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Conductor, cellist power 20th-century works with ISO
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A German conductor and a Norwegian cellist are teaming up with the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra this weekend to give beautiful, profound interpretations of late-life works by two Eastern Europeans.
During Friday's opening-night ISO performance at Hilbert Circle Theatre, conductor Cornelius Meister and cellist Truls Mork showed the angst-ridden expressiveness of masterworks by Dmitri Shostakovich and Bela Bartok at the peak of their creative powers.
Mork makes his ISO debut with a technically brilliant, incisive, accessible performance of Shostakovich's Cello Concerto No. 1 from 1959.
The second-generation cellist began the march from the opening "Allegretto" movement intently, with detached bowing and a mocking demeanor. The second movement, featuring a folksy tune and haunting banter between the soloist and the celesta, was smooth and expressive. The finale -- complete with a quote from one of Stalin's favorite songs, and therefore considered emblematic of Shostakovich's dissidence -- was played with ferocious intensity.
The crowd responded with a quick, unanimous standing ovation, and Mork played an encore.
Those who noticed strong solo playing from the orchestra during the Shostakovich -- say by two clarinets, the solo French horn or contrabassoon -- were in store for even more after intermission, thanks to the rich instrumentation in Bartok's Concerto for Orchestra.
The opening movement of the Bartok really caught fire with the cleanly articulated trombone theme, which blossomed into imitative writing for the brass.
The second movement features paired wind instruments in parallel harmony, starting with bassoons and moving on to oboes, clarinets and others, all making music with gentle accents and hesitations.
Meister stretched out the melodic phrases during the "Elegy" in the middle of the concerto, infusing them with slow-burning tension. But the rhythmic drive and intense harmonies soon took over again in both the fourth movement and the finale.
I can only second Whitney's kudos for Truls Mork's astonishing performance of the Shostakovich concerto Friday evening, and to salute in passing Cornelius Meister's spot-on, lyrically astute interpretations throughout the program. But I want to enter a quick nostalgic shout-out to Ernie Kovacs, a television genius of the 1950s. What does Kovacs have to do with the ISO's program this weekend? Well, from my one-time viewing of it decades ago, Kovacs concocted a most ingenious scenario for the "Interrupted Intermezzo" movement of Bartok's Concerto for Orchestra -- simply as part of his all-too-brief run as the host of a unique comedy show. I've never been able to hear this movement without thinking back fondly on Kovacs' visualization of this music. As I recall, it opens with a bird in its nest, singing, then widens to show a peaceful city park, with a jovial old-fashioned policeman and a pair of young lovers. The young man shows off a little toy he's brought with him, which I remember was actually offered by Miles Kimball through its catalog: a black box with a switch and a door on top; when you flipped the switch, the door opened and a white-gloved plastic hand emerged --- and promptly turned off the switch, slipping back into the box as the door closed. With no dialogue and with the entire movement playing, Kovacs uses the peaceful setting to follow Bartok's mood, and the composer's famous "interruption" (in which he makes fun of an incessant figure in Shostakovich's 7th Symphony) occurs when the young man demonstrates the toy box, the policeman laughing quite raucously. The swooning strings are paralleled to the lovers' billing and cooing, and the lingering flute solo at the end of the movement has the camera moving back up into the trees to focus on the bird, now away from its nest and twittering away. The final hushed measures move to the nest, in which the toy box now sits -- the switch flipping on, the hand reaching out, shutting the switch off and neatly vanishing into the box as several gentle staccato notes finish off the scenario perfectly. A great tribute in a much-abused medium -- from one fantastic Hungarian artist to another -- and one of my very favorite "crossover" memories.
Thanks for the memory Jay -- Do you think we could find a video of the Kovac's Bartok scenario? I'm going to look for it!!
For those wondering what Truls Mork's lovely encore was Friday night, the ISO confirms that it was "Song of the Birds," a traditional Catalan song that the late, great cellist Pablo Casals favored as an encore.
Don't know about the availability of Ernie Kovacs on DVD, Cassie. Does anyone else? It would be fun to see those old shows again -- even his ridiculous send-ups of poetry at its most affected and self-involved, with Kovacs as the glutinously adenoidal Percy Dovetonsils.