Philadelphia Orchestra Concert

I went to my second Philadelphia Orchestra concert today. I have access to unlimited concerts for a year, having paid $25 for the college student ticket program (“ezseatU”), which is a great deal. This afternoon, I hurried back from a field trip, printed my ticket, and arrived at Verizon Hall maybe ten or fifteen minutes before the start of the performance. The ezseatU kids gather in one area of the lobby and have to wait there until right before the concert begins, when an usher leads us all in like ducklings and puts us in whichever seats nobody bought. Both times I’ve gone, standing in the midst of the other college students has made me feel like I’m back in the Whitman music building, which is both comforting and a bit of a homesickness trigger. Nerdy-looking young adults, some of whom carry instrument cases, discuss harmonic novelties in Beethoven, make terrible music puns, and complain about orchestration homework. (If you’re reading this, current and former denizens of the music library, I miss you!)

I had a good seat this time. I was fairly close and had a clear view of the soloists. The program was Frank Martin’s Concerto for Seven Winds, Percussion, and String Orchestra; the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto; and the Bartók Concerto for Orchestra. The Martin had a little group of wind and brass soloists (flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon, horn, trumpet, trombone) seated at the front of the orchestra and they were brilliant. They had some dazzlingly virtuosic solos in the outer movements which rolled out from under their fingers like they were nothing. My favorite movement, though, was the second. In the beginning, the violins play the fragmentary first theme over a persistent minor third ostinato and then the winds eventually pick up the theme in turns and give it very different treatments. It becomes dreamy and lyrical when the flute takes it, and militant when it belongs to the trumpet, while still sounding like part of the same theme. The relentless ostinato can be heard through most of the movement, storming all over the melody at times only to recede politely into the background a moment later. The program notes say it “might suggest a slow march or the inexorable flow of time.”

I wasn’t terribly excited about the Mendelssohn because I am so familiar with it, but this was a really good performance. I had heard it in concert once before, with Joshua Bell and the Oregon Symphony, and that time I had been looking forward to it, but everybody coughed the whole time. Also, tangent: I don’t love Joshua Bell, and the reasons have—perhaps unfairly—little to do with how he actually sounds. Yes, very good violinist. Okay. It’s just all those posters of him playing with his hair all over the place and the halo of flying sweat droplets, and that look on his face like he’s being tortured. And the album covers where he’s reclining on a mahogany sofa surrounded by candles or some similar nonsense. It’s probably not his fault. Anyway, I liked this soloist, James Ehnes. He came onstage wearing a black suit and red necktie and it took me a moment to realize he was, in fact, the soloist because he looked like a rather diminutive businessman. But, my goodness, could that man ever play the violin! He seemed to vary his timbre with the character of the music. In the cadenza, his tone was bright and clear and sounded to me like it should have been produced by an instrument made of crystal. In the B theme, it was warm and rich and matched perfectly with the orchestra. (The Philadelphia Orchestra is known for having a “warm” sound. I can’t really describe what constitutes a warm sound, but I feel like I recognize it, and at the same times as other people.) And I love that theme anyway. My favorite moments in Mendelssohn are the ones with an “It’ll be all right, child” air to them, like this and the “lovers going to sleep” parts of the Midsummer Night’s Dream Overture.

The Bartók was another piece I knew, though I hadn’t heard it for a while and had forgotten how much I like it. The first two movements are not my favorites, though the second movement “game of pairs” is conceptually interesting and has awesome creaky bassoon solos. The third movement is creepy and desolate and the clarinetist and flutist really played up the “creepy” aspect. The fourth movement has to be my favorite, the way it alternates between serious sections with long, legato melodies in the strings and moments that are just plain silly, like the accelerating clarinet march or the deep, quasi-flatulent tuba honks. And then in the final movement, Bartók flirts with the idea of straightforward major tonality but, from the opening horn solo on, keeps throwing in out-of-key notes or surprising modulations… until you get used to him doing so, whereupon the music becomes (for a time) relatively harmonically static and uncomplicatedly sunny. And when you get used to that, it’s back to Bartókian harmonies again. It was fun. And also had fugues. Yay!

So, that was my concert. It’s harder to write about music when I don’t have an assignment to write about it from a particular angle. But anyway, I enjoyed the performance very much! If you ever spend a term or more in Philadelphia during your college career, do invest in their student ticket program.