PERILS OF EXPRESSION: THE AGONY AND THE ECSTASY

Philharmonic reaches for the stars.

George Warren - October 26, 2009

Brahms’ Tragic Overture seems custom-made for the strengths of Theodore Kuchar and the Fresno Philharmonic with its wide range of expression, its depth of musical idea, and its challenging rhythms. On Saturday at the William Saroyan Theatre, the Philharmonic took on this work, Dvorak’s Eighth Symphony, and Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 20 in D minor, with Meng-Chieh Liu at the piano.

In the Tragic Overture, the rhythm of the first theme presents numerous obstacles to success: it begins as a pickup beat, but it is articulated like a downbeat, and it sounds like a downbeat, even though the theme doesn’t work at all when it begins on beat one. As a result, the orchestra that presents this work must feel the pulse and adhere to it despite the overwhelming contrary pulses resounding about the stage.

On Saturday, Kuchar and the musicians embraced the rhythm and presented a compelling performance of the work. Rhythm did not provide an obstacle until just before the end when Kuchar pushed the tempo a bit and not everyone caught up. The orchestra brought its best effort at the outset, striking the opening chords as a unit and managing the polyrhythms in the inner voices with clarity. It seemed, however, that in the effort to present a coherent performance, the big picture fell out of focus. There is a lot of room in this work for huge dynamic contrast, a major strength for the Philharmonic, and there is a real need for that contrast to grow over the course of the work; here, it seemed that the orchestra missed the overall dynamic shape. In the end, the big climax was already spent.

Not so with the Dvorak. Here, the range of expression varied widely, and in the lead-up to the end, there was a lull in the energy, like the crew was gathering it forces. If one hadn’t heard this music before, one watched the brass players lifting their instruments and one knew that this quiet bit was about to get blown away. Kuchar sent the brass section to the top of its capacity and the effect was extraordinary. All instruments contributed to a huge fortissimo with the horns ripping, trombones blasting, violins and woodwinds shrieking, and low strings and timpani filling in all the leftover musical space.

While the whole symphony is typical Dvorak, meaning music well composed with good, solid ideas worked out to the best of their potential, yet, somehow, not as compelling as Brahms or as clever as Schubert, it has more power than other works by this composer. In the hands of Kuchar and the Fresno Philharmonic, the expressive elements dominated what often is merely an average romantic symphony, and the performance was far more enjoyable than one may have expected.

Troubling was the Mozart. Meng-Chieh Liu is an excellent pianist, and one expects that he will knock a work like this out of the park. After all, Mozart’s piano music, while challenging in many ways, is part of the foundation for the virtuosic pianist. While Liu was on short notice, filling in for another musician who was unable to perform, the requirement that the performance be of top quality does not vanish.

Liu took a middle-ground approach to Mozart in that he did not attempt to play in the “classical” piano style of Mozart’s time, yet neither did he overwhelm the music with a romantic style. In this respect, Liu followed the score as closely as possible while playing on a modern instrument, and shaped the phrases with good musicianship. He succeeded very well in playing in time and matching tone with the orchestra. On this night, this interaction was his strength. Where he did not succeed was in the solo sections and in the general clarity of lines. The cadenza in the third movement, while a bit clunky in its construction, was just plain sloppy in performance. Other portions did not come off well either—it appeared that Liu just missed it at times.

He did not help his case, in the critic’s view, when he returned for an encore. Instead of playing something that he is more comfortable with, he played more Mozart: the Alla Turca rondo from the sonata in A major. This is an audience pleaser, and the audience enjoyed it very much, but it was a mess as a performance. Liu simply didn’t have his best technique with him on this evening.

The orchestra, on the other hand, did a marvelous job with the Mozart. The opening material is very challenging with the rhythm, and the musicians captured both the offbeat rhythms and the light feel that Mozart demands. Further, Kuchar and his orchestra well understand the significance of this work and its expressive nature, uncommon in Mozart’s oeuvre, and let the darker moods play out expertly.

In a program with a variety of expression, the Fresno Philharmonic turned in a red hot performance.

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