Perception: Gubaildulina, Mozart, Bartók

Concert
A Far Cry
Jordan Hall
Symphony Hall area
May 10, 2024

With its full plenum of players, A Far Cry is, as a rule, amazing in its energy, precision, and cohesion. To boot, its wonderful democratic approach to enabling different players in rotation to serve as impresarios and programmers for concerts, offers a wonderful sense of mutuality and community. The concerts are wonderfully conceived, highly varied, and incredibly well-played, and this one was no exception.

Jesse Irons, a violinist, served as impresario for the evening. In several opening remarks, he told how The Criers had sought, at one time or another, to program the astounding and demanding Bartók Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta, but always got caught up in the sense that it was so dramatically assertive, so otherworldly, so outer-space-like in some ways, that it was difficult to know how to incorporate it into a program. What would go with it? What could stand up to it?

As Irons recalled, he found himself listening to the Sofi Gubaildulina piece, Meditation on the Bach Chorale… and through it found a way to programming the Bartók. There was something equally otherworldly and majestic about the Gubaildulina piece; it stood up to the Bartók, but also had something quite different that complemented it. Indeed they are both majestic pieces, demanding, significant, robustly unique, and to put them side by side reflects a kind of programming inspiration, but also issues a demand. Irons’ answer to how to get them to sit well together was to sandwich them around the great Mozart Eine Kleine Nachtmusik, a piece so entirely different from either of the others that it could serve both as a buffer and as a kind of template for hearing them. Irons argued, in his prefatory remarks, that a listening to the Mozart, so familiar to all lovers of classical music, could be altered by hearing it within this context. Indeed, in some sense, this was true, though its dramatic difference from the surrounding pieces also made its distinctive straightforwardness a kind of oasis between tumultuous extremes.

The Gubaildulina is a moody, experimental, transcendently jarring piece that constantly challenges one’s sense of settledness. Its trippings between different registers of strings, its unique echoes of high scratchy percussive trebles played on the string bass, and its interchanges between the harpsichord and the strings leads one into a forest of unknowns, full of wonders, somewhat strange and bewildering. The Bartók is a ferocious piece with challenging scrabbles and runs all over the string section, with wild percussive exploits on the keyboard and alarms of all sorts from the percussion filled with cymbals, timpani and xylophone.

Between these two extremes, the Mozart sits like a wonderful creamy interior of an Oreo cookie – its unexpected alterations are present but mild, and its soothing mildness of variation is a sweet temptation rather than an unsettlement. Hearing it amidst the two other ferocious pieces makes one regard its quietude and simplicity as a wonderful kind of resting place in the midst of a world full of challenges. And, especially with the dramatic precision offered by A Far Cry, its seeming simplicity becomes a kind of eloquent appeal for the graceful, balanced and finely tuned, its island of calm gesture an important caesura in the midst of maelstroms.

Some particular notes on the pieces and performances:
Jesse Irons’ prefatory remarks
The challenge here is to see how context can alter one’s perceptions. The Bartók has been on the books to perform but is very difficult to program. It’s kind of a world unto itself and no other pieces came forth as viable candidates to program along with it. But somehow, Sofia Gubaidulina’s work emerged out of the woodwork, something entirely in her own language, and that language is playful, turbulent and so unto itself. And then, why add the Mozart. The thought is that, in the context of the two other majestic pieces it somehow takes on the “alien spaceship” quality that they both exhibit.

