Christian Hertzog

San Diego Arts

San Diego Symphony: Higdon, Grondahl, Tchaikovsky

By Christian Hertzog
Posted on May 16 2008
Last updated May 16 2008

Composers have written concertos for every instrument imaginable, but when it came time for any maestro, ink-laden quill poised over an untouched sheet of manuscript paper, to be inspired to write a great trombone concerto, the Muses must have taken the day off to drink ouzo and gossip about Zeus’s marital indiscretions.

There’s a surfeit of great piano and violin concertos. Cellists, clarinetists, flutists, horn dawgs, trumpeters, bassoonists—all have at least one great vehicle with which to display their instrumental prowess to the accompaniment of a red-blooded symphony orchestra. Even that perennial butt of musician’s jokes, the violist, has several masterpieces to choose from in their repertory of concertos.

Why aren’t there any great trombone concertos? How come trombonists were stuck at the back of the line when all the spiffy concertos were handed out? Hell, the lowly tuba has a concerto (Vaughan Williams) which gets more programming. Why is the trombonist the homely geek no composer wants to invite to the Orchestral Concerto Prom?

There aren’t any trombone concertos which have truly entered the orchestral canon, but there are several fine candidates from the second half of the 20^th century that are definitely worth hearing. I find Donald Erb’s Trombone Concerto to be the cream of the crop, with splendid contributions to the genre from Christopher Rouse and Carlos Chavez, but it seems unlikely at this point that any of these three works will ever be programmed with any consistency.

Enter Launy Grondahl (1886-1960), a Dane better known in his lifetime as a conductor than a composer, who managed to pop off a handsome little trombone concerto in 1924. This work has no doubt suffered from the double curse of its composer’s obscurity and the early 20^th-century critical perception in both Central Europe and North America that Scandinavian composers were backwards provincials unaware of the musical revolutions taking place in France and Germany. It took more than half a century for Sibelius to be widely recognized as a significant composer, and while Nielsen has been enjoying a revival in recent years, his works have yet to earn a place besides other 20^th-century symphonists—so what chance does Grondahl have, a man who didn’t even earn an entry in the most recent edition of The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians?

Not a bad one, if talented soloists such as Toby Oft insist on performing Grondahl’s concerto. Oft, the principal trombonist with the San Diego Symphony, gave an alternately dramatic and lyrical account of this rarity with his home slices on March 7.

The concerto may not earn any marks for innovation or hummable tunes, but it is comfortably Scandinavian in its splashes of color and its use of modes suggestive of folk tunes. There is a definite whiff of Grieg, who, more than any other composer, put forth the notion of a Scandinavian sound in the concert hall: the opening motif of Grondahl’s concerto outlines a descending minor triad with a falling minor second neighbor tone, reminiscent of the introduction to Grieg’s Piano Concerto, the prototypical Scandinavian concerto.

Grondahl’s Trombone Concerto is modest in size (ca. 15 minutes), and in traditional concerto form (Fast Movement, Slow Movement, Fast Movement). The outer movements present concise, straightforward musical statements, but are developed in a typically Nordic way—rather than contrasting themes and building bridges between those contrasts, as most 19^th-century Romantics would have done, Grondahl expands and contracts his phrases in a more organic manner. His musical arguments are much less convincing than Sibelius’s or Nielsen’s, yet they don’t overstay their welcome. The slow movement features a luxurious strand of a melody by the soloist, accompanied by delicate major second chords plink-plank-plunking up and down the piano keyboard, and the last movement, while reminiscent of the first, introduces a new harmonic aspect to the work with some mild bitonal clashes.

Toby Oft displayed a gorgeous tone to support the long melody in the second movement, and played in an appropriately terse, stern, heroic manner for the Scandinavian brooding of the outer movements. Throughout his performance, notes were well-formed, clear, and phrased impeccably. Like so many other talented principals in the Ling era, Oft is leaving the San Diego Symphony for the Orchestral Major League; locals should be grateful to Ling and company for the opportunity to have heard his formidable talent as a soloist before he departs. I hope he returns to Copley Hall as a guest soloist, and brings the Erb Concerto with him.

One composer who seems to have no difficulty these days jostling up against Mozart, Brahms, and Ravel in symphony concert halls is Jennifer Higdon. Her short orchestral work, Blue Cathedral, has been programmed more times than Bill Gates’s hard drive, and it’s easy to hear why. For the audience, there are lots of pretty sounds (with musicians doubling on rubbed wine glasses and what look and sound like the bells removed from cat collars). A program involving a fantastic levitation through the roof of a blue cathedral (spurred on by Higdon’s brother’s death) tells new-music-resistant concertgoers what to listen for. Its moderate length (ca. 12-13 minutes) doesn’t tax anyone’s endurance. For the musicians, there are lots of nice solos, especially for the wind and string principals. The percussion section gets to contribute substantially to the piece, beginning with the delicate tinkly sounds that open the work, joining in the climax with the brass, and ending with bell sounds tolling away.

