When Bela Bartok began composing his Concerto for Orchestra on Aug. 15, 1943, he had just been diagnosed with the leukemia that would silence him two years later, just weeks after the end of the war in Europe that drove him to sanctuary in America.
On Thursday, August 15 – 81 years later – guest conductor Dalia Stasevska led the Philadelphia Orchestra in Bartok’s masterpiece, plus Antonin Dvorak’s optimistic Symphony No. 8 and his brief Humoresque.
As Stasevka explained from the podium, Boston Symphony Orchestra conductor Serge Koussevitsky visited Bartok in the hospital to commission the Concerto for $1000.
Also on Aug. 15, in 1969, the Woodstock festival began. There, John Sebastian earned the same dollar figure as Bartok; but $1000 in 1943 dollars is $18,160 – the fee Jimi Hendrix earned.
Enough with the prices; how about the value? In pre-performance remarks, Stasevska portrayed Bartok as an immigrant, displaced by strife that echoes in our own time. She said his Concerto for Orchestra expresses a yearning to belong, to define a displaced self in a new land.
In a performance that opened in deep yearning, the music transformed through four subsequent movements as joy rewards the exile. Stasevska and the Philadelphians offered poignancy, thoughtfulness and release, large emotions portrayed through nuance, detailed and dynamic.
“Concerto” typically means a dialog of ensemble with soloist; but Bartok treated whole sections as soloists in turn, so the effect is richly prismatic.
Low strings began the piece in musings, questing and tentative, until the winds carried the strings higher with increasingly assertive brass statements that evoked unease, even menace before the woodwinds brought peace. By the finale, the brass would feel triumphant, so this first movement foreshadowed everything.
Bartok called the second movement “Game of the Couples,” winds and muted trumpets harmonizing over varied intervals, punctuated by a solitary drum. Low strings served as connective tissue, but a restless feel grew in pizzicato strings.
The slow third movement began with flute swirls over almost subliminal bass bowing, its deliberate tempo feeding a plaintive mood. Here, and also in the opening, Stasevska achieved an ethereal yearning, built on immaculately accurate articulation in the strings.
The fourth and fifth movements demonstrated dynamics and balance to exciting effect; raspy trombones at a gallop giving way to serene strings in the fourth and an earned but calm triumph in the finale. Sections seethed or soothed in impressive emotional clarity. If the first movement prophesied joy in freedom, the finale harvested it.
When Stasevka returned to the stage in a standing ovation, she first acknowledged the orchestra sections whose work particularly sparkled, saluting the timpanist first; then saluted their blend by drawing all players to their feet.
After intermission, an ice-cream cone of sorts; the brief and well-named Humoresque that Bartok composed for piano and that cinema orchestrator Max Waxman dressed in full orchestra colors. Guest concert master Juliette Kang stood before the first violins as soloist, intoning the familiar light melody that repeated throughout this five-minute treat. The orchestra partnered, sometimes elaborating on the theme as Kang voiced it as a simple repeat, then switching roles.
This miniature served as primer to Dvorak’s orchestral vocabulary that his Symphony No. 8 richly explored in full instrumental variety of lyricism and power; an apt emotional parallel to journey the Bartok had traced. But if the Bartok flowed with serious intent, the Dvorak portrayed a lighter mood thanks to echoes of folksongs whose simplicity grew through inventive orchestrations into grander things.
Always a fertile melodist, Dvorak began his 8th with energetic strings decorated in winds and brass that built to forceful waves, then resolved into Beethoven-style repeats. Here, as in the Bartok, Stasevska’s attention to nuance and detail brought rich results, especially as strings and winds echoed closely.
The adagio was all lyrical charm in pillowy clouds of strings, more staccato interludes with winds in abrupt cadences, then strings swelling – the violas shone here – into dialog with cheerful winds and their own serene ending.
Cheerfulness played out in waltz time in the third movement, all grace and a lovely sweep that felt playful at times, in glowing flutes and strings.
Conductor Rafael Kubelick once pointed out that “in Bohemia (Dvorak’s homeland), the trumpets never call to battle, they always call to the dance!” So it was with the finale Thursday, a trumpet call summoning low strings into the first of succeeding waves with growing vigor. Even in this often assertive movement, Dvorak retained discreet charm, in a gorgeous flute expression before similar quiet musings gave way to brassy and percussive boldness.
Before beginning, Stasevska announced Thursday was her second performance with the Philadelphians this season; she has earned more.
Program:
BARTOK: Concerto for Orchestra
INTERMISSION
DVORAK/orch. WAXMAN: Humoresque in G-flat major, Op. 101, No. 7
DVORAK Symphony No. 8 in G major, Op. 88
A Personal Note:
Also on Aug. 15, three years after Bartok began work on his Concerto for Orchestra, I took my first breaths. So I dressed for the occasion; celebrating my birthday in the seventh row center in light-gray suit and tie, Panama and shiny shoes, with notebook.
Hoke's Jukebox 