I wonder if it’s a truism that when violinist Aubree Oliverson is happy, she plays well. Because on the two occasions I’ve seen her, she’s exuded joy and played very well indeed. Last night, she followed her bliss in the Dvořák Violin Concerto on the first of two concerts presented this weekend by the Princeton Symphony Orchestra.
Last year, I had a few quibbles about her take on the Tchaikovsky concerto, as I thought it lacked emotional depth, but I can’t deny that it was an exuberant performance. Just not sure that Tchaikovsky is always the most exuberant composer. Melancholy and angst don’t appear to be in Oliverson’s vocabulary. She takes the microphone before a performance and offers a brief, sunny anecdote about her first encounter with the work she’s about to play, and it’s evident from the first note that none of that giddy sense of discovery has waned. (Oliverson is still only in her 20s.) But perhaps in my 50s, I err too far in the other direction.
Dvořák seems to be a better fit for her. For sure, there is plenty of drama and wistfulness in the piece, but also lots of cheer and abundant charm in its Czech-inflected melodies and rhythms. Performer and music were as one in the buoyant final movement. I wish all good things for Oliverson. At her age, I was already a bitter fellow (though not at the expense of heart and humor).
Even in her encore, Olivia Marckx’s arrangement of Joseph Kosma’s melancholy standard, “Autumn Leaves,” there was little sense of heartbreak and instead a lot of jazzy playfulness.
Here’s an Oliverson performance compilation I found on YouTube. You can get a taste of her Dvořák as it’s the third selection. Her playing sells itself. In person, she is a ball of positive energy.
The second half of the program was devoted to Arnold Schoenberg’s orchestration of Johannes Brahms’ Piano Quartet No. 1 in G minor. The work is more fun if you’re familiar with the Brahms in its original incarnation (which the PSO presented on a chamber music concert on Thursday night). Schoenberg’s impression of Brahms is a bit like Rich Little’s impressions of most people who aren’t George Burns – you chuckle more because you recognize who they’re supposed to be than for their uncanny accuracy.
But in Schoenberg’s case, I’m not sure that’s even entirely the point. Schoenberg complained once in a letter to critic Alfred Frankenstein that the quartet is “always very badly played,” with the piano frequently overwhelming the strings. (That was not the case on Thursday night.) “I wanted to hear everything – and this I achieved.” So you say, Arnie. But there are times in Schoenberg’s orchestrations of other composers’ music, and not just here, that everything just turns to clotted cream.
The work is at its most pleasing when it emulates Brahms’ style. I was grateful for the sense of spaciousness achieved in the outer sections of the third movement, for instance, when the strings are allowed to breathe and the woodwinds offer touches of expressive color. At other times, it’s like washing down buttermilk with bock. There were passages when the textures became so claggy that I found myself longing for one of Schoenberg’s auditorium-clearing twelve-tone masterpieces that are at least held on a tighter leash, compellingly-argued at a fraction of the length.
Furthermore, there is a tendency in parts for his work here to slide into vulgarization. In Schoenberg’s arrangement, the march that emerges from the third movement is not inspiring, as it is in Brahms’ original, but crass, I suppose the way many marches are when played by ceremonial bands. Brahms’ music can be earthy on occasion, but he is never vulgar, not even when incorporating drinking songs into his “Academic Festival Overture.”
On the other hand, at those moments when Schoenberg really swings for the fences and brings in xylophones and glockenspiels, so that the ersatz gypsy czardases of the work’s final movement take on an almost cartoonish quality, it zings to life. As with Stokowski’s Bach, there’s an undeniable thrill in anticipating how garish and bizarre it will all become.
Of course, all matters of questionable Schoenbergian taste aside, the orchestra played marvelously, under Rossen Milanov’s assured direction. Milanov has been music director of the PSO since 2009.
The concert opened with a brief but attractive work by Bulgarian composer Dobrinka Tabakova, “Orpheus’ Comet.” Suggesting the form of a toccata and unfolding in a swirl of orchestral bees (in Virgil’s “Georgics,” Eurydice is pursued by a bee-keeper, prior to the fatal snake-bite that sends her to the underworld), the work is sensitively orchestrated and full of interesting colors. It culminates in a quotation of Monteverdi’s famous fanfare from his opera “L’Orfeo.” Even without the stunt payoff, the piece is a lot of fun, and at five minutes it does not outstay its welcome. Tabakova clearly understands what Schoenberg did not – that brevity is the soul of wit.
These are just a few of my impressions. You should hear my George Burns. (Say goodnight, Gracie.) You’ll have a chance to draw your own conclusions when the program is repeated at Princeton University’s Richardson Auditorium this afternoon at 4:00. For more information, visit princetonsymphony.org.