It’s a pleasant work, it was well-received by the audience, and well-performed by the Symphony under Jahja Ling’s direction, but like the Grondahl concerto, the question to beg is: Couldn’t we have heard something better?

Higdon is the mid-career composer du jour for American symphony orchestras, but I just don’t find her works for that medium very compelling. Take a listen to her chamber music, showcased nicely on a recent Naxos CD devoted to her works. Writing for small groups of instruments, Higdon produces striking musical ideas and develops them with a convincing rhetoric. Why is it, then, that her orchestral creations suffer from diffuse melodies and harmonies, temporal blandness, and forms which rely more on a successful manipulation of textures and instrumentation than they do on a persuasive use of pitch and rhythm? I wonder how enthusiastic listeners might be about Blue Cathedral if program notes were hidden from them, and they had to judge the piece solely on its musical merits.

The remainder of the program was turned over to an indisputable master, Tchaikovsky. Ling’s interpretation of the Adagio Cantabile for strings was clean and straight, provided with a dolorous patina by the performers. Ling conducted without baton, presumably for more expressive purposes, but if so, said purposes were lost on these ears. Tchaikovsky needs a healthy dollop of schmaltz (or should I say “unhealthy,” given the word’s Yiddish origins as “rendered fat?”), but Ling apparently prefers his Tchaikovsky lean and mean.

Perhaps Ling should have picked up the baton, because his interpretation of Tchaikovsky’s Second Symphony in C minor, op. 17, was right on the mark. In this earlier symphony, Tchaikovsky had not yet found his groove as the maestro of melancholy, the jefe of hysteria. Emotions are more reserved here, unlike the angst and over-the-top exuberance found in Tchaikovsky’s more famous works. Under Ling’s baton, the musicians were able to muster the appropriate blend of precision and feeling. The best ensemble work of the evening was evident in the scherzo, a mildly grotesque whirlwind in which rapid musical ideas were tossed back and forth between sections. The wind section in particular excelled here, as did the principal horn solo in the first movement, and the clarinet and bassoon duet in the second.

About the author: Christian Hertzog catalogs music for the Geisel Library at UCSD, where he is also Chief Steward for his local.
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Comments

Posted by Jennifer Higdon	May 16, 2008
Dear Christian, I stumbled upon you article here while I was searching for some information on another composer, and I thought I'd take a moment to respond to your question: "I wonder how enthusiastic listeners might be about Blue Cathedral if program notes were hidden from them, and they had to judge the piece solely on its musical merits." I actually have a good idea about this...the program notes are left out at many concerts where this piece is heard, and it doesn't seem to make a difference in the audience's reception of the piece. Also, this work gets a lot of radio airplay, where program notes are not a part of the broadcast. I get emails and letters from folks who have heard the work and ask if I'm a painter, and that's why it has the title it does. Most folks think it's too uplifting to be about a death. But there's not doubt, the piece has an effect on folks. Here's an interesting story: a young man in Toronto, named Anthony, has been listening to this work every day since he was 2 years old. I got a letter from him parents thanking me for the piece and for getting Anthony so excited about new music. When I was in Toronto last year for a performance of my Percussion Concerto, Anthony and his parents came up to me in the crowd, and I have to say it was a stunning moment to see this kid (who made his parents bring him) have a tearful reaction to meeting a composer. Anthony doesn't have a bit of an idea of what this piece is about, nor does he need to. That's not the point about music. I believe that you don't need to know a thing about any piece that you hear. If the piece speaks to you, good. If it doesn't, that's fine also. It's just not necessary to have the "story" behind a work. Orchestras apparently like doing the work because it fits on a program where a smaller orchestra is used; it's a good length to fill in with a concerto and big orchestral closer; it's not hard to put together (youth orchestras do the work a lot), and it doesn't cost a ton of money to rent (that's often a consideraton for orchestras). Those are the primary reasons. Program notes are optional--but if you want to truly find out why the audience reacts the way they do, ask some of them....they're the best composition teachers around. And composers usually are the least knowledgeable about why an audience reacts the way it does. Glad you like the chamber works...if I wrote like that for orchestra, though, no one would be able to put the pieces together without 3 extra rehearsals. My chamber pieces are extremely difficult to put together--I have nothing that is easy. But, then I don't know many composers who write for chamber settings in the same way they write for orchestra (look at the difference of Beethoven's string writing in chamber versus orchestral-it's fascinating). Well, I should sign off. Thanks for the observations. warm regards, Jennifer Higdon

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