Ending on a High Note

Friday night’s sold-out National Symphony Orchestra concert at the Kennedy Center Concert Hall was the midpoint of the final subscription series of the season, and also the end of a two-season cycle pairing Beethoven’s symphonies with those of American composer George Walker (1922-2018), the first Black composer to win a Pulitzer Prize for music. I did not attend any of the earlier performances in this cycle, and in fact haven’t attended an NSO performance since 2019 (maybe even 2018), so in a sense I was going in cold as far as being familiar with the orchestra at this point in Noseda’s tenure. I was also agnostic on the wisdom of pairing Walker with Beethoven, especially on a program featuring the Ninth Symphony. Turns out Walker’s Sinfonia No. 3 fared pretty well in the matchup with, at least in this round. 

Walker’s three-movement work has no obvious common musical ground with Beethoven’s (unless we’re talking about the late string quartets or piano sonatas), but it has remarkable narrative and emotional heft, which contrasts nicely in juxtaposition with Beethoven’s towering monument. Sinfonia No. 3 struck me as a near-perfect piece of musical noir, so much so that I was rather shocked to discover it was apparently written in 2002, rather than in the 1940s or 50s (I was also dismayed by how difficult it was to find the date of composition for most of Walker’s works). It’s discordant and dissonant, but also swaggers and swerves from one section or climax to the next as if we were following an antihero into an abyss of their own making. Strains of Copland and Stravinsky peek through, as well as the film scores of Quincy Jones, all of whom, like Walker, have a connection to Nadia Boulanger. The American strain of musical Modernism doesn’t have many fans in its concert halls, but Walker’s music, and the attention it’s drawing during the current movement to redress decades of ignoring the music of Black composers may change all that. One can hope.

But let’s be clear-- for me, and I suspect many in the house, Beethoven was the draw. It used to be accepted wisdom that any performance of the Ninth was a real event. I remember the first time I attended one that I was so elated at the prospect of hearing this legendary piece performed live that when it was over I stood up and cheered as if I had just witnessed a Beatles reunion. In hindsight it wasn’t all that great, but it was good enough to thrill me, and that’s not a bad thing. Now I’m old and jaded, and I hope for something that doesn’t suck, especially since I’ve experienced truly great performances of the Ninth (thank you, Michael Tilson Thomas and the SF Symphony), and sad, dispiriting performances of the Ninth when I most needed it to be great (I’m talking about you, Marin Alsop and the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra soon after Trump’s election). Regardless, it remains a piece that will forever hold the potential to be breathtaking and awe-inspiring, and on that level, it has few if any musical peers.

Friday’s performance wasn’t one for the ages, but it was pretty damn good. My colleague Robert Battey is consistent in his praise of the NSO’s growth under Noseda with one consistent caveat, which is that the strings are often buried by the horns, brass, and percussion when Noseda (and others) are on the podium, so I was listening for evidence of this problem. What I heard was a sublimation of the strings in certain parts that focused attention on other sections of the orchestra, usually to great effect, with the result being I heard things in this performance of the Ninth I had not really noticed before. This mostly delighted me (except for a couple of inexplicable gaffes by the horns which came through loud and clear, and timpanist Jauvon Gilliam’s inability on this night to deliver the same notes the same way more than once during the first and second movements that were almost as distracting as the horn flubs). The strings, split with the celli placed between the violins and violas, came through with strength and clarity.

The vocal component was mostly excellent, provided by The Washington Chorus under Artistic Director Eugene Rogers, and soloists Camilla Tilling, Kelley O’Connor, Issachah Savage, and Ryan McKinny (replacing Hanno Muller-Brachmann). McKinny made an impressive entrance with “O Freunde, nicht diese Töne!" and maintained that level throughout. Savage, an excellent tenor whose appearance here seems like luxury casting, also acquitted himself nicely. Tilling and O’Connor were present. 

Noseda put his personal stamp on the piece with a quickened tempo that made the entirety fly by in what felt like no time, especially the fourth movement, in which the Turkish march and the weird little discussions between the various sections of the orchestra was rendered faster than I could have imagined. The point of this eluded me, but I can’t say it was a bad choice, just one I wouldn’t have chosen. On the other hand, the third movement developed a fascinating drone effect I found mesmerizing, creating a golden glow that would have had Wagner seething with envy (and inspiration).But that  glow had curiously little warmth, which is how I would describe the whole in just a few words.

I didn’t mind that: music should not be static and this was definitely not a rote performance -- it was considered and intelligently thought out. Kudos to the NSO and Noseda for that, because at this particular moment, that is what we need from orchestras: make it your own, and make it interesting to the audience, whether it’s their first time hearing the piece, or their fiftieth, and on this score, Noseda and the NSO delivered handsomely.

Beethoven’s overture for the Creatures of Prometheus ballet was the opening, and as an amuse bouche it was fine, but up until this point I had managed to avoid seeing this drivel performed during three decades of attending classical music performances, and if I never hear it again that will be fine, too.

Photo Credit: Scott Suchman