Respectable Songs and Thorough Frenchness

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The New York Sun

John Harbison is a wildly successful composer, receiving a thousand commissions, a thousand opportunities. (He may disagree with this.) He writes it, it gets performed – and usually recorded. He has written several pieces for the soprano Dawn Upshaw. On her marvelous 1989 album – dominated by Barber’s “Knoxville: Summer of 1915” – you will find Mr. Harbison’s “Mirabai Songs.”


He has now written “Milosz Songs,” premiered by Ms. Upshaw and the New York Philharmonic last week. The composer has taken 11 poems of the late Polish poet and made a half-hour cycle out of them. (The poems are in English translation.) The music is utterly Harbisonian. His fans will adore it, and others will almost certainly respect it, even if they are unmoved.


Czeslaw Milosz, of course, was one of the great anti-totalitarians – great anti-Communists – of the age. (This is in addition to being a first-class writer.) Several years ago, I talked with the Chinese intellectual and Tiananmen Square leader Jian-li Yang. He is now in some PRC dungeon. I asked whether he could describe the situation he and his fellows found themselves in, and he merely cited a book: Milosz’s “Captive Mind.” That was enough.


Mr. Harbison’s songs are for soprano and full orchestra, but the composer surrounds his singer with a subgroup: with three flutes, a vibraphone, a harp, and a celesta. As he explained in a brief essay – published in the Philharmonic’s program – “I thought of these players as satellites revolving around the path of the singer.” It was a smart and engaging idea.


The “Milosz Songs” are small-scale, intimate, well crafted. They tend to alternate between soft and loud: One song is soft-ish, the next one is loud-ish. Taken as a whole, they are somewhat lulling, in quasi-minimalist fashion. As usual from this composer, the work is earnest, and you know that a fine compositional mind is behind it. But what about its impact?


In my view, these songs suffer from a bit of blandness, bloodlessness. For example, Mr. Harbison uses the poem “You who wronged a simple man.” Here, Milosz mercilessly fingers police state thuggery and cowardice – condemning those who “mix good and evil,” and “blur the line.” But the music is typical Harbison: gentle, with that marimba (or vibraphone, or xylophone) going.


The “Milosz Songs” will impress – have impressed – others more than they did me, on Saturday night. And perhaps I need another hearing or two.


Whatever the case, Mr. Harbison should be applauded for turning to Czeslaw Milosz. For many years, he was not exactly a favorite of elites and intellectuals, because he indicted Communism as Nazism’s close cousin (twin brother, actually). He tended to embarrass and flummox his colleagues in the West. I can’t help thinking that anyone who admires Milosz must be a good man.


Dawn Upshaw – recently blonde, by the way – sang as you would have expected: with great sensitivity, great sympathy. She has a natural feeling for the musical line, and if some of us wish she’d travel more directly to notes, rather than scooping up to them – well, that is the life she has chosen, to quote “Godfather” language. Mr. Harbison and other contemporary composers are lucky to have Ms. Upshaw as a champion.


Conducting the Philharmonic was Robert Spano, late of the Brooklyn Philharmonic and now with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra. He will bring that group to Carnegie Hall on March 11, for the Verdi Requiem. He was keen and helpful in the Harbison songs, and excellent in the work that had begun the program: Bartok’s Music for Strings, Percussion, and Celesta.


What this piece needs is balance, and logic, and an inexorability. It could also stand some emotion (though caged emotion, most of the time). In Mr. Spano’s reading, it had all those things. The performance was as good in its quietude as in its swellings. If you want to measure Mr. Spano’s effectiveness, consider that the audience kept still – relatively still – all through the Bartok.


The conductor was notably alert, focused, intense – on the balls of his feet (figuratively speaking). And the orchestra was super-responsive, for example in the second movement, where these players showed off all their virtuosity. That virtuosity included accuracy, as it must.And the last movement – Allegro molto – danced incisively, almost thrillingly.


The program ended with Bernstein’s Symphonic Dances from “West Side Story.” (If you had written that show, wouldn’t you have made symphonic dances from it, too?) The New York Philharmonic should own this piece; it is its birthright. But surprisingly enough – particularly given the Bartok – this performance was sloppy, stiff, occasionally cloddish. Who’d’ve guessed? At several points, orchestra members have to snap their fingers, as the Sharks and the Jets do. In this, the players were not together at all – reminding me of the worst of their pizzicatos.


On the plus side, Rebecca Young sang “Somewhere” nicely on her viola.


