Hooked On Symphonics:
The BPO has outdone itself with its 2006-07 season.
The 2006-07 season of the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra is packed with rumbling symphonies, well-planned theme nights and promising pop concerts. It’s enough to make serious classical buffs salivate, while simultaneously luring the rest of us to the friendly confines of Kleinhans Music Hall with promises of a musical awakening. But for passive-aggressive music critics with no other outlet for their unresolved rage issues, this season presents a dilemma. There’s nothing to insult here, nothing to even mildly make fun of, nothing to appease the roiling sphere of male anger that lives in my stomach. He speaks to me, you know.
[What’s that, ball of testosterone that lives in my stomach? I have to say something negative about something? Or you’ll make me start watching wrestling again? OK, OK!]
One of the biggest names on the Pops Season Schedule is Neil Sedaka, the classically trained pianist, famed Brill Building songwriter and legendary performer. Sedaka will be playing a two-night stand with the BPO on November 10 and 11, which anybody would be stupid to attend, because Neil Sedaka sucks. I can’t really explain why he sucks, but just take my word for it. He does. Breaking up is hard to do, unless you’re breaking up with Neil Sedaka, because Neil Sedaka sucks.
[Have I appeased you? You know I really don’t have any opinion on Sedaka either way, right? Can I start being nice now? Thank you.]
Here’s the good news: if you ignore Sedaka’s shortcomings, pretty much every concert on both the Classical and Pops schedules is worth the price of admission. On the classical side, Music Director JoAnn Falletta has put together a truly inspired season, placing universally known masterpieces alongside ambitious, lesser-known works and brand new, locally focused material. The Opening Night Gala (Sept. 16) is one of several can’t miss evenings, featuring violin virtuoso Sarah Chang performing the ultimate violin showcase – Vivaldi’s “The Four Seasons” – along with Tchaikovsky’s Divine Comedy-inspired “Francesca da Rimini” and Ottorino Respighi’s symphonic poem “Pines of Rome.” Mussorgsky’s “Pictures at an Exhibition” is another no-brainer. The understandably ubiquitous piece, defined by its solemn trumpet promenade, will headline the weekend of Oct. 13-14, featuring guest conductor Andreas Delfs of the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra.
Once you get through the big-name shows, some seriously intriguing stuff crops up. The most immediately eye-catching bears the name “Beethoven and Bob Dylan” (March 3-4). What sounds like an ill-advised experiment promises to be a seriously beautiful thing, because it’s not an attempt to fuse the Dylan with Beethoven. Just try to envision an old guy in a beret reading the lyrics to “Subterranean Homesick Blues” while a dude in a tuxedo plays “Moonlight Sonata.” Super gross. Instead, Falletta will lead the orchestra in Beethoven’s 4th Symphony, followed by composer John Corigliano’s “Mr. Tambourine Man: Seven Poems of Bob Dylan,” sung by soprano Hila Plitman. While this is quite a risk for Dylan fans to take, I expect more than a few to take the plunge.
Two geographically themed nights will be packed with real dramatic muscle. “Russian Nights” (Mar. 31-Apr. 1) will be anchored by another Tchaikovsky masterwork, his “Romeo and Juliet” overture. The piece’s “love theme” is probably the most famous ode to romance in music history, but in case you’ve never seen the movie, the ending is a bit of a downer: Romeo dies, just like he did in Titanic, and Juliet dies, just like she did in that remake of Little Women. The night’s closer will be Dmitri Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 11 (The Year 1905), the musical interpretation of a government-sanctioned massacre that took place on January 9, 1905. Tensions between Czarist government and the Russian public reached a boiling point on this day, when armed forces killed hundreds of protesters outside of the Czar’s winter palace in St. Petersburg–resulting in the Bolshevik revolution and the rise of Lenin. Given the subject matter, the 11th isn’t a lighthearted affair; the music invokes images of brutality and mourning, resilience and inspired defiance.
