Carnegie Hall: Philadelphia Orchestra Performs Tchaikovsky and Bartók

On Tuesday evening, I went to Carnegie Hall to hear the Philadelphia Orchestra, under the baton of its Music Director Yannick Nézet-Séguin, perform ballet music by Tchaikovsky followed by a concert rendition of Bartók's only opera, Bluebeard's Castle.  As Nézet-Séguin will next season be taking over as Music Director of the Met Opera, I was naturally quite interested in hearing how he would approach the latter work.  Previously, I had seen him conduct Verdi's Otello at the Met in 2015 and had thought he had made an excellent job of it.

The program opened with selections from Tchaikovsky's best known work, the ballet Swan Lake.  There must be some connection between Tchaikovsky and Bartók that I'm missing because the last time I heard Bluebeard's Castle (conducted by Valery Gergiev at the Met in 2015) it was also paired with a work by Tchaikovsky, on that occasion the one-act opera Iolanta.  On the surface, Tchaikovsky's late Russian Romanticism has little in common with Bartók's uncompromising modernism.  Instead, the two composers' works present a stark contrast to one another.

Swan Lake's convoluted early history is provided in detail in the Wikipedia article linked to above, but it's worth noting that there appeared over the years several alternative endings to the well known story.  In 1987, I witnessed an interpretation by the Paris Opera Ballet that was without doubt the finest ballet performance I've ever attended.  In this version, in which Sylvie Guillem danced Odette/Odile and Rudolf Nureyev took on the role of Rothbart, only Siegfried died at the end.  Once he was gone, Rothbart, held aloft by wires, swooped down, lifted the recumbent form of Odette, and carried her off.

After intermission, the orchestra - now joined by soloists Michelle DeYoung, mezzo-soprano, and John Relyea, Bass - returned to the stage to perform Bluebeard's Castle.  This was really the work I had been most interested in hearing.  In contrast to the Tchaikovsky, it is a thoroughly modern piece whose intensity owes as much to the psychological depth of its libretto as it does to Bartók's fascinating score.  The Prologue makes this clear when it asks: "Where is the stage: outside or within, Ladies and Gentlemen?"  As Judith moves from one locked room to the next, the listener understands her horror as she penetrates ever deeper into Bluebeard's subconscious and forces him to reveal to her his innermost secrets.  The use of only two characters heightens the drama and at times creates an almost unbearable sensation of claustrophobia.  The audience begins to feel that they too are confined with a protagonist who may very well be a sadistic madman.  Even if the sinister overtones of sex and violence are never made explicit - the work was, after all, written in 1912 - they still lurk in the shadows and contribute to Judith's growing trepidation.  All the while, Bartók's music enhances the atmosphere of gloom and foreboding.  This is particularly apparent in the use of the minor second whenever there is any mention of blood.

The libretto, based on the fairy tale by Charles Perrault, was written by Béla Balázs, a friend of both Bartók and Kodály.  Significantly, Balázs based the verses in his libretto on Hungarian folk ballads, a form already of deep interest to Bartók from his ethnological research, and this is no doubt one reason the composer was attracted to the project in the first place.  The references to folk music do not, however, account for the symbolism of the different colored lights each time the door to a new room is opened (with the exception of the sixth), and I've never been able to find a satisfactory explanation for it.

The Philadelphia Orchestra has always been one of America's finest ensembles and I've very much enjoyed hearing their music over the years.  The lush sound of the string section was particularly notable in the Tchaikovsky.