***


On Friday night, the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center put on a very attractive program, advertised as “Angela Hewitt and the Music of France.” Amazingly enough, it featured Angela Hewitt and the music of France. Ms. Hewitt is a Canadian pianist, especially known for her playing of Bach – but she has extensive experience in the French (and other) repertoire, too. On this bill were Debussy, Ravel, and Franck.


Please, no quibbles that Franck was, technically, a Belgian. He certainly lived and worked in France.


Ms. Hewitt played in all three of the evening’s pieces, and so did a young cellist: Daniel Muller-Schott, from Germany. The two of them started things off with Debussy’s Sonata for Cello and Piano, one of that composer’s most unusual and affecting pieces.


A quick question: When you play a sonata, of this type, are you playing chamber music – or are you more like in recital territory? Whatever the answer, it matters not.


Mr. Muller-Schott and Ms. Hewitt gave an enjoyable and mature reading of the Debussy sonata. The cellist made a beautiful sound, or sounds, and if he had some intonation problems, those problems were slight. Ms. Hewitt played – particularly in the first movement – with an interesting detachment. I’m not speaking of an emotional detachment, but of a semistaccato style on the keyboard. She would emphasize clarity all night long (sometimes at the expense of Impressionist mystery).


Debussy’s second movement is a little freaky, spooky, weird, and the players caught those qualities. They employed a variety of colors, and paid close attention to rhythm. Without smart rhythm, this movement is lost.


The third should begin with a kind of flying sensation, which it indeed did – Mr. Muller-Schott and Ms. Hewitt introduced this movement wonderfully. Then we have a merry, dancing tune, and the cellist could have used crisper articulation here. So could the pianist. (This was a rare example of muddiness from her.) But, on the whole, these players conveyed this music well.


The Ravel on the program was his much-loved Trio in A minor. In the middle of the last century, people around the world wore the grooves off the LP by Rubinstein-Heifetz-Piatigorsky. (Now you can wear the grooves off a CD.) Joining Ms. Hewitt and Mr. Muller-Schott for this work was the violinist Ana Kavafian, a mainstay at the Chamber Music Society.


Ms. Hewitt began the work, and she was utterly crystalline – remarkable. When the others came in, all was composed. All was harmonious. One trick in this music, as in much French music, is to be insouciant without being too un caring. These musicians largely achieved that. In my view, Mr. Muller-Schott lingered over the beautiful phrases Ravel gives him just a little too long. (I’m speaking of the first movement.) A cooler dispatch would have suited.


And overall, this movement could have used more enchantment, even some intoxication. Everything was correct and commendable – but perhaps a little too obvious.


The second movement is a type of scherzo, and, for me, it was just slightly heavy, a little clumsy – but perfectly acceptable. At the end of the movement, Ms. Hewitt made a big, showy gesture with her arm, provoking the audience’s applause.


In the next movement – a passacaglia – Mr. Muller-Schott did probably his most impressive playing of the night: He intoned Ravel’s melody with a spareness – almost a desolation – that was exactly right.


And the final movement (Anime)? It begins with kind of an otherworldly haze, from the strings. This haze did not really come about. But some lovely playing ensued from all three members of the trio, and Ravel was well served. Toward the end – in particular – Ms. Hewitt played with extraordinary resolution. On the final note, she threw out another of those arm gestures. She looked, for all the world, like Angela Gheorghiu. But La Gheorghiu has the excuse of being an opera singer. A soprano, to boot.


After intermission, we had the Franck: his piano quintet in F minor, a sprawling, restless, Romantic work (1879). Joining the players already mentioned were a second violinist, Jennifer Frautschi, and the violist Paul Neubauer.


In the opening movement – as throughout – Mr. Neubauer contributed his strikingly beautiful sound. It is really one of the most beautiful string sounds you can hear in New York, or elsewhere. The group as a whole played with admirable unity and conviction. Ms. Hewitt could be a little stiff, in need of more bend – more suppleness, more pliancy. But she provided a nice tension, where that was desirable. And, as always, she evinced a decisive sense of rhythm.


Ms. Kavafian faced some intonation trouble in the second movement, and in other spots. But this did little harm. To begin the last movement, Ms. Frautschi came up with some wonderful squirminess; Ms. Kavafian squirmed well too. The pianist tended to play decorously, and I might have wished for more freedom – more Romantic abandon – from her. But her restraint was musical, and, indeed, French.


Which was perfectly appropriate for an evening of music from France – plus Angela Hewitt.


The New York Philharmonic will repeate its program Tuesday evening at Avery Fisher Hall (Lincoln Center, 212-875-5656).


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