Seattle Symphony “Rite of Spring,” with Ludovic Morlot, conductor
By Melinda Bargreen
From France to America, from America to France: no wonder these musical themes intrigue the Seattle Symphony’s new music director Ludovic Morlot, a Frenchman who has moved to Seattle. Each of the concerts he has conducted this season has dealt in some way with Franco-American themes, but none to quite the extent of the Sept. 29-Oct. 1 program centering around Stravinsky’s “The Rite of Spring.”
No one could call it a restful concert. Not when you start right out with the “Rite,” a forceful and brilliantly primitive ballet score that created a scandal at its 1913 premiere in Paris and still can make the earth move. And not when you conclude the evening with Edgar Varèse’s “Amériques,” an even more forceful (though less brilliant) work that was apparently designed to surpass the “Rite” in volume levels, if not quality.
In between came Gershwin’s peppy, jazzy “An American in Paris,” a piece that reverses’ Morlot’s path across the Atlantic by representing an American’s first impressions of the City of Light. (Curiously, the Gershwin work also was heard on the Sept. 17th opening night gala; it seems odd to schedule a repeat performance so soon, before an audience many of whose members had already heard the Gershwin at the gala.)
A few weeks into the season, it’s already clear that the orchestra and the audience are galvanized by the energy Morlot brings to the podium. At each program thus far, the maestro has taken up the microphone to address the listeners. Some people like this practice, as a way to see more clearly into the conductor’s view of the music. Others don’t, preferring that the conductor get on with the business of conducting. Wherever you stand on the issue, there’s no denying that it is fairly unusual among major American orchestras to have remarks from the conductor as a standard feature of subscription programs.
The concert’s high point, not surprisingly, was the Stravinsky, all sharp edges and dramatic pulses conveying the unmistakable energy this landmark score. Here Morlot was right at home, changing rhythms and meter as smoothly as an expert racecar driver changes gears. There were a few intonation problems, a few false starts and wrong entrances, but these receded to non-issues in comparison with the overall effect of the reading. The guest concertmaster, Yang Xu of the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, made a strong impression here, and an even finer one in his “American in Paris” solos.
The Varèse “Amériques,” conveying that composer’s impressions of America, did not show to advantage following the “Rite of Spring” – of which “Amériques” seemed a noisy and less effective imitation. Only cowbells and Wagner tubas, it seemed, were missing from the personnel list; there even was a heckelphone, a bass-toned member of the oboe family played by one of the world’s few recognized heckelphonists, Seattle’s Arthur Grossman. The percussion section included a deep-toned and exceedingly loud siren that sounded like the moos of a bellowing Holstein (periodically inducing titters in the audience).
“You’ll love it for its passion,” Morlot said of the Varèse from the podium, “or you’ll love hating it.” The “Amériques” made the “Rite of Spring” sound positively lyrical by comparison, but the performance – culminating in a musical cataclysm of paint-peeling volume – nonetheless found favor with the audience – whether for Morlot’s former or latter reason.
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