Concert-drama continues

Philadelphia Orchestra's Barnes/Stokowski Festival presents 'The Rite of Spring'

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3 minute read
Dancers in the original production of 'Rite of Spring,' with Nicholas Roerich's costumes and set design. (Photo via Creative Commons/Wikipedia.)
Dancers in the original production of 'Rite of Spring,' with Nicholas Roerich's costumes and set design. (Photo via Creative Commons/Wikipedia.)

Igor Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring may evoke the antediluvian stirrings of life at winter’s end, but its terrifying allure also makes it a natural for the Halloween season. This weekend, principal guest conductor Stéphane Denève led the Philadelphia Orchestra in a seismic performance that aptly captured the primordial and the picaresque, reminding us in part why this work caused a riot when it premiered in Paris in 1913.

The score — Stravinsky’s setting for Diaghilev’s raw ballet about rebirth and human sacrifice — debuted in the United States in 1922, with Leopold Stokowski leading the Philadelphia Orchestra. This accounts for its appearance during the two-week Barnes-Stokowski festival.

Across the continents

The piece rightly claims its place as the work that launched classical music's modern era. From the opening bassoon solo, performed with a haunting sense of mystery by Daniel Matsukawa, through the ferocity of oscillating rhythms to grating discords that won’t give up, The Rite of Spring exerts visceral power today as it did a century before.

As with last week’s Barnes/Stokowski program, the selections featured here were interspersed with dramatic sketches by Didi Balle under the rubric of The Artful Titans. Nicholas Carriere’s Stokowski and David Bardeen’s Barnes traced the roles these two men played in making Philadelphia a hub of cultural innovation in the early years of the 20th century.

I thought the dramatic sequences in Part Two were weaker and less involving than those in Part One. However, I appreciated this week’s stronger emphasis on the influence of African art and music on the birth of modernism. Referring to Barnes’s enthusiasm for African masks and his own fascination with Stravinsky’s African-inspired rhythms, Stokowski nodded his head and reflected, “We heard the beat of the same drum.”

Certainly, the percussion section was remarkable throughout this work, with Chris Deviney playing bass drum, Don Liuzzi and Angela Nelsen on timpani, and Bill Wozniak and Phillip O’Bannon on several other percussion instruments.

Offering a different spin on creation myths, the concert began with Darius Milhaud’s Creation of the World, a work for small orchestra with a light touch, featuring saxophone and a woodwind sextet to the conductor’s left. By the 1920s, jazz had permeated Western culture, adding lilt and sass even to a ballet on a ponderous theme.

Peter Richard Conte played Poulenc's captivating organ solos during the Concerto in G minor. (Photo courtesy of the Philadelphia Orchestra.)
Peter Richard Conte played Poulenc's captivating organ solos during the Concerto in G minor. (Photo courtesy of the Philadelphia Orchestra.)

Milhaud’s work includes several piquant saxophone solos (played by Gary Lewis) as the composer explores the birth of flora and fauna, the dance of created beings, and the desire of man and woman. It ends with a slinky line in the oboe — elegantly performed by Peter Smith — and the purr of flutes as “man and woman kiss.”

Á la mode

Seated at the organ console behind the violins, Peter Richard Conte joined the orchestra before intermission for a performance of Francis Poulenc’s Concerto in G minor for Organ, Strings, and Timpani. This largely captivating work, memorable for its powerhouse opening and concluding organ solos, was composed in 1938.

The links to Stokowski are nebulous (Poulenc composed in Paris during the lifetimes of the “artful titans” and wrote for organ, which was Stokowski’s original instrument). Any jazz influences, if they exist, are deftly concealed by the composer.

The work does have splendid moments of tension and release, such as the tumble of discordant tones before the Tempo de l’Allegro. This occurs about five minutes from the concluding unison G at ffff, or “loud times four.” Under Denève’s direction, with Conte’s virtuosity and Liuzzi’s powerful performance on timpani, this was one of the finest performances of this concerto I have heard, nuanced and multifaceted but bombastic where it needed to be.

While at the Kimmel Center, I stopped by before the concert to hear the Blackbird Society Orchestra, an ensemble of talented musicians, playing 1920s jazz on the roof garden. The well-attended event was in honor of South Philadelphia-born Eddie Lang, known to some as the “father of jazz guitar.” This program brought back many memories (conveyed by parents and grandparents) of the music of Louis Armstrong, Bix Beiderbecke, and other jazz greats from that or more recent times.

What, When, Where

The Rite of Spring. Peter Richard Conte, organ; Didi Balle, playwright and director; David Bardeen, actor; Nicholas Carriere, actor; Paul Schoeffler, actor; Stéphane Denève, conductor. Philadelphia Orchestra. Creation of the World, Op. 81, by Darius Milhaud; Concerto for Organ, Strings, and Timpani in G minor, by Francis Poulenc; The Rite of Spring, by Igor Stravinsky. October 19-21, 2018, at the Kimmel Center's Verizon Hall, 300 S. Broad Street, Philadelphia. (215) 893-1999 or philorch.org.

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