Fun With Varèse

One of the most enjoyable aspects of listening to a European orchestra is that the players do not sit onstage before the concert and produce a cacophony of seemingly interminable noise. Rather, the stage is empty until just prior to the performance, when they file out in dignified fashion. But when the Amsterdam Concertgebouw Orchestra was in town in 2000, they did come out and play random bleats and brays in a parody of an American ensemble. The reason? They had opened the concert with a short, whimsical work by that most iconoclastic of avant-garde composers, Edgard Varese.Varese’s “Tuning Up” was on the program on Wednesday evening when the Juilliard Symphony and the Axiom Ensemble (a dedicated chamber group created and managed entirely by Juilliard students) performed at Avery Fisher Hall under the baton of James Conlon. Their performance of Varese student Chou Wen-chung’s reconstruction of the piece was all in good fun; it featured snippets from Beethoven and Ives amid the phantasmagoric maelstrom.The printed program confidently ascribed the next piece, an arrangement of Debussy’s “Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun,” to Schonberg student Benno Sachs. This is an interesting theory but hardly a provable one. The jewel in the crown of the transcriptions that Schonberg engendered for his Society for Private Musical Performances, this gorgeous reworking is one of only two pieces in the entire repertory that is actually an improvement over the original work of genius (the Ravel “Pictures at an Exhibition” being the other). And there is much controversy about who penned this delicately lyrical reduction for chamber ensemble.When it was recorded by the Boston Symphony Chamber Players in 1980, it was attributed to Hanns Eisler, but with an asterisk. It is even conceivable that the real author was Alban Berg, who scribbled notes on the piano part. In any case, the Axiom Ensemble performed this sensuous delight magnificently.This concert reminded me of that one chocolate in the box with a less than delicious center. That gooey middle was “The Age of Anxiety” by Leonard Bernstein, a pompous piece with pretensions to profundities that are simply not there. Lenny being Lenny, he subtitled the work “After W. H. Auden.”The poet, who had collaborated successfully with Benjamin Britten, was quick to point out that the work “has nothing to do with me.” At least Wednesday night’s performance was first-rate. Pianist Yun Kyung Choo was almost completely note perfect and exhibited a strong-handed air of confidence. I would love to hear her play good music someday.Mr. Conlon suggested to the Juilliard School that one of its students try a hand at a chamber reduction a la Schonberg, and the result was the world premiere of the “Gurrelieder Vorspiel” (the opening of Schonberg’s massive work for chorus and orchestra) scored for small ensemble by Huang Ruo. Once again, the Axiom players were superb, although some of the gigantic heft of the piece was sacrificed in favor of rather thin rivulets of melody. Mr. Ruo made a noble effort, but he’s no Benno Sachs.Imagine if you were a parent spending all that money to send your child to Juilliard, only to discover that he or she was learning to play the lion’s roar. This instrument, which consists of an old-fashioned washtub with a hole cut in its bottom through which the player pulls a length of rope, was only one of 135 instruments used for the splendiferous version of Varese’s “Ameriques,” which concluded the evening’s festivities. The title refers to the European sense in the 1920s that America represented all that was open and exciting, daring and individualistic, not dissimilar to the land of rough-hewn liberty painted by Antonin Dvoryak. Of course, in those days all Americans felt the glow of the patriotic that so many have now self-indulgently forsaken.By the way, no one applauded at this concert. It wasn’t that we didn’t like the performance, but rather that Mr. Conlon asked us at the very beginning of the evening to please refrain. Apparently, he wanted to make a point about complimentary sonorities, but it seemed to me a bit precious – a stunt. Too bad: There have been several concerts this season during which I had no desire to applaud, but this was not one of them.

Fun With Varèse

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