Exploring Composers and Their God

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The New York Sun

Leon Botstein and the American Symphony Orchestra inaugurated their new season at Avery Fisher Hall with a concert designed to demonstrate the relationships between five diverse composers and their God. The program, titled “The Art of the Psalm,” was shaped as if it were a major choral symphony in five movements, something Gustav Mahler might have conceived.

The event began with the devout Catholic Anton Bruckner and his setting of Psalm 150, the last sacred work written by the Linz master. Bruckner would devote his last five years to imbedding God into his final two instrumental symphonies — the 8th and the unfinished 9th. This setting is a glorious Allelujah and, though I detected some shrillness in the higher voices of the Concert Chorale of New York, this was still a powerful performance.

Those same female voices carried the next piece, the American premiere of Franz Schreker’s Psalm 116. Schreker was born and raised a Catholic, but was ethnically Jewish, a fact not unnoticed by the Nazi regime. He is probably best known as the man who conducted the premiere of Arnold Schoenberg’s massive Gurrelieder, and required custommade, extra long music paper to allow him to see all of the parts at a glance.

His psalm setting is an early one, and does not portend the atonal composer to come. Rather it is a Brahmsian Wiegenlied, gently rocking and comforting. The chorus, and especially the magnificently protean orchestra, conveyed just the right sense of sweetness.

Most of this music was unfamiliar, as befits an ASO presentation, but there was one famous melody to be heard. What seemed to be an orchestration of that familiar Rachmaninoff Prelude in C sharp minor turned out to be the opening of the setting of Franz Liszt’s Psalm 13. This was originally envisioned as a full-blown operatic scene, but all of the splendid material went to one tenor soloist when the work was published.

And what a soloist we had this day. Simon O’Neill has a ringing heldentenor that cuts right through the orchestra and easily resounds in the back row of the balcony. Barrel-chested and youthful, he could certainly step into a Siegfried or Siegmund role in the future. In fact, Liszt seemed to be influenced by his friend and son-in-lawWagner as he penned this dramatic scene.

Alexander von Zemlinsky was certainly the most ecumenical of these five composers. His father was a Catholic who converted to Judaism, while the composer himself eventually became a Protestant (and added the “von” to his name to assist in his assimilation). His setting of the familiar 23rd psalm was lovely, filled with sounds of nature and expressionistic tone painting — the dissonant muted horns at the word “enemies” being a prime example. Here the orchestra was superb in changing colors quickly and meaningfully.

But the best performance of the afternoon was the triumphant reading of Max Reger’s mighty setting of Psalm 100. Americans who know this music have most likely only experienced it in its “cleansed” version by Paul Hindemith, who unilaterally decided that Reger’s dense harmonies were too difficult to follow. But they are not at all murky in the right conductor’s hands, as Mr. Botstein demonstrated this day, in what turned out to be the American premiere of the original version of the piece.

Certainly Mr. Botstein and his band made a very strong case for the man and his glorious setting. Taking the opening line, “make a joyful noise unto the Lord,” quite literally, Reger pens a spectacular tribute in four distinct movements. There are very dense passages to be sure, but that is the very essence of Reger’s cryptographic aesthetic. The devilishly difficult vocal double fugue that ends the work was nimbly sung by the chorus and the subsumed inclusion of Bach’s “Ein’ feste Burg” was radiantly clear and resoundingly inspirational. This was a wonderful performance and sent the crowd home stirred and revivified.

Mr. Botstein has done an excellent job building this orchestra to such a high level of competency. Over the past two seasons especially, it has entered the top circle of local ensembles, yet has been largely ignored or consistently denigrated by the usual scribblers. My sense is that, if it sustains this instrumental excellence, eventually even the naysayers will come around.


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