20th and 21st Century American music at Severance

Leonard Bernstein once declared “Music is never about anything – music just IS.”  Granted, this was at one of his Young People’s Concerts and perhaps he was simplifying to make a point.  But his statement was as absolutist as it was counterfactual.  The literature contains a panoply of music in which a program is either implied or explicit.  Last night at Severance Hall, composer John Adams and violinist Leila Josefowicz presented an evening of explicit program music from the 20^th and 21^st Centuries.

Adams has been referred to as a minimalist composer, but I feel that label is limiting.  While Short Ride on a Fast Machine, which opened the program, lightly wears a minimalist garb, the composer applies the method as a means to an end.  The perpetual motion that characterizes the work allowed each section of the orchestra to shine – in particular the brass and percussion.

Aaron Copland’s Quiet City was in marked contrast to Short Ride, a study in stillness.  Michael Sachs trumpet and Robert Walters English horn floated above the orchestra without calling attention to themselves. 

Adams presented the Suite from Appalachian Spring as the ballet score that it is, stripping it clean of the treacly schmaltz too many conductors have foisted upon the work.  The orchestra responded with wonderfully transparent strings, spiky balances, and bracing rhythms.

As much as I adore the music, I am as appalled by the program behind Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade as John Adams noted in spoken remarks.  His response is Scheherazade.2, a symphony for violin and orchestra which owes nothing to minimalism - in which the character takes control of her story, struggles for, and attains freedom.  Violinist Leila Josefowicz did more than perform the work, she inhabited the title role as an empowered version of the story teller.  Josefowicz did more than navigated the work’s technical challenges without any sense of strain, she convincingly brought forth the work’s emotional content.  Adams and the orchestra furnished a collaboration – not a mere accompaniment – which made the work more than the sum of its parts.  In particular, percussionist Mark Damoulakis’ mastery of the vibraphone and Chester Englander on the cimbalom provided for some atmospheric color.  The audience’s silence during the performance and sustained ovation afterward were earned.