Sofia Gubaidulina
Meditation the the Bach Choral ‘Vor deinen Thron tret ich hiermit’ BWV 668
Harpsichord chords followed by otherworldly violin and viola ramblings. Indeed extraterrestrial, with a cello ascent. The bass is tremolo-ing right at the bridge, an incredible effect. Wonderful interplays of tonality. The harpsichord plods on, then is met with the basso hippopotomi. Airy violin and viola then a growing increase and reverberation, swirling very high on the bass. How ironic to get that edgy effect there! The harpsichord chirps away, inviting further ruminations from the strings. The violins ask the questions every more urgently and the bass and cello answer, but equivocally. Then a climbing of rope ladders towards some hidden height, ever upwards. Much energy and agitation. What a great saltando percussive effect on the bass! Eerie and otherworldly. The bass is a real star here. Now lurking along, not really going anywhere. Strings opposed to harpsichord, aimlessly. Will it ever stop? The frustration drama yields to harpsichord tremolos and the lower voices chant in unison. Everyone joins in – from the back of the orchestra too. A community of thought is capped by angry complaint by the harpsichord which turns into a settled, sonorous, conclusion.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Eine Kleine Nachtmusik, K. 525
I. Allegro
Energetic and straightforward. What was hidden and mysterious in the Gubaidulina piece is elegant and transparent here. The bass does pose a question which the trebles seek to answer. The Criers here are luminous. It is all so clear and above board – but what lurks below? After the repeat, it begins to unravel, but goes right back to its initial gusto. Whereas the Gubaidulina is all anguish, this, at least for the present, is simple and clear.

II. Romanze: Andante
A simple and melodious andante. Are there no complications here? Graceful to the nth degree. Then just a little extra variation – a bit of pumpkin spice – nothing too dramatic. The Criers play it with precision and luminosity. Is that catch here that there is a harpsichord in both pieces? A faster part with turns echoing all around. It returns to the ultimately placid theme. Yet, is there any self-knowledge here?

III Menuetto: Allegretto
Exuberance par excellence, with a rollicking rhythm, executed perfectly. The Criers give it verve and punctuation, and it’s fun to watch Irons leading it all with gusto.

IV Allegro
Now the trickle-light frolic where the sharpness of the skates is tested. It varies a little bit but it springs back to the original theme. This is lightness and perfection, everything the Gubaidulina piece is not. A change of key – well, it’s something – and now a little minor key with urgency. But it ends with clarity and verve.

Has the Mozart taken on the grandeur and wildness of the Gubaidulina? Not exactly. Rather, it has provided an island for the spacecraft to land, a soft pad in the midst of turbulence.

Béla Bartók
Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta, Sz. 106, BB 114
I. Andante tranquillo
Searching in violas, violins pick up the trail, then the cellos. Again with the violins. A searching quality with repetitive probing. A weaving, layer over layer, with an earnest delicacy. The cellos press the question faster as the tension builds. Now all of them are in the game and there is a cymbal clashing and a timpanic thunk. Atmospheric explorations. It does have an outer space aspect. It goes to nothing.

II. Allegro
Ferocity in the strings, percussion, keyboard. The Criers pull it off brilliantly. Two timpani stabs set the stage for a series of pluckings. It all gets very energetic with lots of tremolos. Keyboard takes off with a terrific zoom. Punctuated attacks in syncopation – fascinating – followed by an urgent wandering. Scales up and down, all pizzicato – it’s a pluck fest. A race downwards, with skipping across the rocks. Then the ferocious main theme. A lumbering lover then tries to emerge. Then everyone together with the keyboard sounding the alarm. Now they are really going.

III. Adagio
Starts with a series of clinks. Then the timpani, wavering. The violas add some reflection and violins echo quizzically. Haunting cello exploration. Now some really spooky stuff – high whiny violins with timpani stretching the smiles. The harp expands the gap. Tremolos everywhere, cataclysms. The keyboard tries to hold down the fort. The beautiful celesta plunking. An attack comes from nowhere followed by aimlessness. That clinking reasserts itself, and it fades off into nowhere.

IV. Allegro molto
Furious plucking leading to utterness. Something like a theme emerges, in syncopated frenzy. Fanfares in strings abound. The keyboard turns to four hands, romping and rollicking. The Criers put it together flawlessly. They’re going crazy now. The keyboard in a frenzy as are all the strings. Broad brush strokes – large rolling waves. Is there a solution here? This is going somewhere, but where? Then they hover in trill. The celesta scales set a pace before the next frenzied race. And it ends with a bang!

Overall –
Yes, indeed – two exuberant, extravagant orchestral sized pieces, something like large spaceships, with the exquisite Mozartean oasis in between, that interior grand in its elegance and simplicity, a breath, a casesura, a pause between the majestic storms, a necessary place for reflection in the midst of the existential challenges.

– BADMan (aka Charles Munitz)