Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840-1893)
Romeo and Juliet: Fantasy-Overture (1870)
Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971)
The Firebird: Suite “No. 2” (1919)
Edgard Varèse (1883-1965)
Amériques (1922 version)
Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra/Mariss Jansons
rec. live, 2013-2015, Munich, Germany
BR Klassik 900016 [70]
Why, oh why, do otherwise capable, accomplished conductors feel the need to overinterpret, overconduct, and just generally overdo Tchaikovvsky? (Talk about a composer who doesn’t need help….) Here, even so estimable a musician as Marris Jansons succumbs.
The start of Romeo is straightforward – though the clarinets change colour noticeably as they shift into and out of their chalumeau range – with strong, lean accents and sforzandos. The Allegro giusto is giusto indeed, moderately paced, with the numerous dotted figures shapely rather than tensile. The love theme proper is airy and open. In the second battle scene, the bows tend to sit long on the strings – this is, after all, a German orchestra – but the resonance is imposing, and Jansons inflects the various motifs to enliven the textures. But then Jansons begins to interject subito pianos that the composer didn’t request, presaging trouble to come: the love theme’s climactic reprise is burdened with rhetorical distentions that weigh it down and produce uneasy, approximate coördination at key points. The coda moves along, but the unease persists, and the first horn oddly draws focus in the last cadence.
The Firebird Suite “No. 2” – it’s the standard edition, not one of the hybrid versions -is better, though not quite distinctive. The opening bass triplets are clean, the wind interjections crisp;the accents are tightly focused. Jansons brings out the buoyancy and dancing lilt of the Firebird’s Variation. The Princesses’ Round Dance, led by a lustrous, expressive oboe, opens out into a pleasing climax. The slightly restrained Danse infernale has enough breathing time; the Lullaby feels spacious, gradually bogging down; and the finale’s bass-drum downbeats go soggy and tentative.
Full disclosure: I’ve never particularly liked Amériques, and this performance did nothing to change my mind. The piece supposedly reflects Varèse’s impressions of New York City after a visit; the concatenation of angular dissonances may well be an accurate rendering, but, as a lifelong New Yorker myself, I hardly need it. The large orchestra includes an extended percussion battery. The angular, dissonant motifs, odd series of woodwind trills, and light-percussion-heavy textures (so to speak) leave the impression of modern-music cliché, though Varèse probably got there first. Save for a brief, lonely trumpet solo about twelve minutes in, little here interested me, and the piece somehow signals an ending a good six minutes before it’s actually over.
Paradoxically, this is the piece that shows everyone off to best advantage. Its irregularities don’t allow Jansons scope room for his backbreaking, and linebreaking, hijinks of the Tchaikovsky; the playing is consistently knowing and assured. And the engineering precisely locates the various instruments within the overall sonic frame. (Are the muted trumpets at about 6:00 actually offstage? That’s how they sound.) Oddly, this is the only piece where the producers have included the applause!
If you want to explore Varèse, start with the relatively conventional Arcana for a similarly large orchestra: even if you’re allergic to nontonal compositions, the big blocks of sound will at least draw your ear. (I recommend Martinon/Chicago/RCA – better than either of the Boulez versions.) Veteran listeners, no doubt, are already drowning in versions of the other two scores. Jansons did some outstanding work – frequently better in performance than in the studio – but his disc, sadly, is only for his completists.
Stephen Francis Vasta
stevedisque.wordpress.com/blog
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