Symphony concert a tribute
to enduring classical music
Mahler's Fourth Symphony in G: Presented by the Honolulu Symphony Orchestra, repeats 7:30 p.m. today at the Blaisdell Concert Hall, 777 Ward Ave. Tickets: $15 to $55. Call 792-2000.
Review by Ruth O. Bingham Honolulu Symphony's Masterworks series resumed Sunday with a lightly attended concert framing the 20th century: Viennese Gustav Mahler's Symphony No. 4 (1900) and American Joseph Schwantner's Concerto for Percussion and Orchestra (1995). The musical contrast spoke volumes about the century's shift from "old" country to "new," from post-romanticism to postmodernism, from melody to rhythm.
Special to the Star-BulletinMahler called his Fourth, his most accessible and shortest symphony at "only" an hour, a "symphonic humoresque." Even its darker moments soon lapsed back into Viennese gemütlichkeit (geniality), and it exuded a dreamy nostalgia as though viewing childhood through the wrong end of a telescope, rather the way the far end of the 20th century looks to us today.
The symphony was a curious example of organicism in reverse, progressing "backward" from complex polyphony to simple statement: The music from which themes derived was presented at the end, so that the question in listening was not "Where is it going?" but "Where is it coming from?"
Where it was coming from was the "Wunderhorn" song in the fourth movement, beautifully sung by lyric soprano Ying Huang, best known for her title role in the 1995 Mitterand film "Madama Butterfly." Huang's voice, although not large, was exceptionally smooth and clear, especially in her middle-high range. With a soprano like Huang, Mahler's fourth movement was not nearly long enough.
Guest conductor Keri-Lynn Wilson adopted a straightforward approach to the Mahler that allowed its beauty to blossom from within. Many young conductors turn music into personal showcases, but Wilson kept the focus on the music and on the soloists, revealing herself to be skilled, sensitive and understated. In fact, it was easy to overlook how much she contributed to the concert's success: Her conducting in the Schwantner, for example, may have looked almost metronomic to some, but it required that firm a beat to coordinate its complex rhythms and changing meters.
Schwantner's concerto provided an explosive first half to the concert with a festival of instruments, fascinating visually and aurally. The battery of percussion must have been overwhelming on the parterre, but it balanced beautifully in the balcony.
Schwantner painted with layered textures and tone-color washes of sound, from the piercing brilliance of the crotales to the rumbling of the bass drum, creating an arch form based on repeated "cells" reminiscent of minimalism. His use of percussion was extraordinarily expressive: The gentle elegy in the middle, for example, was slowly shattered by an increasingly insistent pounding in what must surely be the longest bass drum solo in all music literature.
The soloist for this work was the masterful James Lee ("Trey") Wyatt III, Honolulu Symphony's principal percussionist, currently on a one-year leave with the San Francisco Orchestra. Wyatt moved smoothly between instruments, playing even complex rhythms with ease and impressive precision; it would be a shame to lose him to another orchestra.
Wyatt's Honolulu colleagues, Stuart Chafetz, Gabriel Sobieski, J. Riely Frances and Steve Dinion, provided support and interaction throughout; even divided by the rest of the orchestra, the percussionists performed as a unit.
Throughout the 20th century, pundits predicted the imminent demise of classical music, but Mahler and Schwantner, as different as they are and coming from opposite ends of that century, demonstrated its vitality. Despite all predictions, classical music remains alive, a balance between exciting new works and an enduring tradition.
Ruth O. Bingham is a free-lance writer who has
a Ph.D. in musicology from Cornell University.
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