Lisa Batiashvili, the ‘Missa solemnis’ and lotsa Lindberg
By Jay Nordlinger
The final weeks of the New York Philharmonic’s season contained two items of particular interest: a performance by Lisa Batiashvili, the young Georgian-born violinist; and a performance of the Missa solemnis, the oratorio (more or less) by Beethoven. The Missa solemnis is one of the greatest works in all of music. More, it’s one of the greatest works in all of art. Yet chances to hear it are few and far between.
Chances to hear Batiashvili have been many, certainly with the New York Philharmonic. A few seasons ago, she played the Shostakovich Concerto No. 1—and she played it to within an inch of its life. Seldom has that concerto been played with more understanding, beauty, intensity and nerve. Then, in a later season, she played the Beethoven Concerto, with outstanding humanity and nobility. Still later, we had Prokofiev’s Concerto No. 2. The New York Philharmonic has a good thing going in these Batiashvili appearances.
At the end of this season, she played the Sibelius Concerto, that strange, mighty and wondrous composition. In the first movement, she was her exemplary self. Her sound was superb, and her technique was hardly less so: She handled Sibelius’s passagework with elegant virtuosity; her intonation barely faltered. Her rhythm was alert and incisive, which is very important here. And she never let the music become soup: She was clean, without being too scrubbed.
Mainly, though, she showed musical judgment—and soul. Those are the priceless qualities that can’t really be learned. She got the most out of every phrase without ever milking any of them. And, as she played a phrase, she was mindful of its place within the whole.
In the second movement, Adagio di molto, she produced a bold yet lyrical sound: It was rather a fat, mezzo-y sound. And that riveting finale, she began rivetingly. As she continued, however, she became just slightly stiff and effortful. Just slightly. This movement lacked the charge—the electricity—it ought to have. But one’s standards for Lisa B. are awfully high.
The Sibelius Concerto, though as familiar as “Do-Re-Mi,” never stales. It works its magic year after year, generation after generation. How upsetting that its composer lost his compositional juice—fell silent during the last decades of his long life.
Not at all silent has been Magnus Lindberg, the Finn who is the Philharmonic’s composer-in-residence. He evidently has an ardent fan in Alan Gilbert, the Philharmonic’s music director. The concert with Batiashvili began with a Lindberg work called Arena. It was composed in the mid-1990s as a test piece for a conducting competition. Lindberg has said, “You can almost call it a concerto for conductor and orchestra.” You can call it whatever you want, but it’s still a piece like many, many others—by innumerable composers around the world. Arena is that squirmy sci-fi soundtrack that everyone writes. The music is busy-busy-busy. Lindberg may have provided a good test piece—but is it a good piece piece?
It seems to me that Gilbert and the Philharmonic performed this piece just to say they did—musical merit aside. The performance of new music is supposed to be next to godliness; and it earns you Brownie points from the critical establishment.Is it really and truly worth 15 minutes of Philharmonic time to play something like Arena—when you could be playing the worst ballet excerpts of Franz von Suppé or something? Music is more than cleverly arranged noise.
The concert that featured the Missa solemnis began with yet another Lindberg work—one that proved more than cleverly arranged noise. Called Al largo, it is an orchestral essay, or perhaps a bona fide tone poem. It is lush, colorful—almost cinematic and kaleidoscopic. It is not perfectly clear how the sections relate to one another, but those sections are interesting. The composer has cited the influence of Ravel and Schoenberg in this work; I also thought I detected Sibelius and Richard Strauss. In any event, I would like to hear Al largo again—high praise—and it was wonderfully played and conducted by the Philharmonic and its music director.
I do have a question—a question-criticism: Does the work have to be quite so long? I doubt it, but there are worse ways to spend a half-hour, particularly with contemporary music. For instance, you could hear Arena twice.
Before I get to the heart (if that’s the word) of the Missa solemnis performance, let me touch on the four vocal soloists. The soprano Christine Brewer was strong and surefooted, as usual. The mezzo-soprano Jane Henschel was rich, solid and alive. She suffered a letdown, technically, about two-thirds of the way through the performance—having an attack of the flats, for example. The tenor Anthony Dean Griffey lent his usual combination of vocal heft and vocal beauty. He sometimes covers his sound weirdly, however. Eric Owens, the bass-baritone, was fine.
Let me say, too, that these were big singers upon that stage—big vocally and bodily. How refreshing. I don’t know about you, but I’m kind of tired of soubrettes and starlets. Another observation, if I may: For the last 10 years or so, singers have been bringing bottles of water onstage with them. They twist them open and closed, and they suck and chug, throughout a performance. This is gross. It looks terrible. From time immemorial, singers managed without bottles of water at their feet, and on their lips. Today’s singers should discard this crutch-like and ugly habit.
About Alan Gilbert’s conducting of the Missa solemnis, I will be brief. In his hands, the work was correct, compact, rounded, sensible, measured, unobjectionable—nice. The thing is, the Missa solemnis is not nice. It is flooring. This account made no impact whatsoever, at least on me. It was deficient in gravity, sublimity, majesty, spirituality, struggle, uplift, transcendence—everything that makes the Missa solemnis the Missa solemnis. It was hardly the Missa at all; it was a Missa-lite.
I hasten to say that I don’t question the sincerity of the conductor, orchestra, chorus et al. They may feel this music very deeply. It is simply that, in my opinion, this did not come through. And I guess we should be grateful that the Missa was programmed. At some point, may we have the Choral Fantasy—another underperformed Beethoven masterwork—too?
Let me pick on the Philharmonic a final time (before next season). The orchestra has released a series of recordings called Alan Gilbert: The Inaugural Season. The inaugural season? Like Toscanini has come to town or something? A few years ago, a young pianist—good, but not quite a threat to Rubinstein’s reputation—released an album called The Berlin Concert. Oh, really? The Berlin concert? What were Furtwängler’s concerts, as compared with this one!
