Boston Classical Review

There are few great works upon which fame has shone more unwillingly than Edward Elgar’s Violin Concerto in B minor—at least so far as the Boston Symphony Orchestra is concerned. True, this three-movement effort is very long and difficult, almost as much for the soloist as for the conductor who must coordinate its occasionally rambling peregrinations. Nevertheless, in the right hands, the music is hardly inaccessible.

On Thursday night at Symphony Hall, those hands belonged to violinist Frank Peter Zimmermann and conductor Dima Slobodeniouk, who, together, brought the chestnut back into the BSO’s repertoire for just the sixth time in its history and the first since 2010.

Premiered a century earlier, in 1910, the Violin Concerto is steeped in the noble lyricism for which Elgar is rightly famous. It is also, by turns, explosive, passionate, and not a little wistful.

As such, the score manages to turn the outdated caricature of Elgar as a haughty cog in the wheel of British imperialist culture on its head. Certainly, this is music of deeply personal feeling, as its volatile expressive range and tempestuous turns of phrase attest—not to mention an elliptical dedication, possibly to one of the composer’s lady friends.

At the same time, the composition is a work of assured originality. Elgar’s symphonic approach to the form ensures a thematic and motivic rigor that one doesn’t always encounter in this genre. And his singular command of instrumentation results in an integration of solo and accompanimental parts that is ever striking, not least during the finale’s accompanied cadenza.

On Thursday, Zimmermann and Slobodeniouk seemed intent on shaking up any notions that this concerto is some fusty, sentimental relic: theirs was a reading marked by fire, passion, and agreeably driven tempos. Though the dark sonority of Zimmermann’s G string meant that his instrument’s low-register statements sometimes felt muted, the high-tessitura ones spoke cleanly.

The soloist’s playing in the first movement, with its little scooping gestures and generous helpings of portamento, seemed to channel the Austrian virtuoso Fritz Kreisler, for whom Elgar wrote the piece. Though apparent issues with slipping pegs dogged intonation in parts of the Andante, that larger section sang rhapsodically, as did the finale.

Throughout, the German violinist, back with the BSO for the first time since 2016, demonstrated an electrifying rapport with the ensemble. The pairing’s articulations and balances were always carefully dispatched, and, despite the concerto’s sometimes-thick textures, no harsh projections marred the solo line.

For their part, the orchestra’s contributions were tonally full-bodied, texturally clear, and shapely. What’s more, the collective’s dynamic range was as expansive as its grasp of shifting Elgarian character proved impressive.

The last owed, at least in part, to Slobodeniouk, whose affinity for the concerto was evident from the downbeat, especially in his mastery of its many rubato episodes. These are notoriously tricky to pull off. Yet, on Thursday, they all emerged with unfettered naturalness. One looks forward to the day when the conductor returns to Symphony Hall with Elgar’s symphonies—especially the glorious Second—in tow.

Until then, the memory of another such score, Stravinsky’s Symphony in Three Movements, will suffice. Completed at the end of World War 2, the work stands among the composer’s most overtly American efforts: its second movement recycles music originally intended for an aborted film project.

Slobodeniouk’s approach to its pages on Thursday didn’t stint on slashing attacks, chugging ostinatos, or edgy climaxes: the Allegro’s extraordinary study of register and sonority spoke decisively. But neither did it shy away from highlighting a surprising degree of lyricism and warmth hidden beneath the surface.

That was most true in the Andante, whose droll, Haydnesque moments for woodwinds and harp came out sounding like the love child of Swan Lake’s Odette and Petrushka. While there were occasional interpretive touches with which one might quibble (like the more-lyrical-than-usual opening of the Con moto), Slobodeniouk’s interpretation was largely remarkable. As in the Elgar, conductor and orchestra inverted an inherited truth, teasing out a touchingly human dimension from one of the 20^th century’s most impenetrably abstract artists.

The pairing also fared impressively in Adolphus Hailstork’s Lachrymae: 1919. Written for the Virginia Symphony in 1994, the work is a meditative response to the events of the “Red Summer” of 1919, when race riots across the country resulted in hundreds of deaths.

Scored for strings and a quartet of off-stage winds, Hailstork’s opus draws on various devices from African American musical traditions—contours of spirituals in counterpoint and call-and-response gestures among them—as well as the larger tradition of instrumental laments. Periodically, its stately rhythms recall Bach’s great solo-violin Chaconne.

Thursday’s account, which involved the BSO strings playing in their most firmly responsive manner, brought out those spots subtly. The big moments, like the keening, dissonant climax, were strongly etched. In the devotional coda, its final fadeout hauntingly bridged the divide between sound and silence. Afterwards, Hailstork, looking vigorous at 83, was on hand to bask in the audience’s hearty cheers.

The program will be repeated 1:30 p.m. Friday and 8 p.m. Saturday at Symphony Hall. bso.org

Posted in Performances

---

Leave a Comment

Name (required):

Email (will not be published) (required):

Website:

Message:

Δ