Violinist flips script on classical concerts
Patricia Kopatchinskaja is here to remind us that classical music is dead — dead in the way it’s performed, politely and predictably.
“Bye Bye Beethoven,” the violinist’s semistaged program with the Mahler Chamber Orchestra, firmly situates its music in the past. The omnipresent image is a clock face, whose hands move backward and whose amplified ticking filled the silences between works on Thursday, June 14 — the first night of Cal Performances’ Ojai at Berkeley, which concludes in Zellerbach Hall on Saturday.
Kopatchinskaja, who frequently performs new music, says the production is about the irrelevance of the concert event. It’s fitting, then, that the evening began with Ives’ “The Unanswered Question,” whose static harmonies, played by offstage strings, sound like an old recording. It’s the prickly wind and brass lines that we hear most closely; these dissonances are what’s relevant (never mind that they’re 110 years old).
What’s age got to do with it? “The Answered Unanswered Question” by György Kurtág, who’s still alive, feels older than the original. Chains of slow-moving chords
evoke Renaissance counterpoint, only with new sounds — stunningly beautiful combinations of microtones.
Played by a wind and brass chorale, Bach’s “Es ist genug” was liberated from its chirpily religious text, about being excited to die. “Once Upon a Time,” the spoken word quartet by John Cage on the poetry of Gertrude Stein, was meaningless, but full of infectious energy.
On paper it seemed wacky, but the movement of Haydn played backward was pretty in its own right, if not especially profound. Normally, in the “Farewell” Symphony, the musicians gradually leave the stage; in reverse, a warm and full-bodied Adagio germinates from a halting, icy-toned violin duet. At times, the regressing harmonies are deliciously off-kilter. Yet they also sound vaguely familiar in a comforting way, like the latest sound from a band in its twilight years.
The finale, Beethoven’s Violin Concerto, was less iconoclastic than it was eager to try new things — showcasing the Mahler Orchestra’s tightly woven ensemble as much as the solo. Minor reorchestrations distributed some of the cadenza material around the group, the winds and brass were allowed to play full force, and the timpani, placed in front, were thunderous.
When the soloist’s main concern isn’t being heard, the possibilities are endless. Any bowing is fair game, no fingering is too risky, and sometimes, the results are magical. In the high passages, Kopatchinskaja’s tone was gossamer, her notes whispering; in the next breath, her accents seemed ungainly, like those of a student who hasn’t yet grown into his arms.
I wasn’t affronted at any one moment, not even by the heavy-handed imagery (the performance dissolves in chaos, the set parting to reveal a graveyard scene whose tombstones bear the names of the great composers). But when I realized that I wasn’t going to get to hear the end of the concerto, I wasn’t disappointed, either. Saturated by so many extremes, the music quickly used itself up. By the end of the first movement, the performance had gone to every possible plane; the rest was often beautiful, but never special — nor particularly relevant.