“Viennese Masters,” the other regional tribute program (Mar. 16-17), finds Falletta conducting Mozart’s Violin Concerto No. 3 and Gustav Mahler’s 5th Symphony. After the combination of elegance and effortlessness that is Mozart at his best, expect the storm clouds to converge with Mahler’s opening notes. If you’ve ever found yourself sitting in your bedroom, reading Nietzsche by candlelight with Joy Division sighing in the background, flipping your lanky bangs out of your face with a deft jerk of the head, you’d probably love this dude. A true outsider with nothing more than a cult following during his lifetime, Mahler’s prolific catalog is one of history’s darkest. His famed “Kindertotenlieder,” a song cycle about the death of children, includes song titles like “Now Will the Sun Rise As Brightly?” and “Often I Think They Have Only Gone Out.” While his 5th Symphony isn’t quite as bleak, it is typical Mahler–the dashes of brightness are rare and blissfully cathartic, especially the rousing, majestic finale.
[What’s that? I’m praising people too much again? I can’t help it; there’s nothing to lambaste. I threw Sedaka to the wolves for you; that’ll have to do for now.]
For me, the best and most unorthodox show of the season will be “Tchaikovsky’s 4th,” (Dec. 2-3) which combines the breathtaking, borderline schizophrenia of the title symphony with Roberto Sierra’s “Concerto for Saxophones and Orchestra.” The monstrous saxophonist James Carter will join the BPO for the latter; his chameleonic talents have been a blessing to the world of jazz since his 1993 debut album. Because of his uncanny ability to tear up any chart you throw at him, his collaboration with an orchestra should be electrifying. Equally kinetic will be resident conductor Robert Franz’s approach to Tchaikovsky’s 4th, a symphony written at an especially tumultuous period of the composer’s tragic life. A notoriously insecure, homosexual man, Tchaikovsky spent his life fearing social ostracism and its violent consequences, a fear that may have resulted in suicide (cholera was the original explanation, a diagnosis that is questionable at the very least). It also didn’t help that he was critically lambasted on a regular basis.
Soon after beginning his 4th symphony, Tchaikovsky decided to get married, both to allay the rumors about his sexual preference and give a shot of confidence to his tortured mind. Unsurprisingly, the marriage was an unmitigated disaster; after threats of suicide on both sides (including a failed attempt by the composer), a psychiatrist ordered Tchaikovsky to get a divorce. A year later, he completed the symphony. An exploration of mankind and the fates that befall us all, the work is a thunderhead of human emotion, the product of a musical genius pouring all of his misery and stubborn hopes into his creation. And for all of his well-documented pessimism, Tchaikovsky dreams of a better future are soaked into the fabric of this symphony’s fourth and final movement, a frenetically joyful explosion of brass and percussion. The feelings of this man were never allowed to surface, and he threw them into his music so passionately that the echoes have yet to fade.
For all of the wonderful classical programs, the most pleasant surprise was the pops season, which normally gives me a few reasons to start pouring the Hatorade. With a Strauss-themed Masquerade Ball, A Salute to Motown and tributes to Duke Ellington and George Gershwin, Principal Pops Conductor Marvin Hamlisch has put together an entertaining, kaleidoscopic concert schedule. But for my money, nothing can touch Judy Collins, who joins the BPO for two performances (May 4-5). She’s one of the great voices of the 20th Century, not because of her range or improvisational abilities, but for her priceless, intangible quality-–an otherworldly sweetness that turns practically any song into a lullaby from mother to child. From her famous take on Joni Mitchell’s “Both Sides Now” to her incomparable renditions of Irish folk songs, Collins’ songs still sound fresh 40 years later, and I suspect her live show will be equally uncompromised.
[Are you making fun of me for liking Judy Collins? You listened to Tesla when you were a teenager! Look, I got a great wife in spite of you, not because of you. You don’t own me! AAAAARRRGH!!!!]
Joann Falletta and Marvin Hamlisch have given a pile of gems to Western New York, in the form of some killer concerts. But they’ve done more than that: They’ve taught me the meaning of friendship. It’s easy to criticize, to say that Neil Sedaka sucks, to look down your nose at the sheep that flock to his performances, to send him threatening letters and hang around outside his house. I’ve learned that while it’s hard to avoid stalking Neil Sedaka, it feels good to be nice. So the next time you’re drunk with anger, try and say something nice about somebody. Or just make them watch Pay It Forward. It’s all in there somewhere.
Appeared in the September/October 2006 issue of Buffalo Spree.