Glass meets Beethoven at last Masterworks concert of season
HARTFORD — Minimalism meets maximalism at the final Masterworks concert of the 2021-22 season. It’s a double feature of Philip Glass’ “Concerto for Saxophone Quartet” and Beethoven’s ”Choral” Symphony No. 9 in D minor, Op. 125. The remaining performance Sunday at 3 p.m. is sold out.
Neither piece represents an extreme for its composer. Glass’ use of a saxophone quartet allows for a jazzy freedom that his more rigid piano-rooted works can’t come close to, and as outrageous as Beethoven’s 9th may get, this is the guy who wrote “The Battle Symphony,” which fires a cannon and muskets. Both works are standards that deserve to be heard live, and they have more in common than you might imagine.
Resonance, for instance. Get ready to rumble. This concert is as defined by vibrations and reverberations as it is by the precision of the playing. Glass’ concerto is marked, as most minimalist orchestra pieces are, by the ethereal thrum that rises when so many instruments are playing the same thing at the same time, and it’s augmented in this case by the mighty pulsations of confidently wielded saxophones. The Beethoven is just plain loud and busy, the strings and the brass and the singing creating an almighty dynamic din.
Glass’ “Concerto for Saxophone Quartet” was only written in 1995 but has practically become a standard. It’s performed here the Resurgam Quartet, a hardy group of Hartt School grads dedicated to classical saxophone compositions (including some they’ve commissioned themselves). They play with charm, enthusiasm and a welcome cheeriness, swaying with the metronomic Glass beats.
The concerto is played at a relatively speedy pace. It’s not measured and contemplative like many of the composer’s chamber works. It’s vibrant and human and rich, not tinny or creepy or bleak (in case you only know Glass from his score for the horror film “Candyman”). He sets deliberate challenges for the saxophonists, and the Resurgam Quartet — Harrison Kliewe on soprano sax, Colette Hall on alto, Sean Tanguay on tenor and Michael Raposo on baritone — maneuvers them with gusto. The solos are constrained on purpose. It’s hard to hear a saxophone and not expect it to start improvising a long improvised bebop solo. Glass plays around with that expectation.
There are many fascinating quirks in this concerto. There’s a section where the saxes play a sweet melody while the orchestra makes a thudding wind-down sound as if it’s being unplugged. The effect is not soothing, but not jarring either. The experimentation can be illuminating, and guest conductor Adam Boyles is sharp at illuminating the details.
Boyles has a punchy, arms-straight-out, sweeping style that really comes into play with Beethoven’s 9th. It takes some grand gestures to contain such a bear of a symphony, and Boyles makes it rousing and overpowering from the first notes. The piece can get so big and booming that when the occasional quiet melody breaks through you almost giggle. The audience buys into the bombast easily. There were a lot of bobbing heads in the Bushnell audience when the very well known 2nd movement began. The 9th symphony has been used in movies ranging from “A Clockwork Orange” to “Ace Ventura: Pet Detective,” so it’s well-known far beyond classical circles.
Beethoven’s 9th is a battleship of a symphony. It’s so bombastic, so brazen, so familiar and so intimidating that you’d think anything sharing a stage with it would barely get noticed. But place Philip Glass against it and you learn something about both composers. Glass removes a lot of elements from the orchestra, like brass and most of the percussion, so he can focus on the sax soloists. Beethoven works a full orchestra and adds a chorale of dozens of voices, all in the service of the symphony and not rising or falling on any player. Both pieces build expertly in strength and power. Both reverberate and buzz and bring the noise. Each, in its own way, is breathtakingly beautiful, yet also bold and brazen.
The programming and the playing has been reliably superb, but the Masterworks season has had its share of unsteadiness. Back in the fall everyone was wearing masks and showing vaccination cards at the door. Now, the orchestra still wears masks but less than half the audience bothers to, despite the number of COVID-19 cases still being rather alarming. Other current issues are added to the mix, like a fundraising table for donations to Ukraine. Attendance is noticeably higher: the Sunday matinee of this concert is sold out, and subscribers who may have sat a few shows out are putting their tickets to use again. In terms of getting through the season, a couple of weeks ago the symphony was able to present the Masterworks “New World” concert it had to postpone in January.
The Hartford Symphony Orchestra shifts to summer programming now, with a month of weekly Talcott Mountain Music Series classical pops shows at the Simsbury Center for the Performing Arts in July.
The Glass/Beethoven is a fitting close to a Masterworks season of intriguing juxtapositions and enlightening, uplifting performances. The continuing vibrations of this concert should hold us nicely until the next Masterworks season kicks off in the fall.