Conductor, cellist help symphony’s Schumann Festival end on high note
In the rearview mirror, the Houston Symphony’s Schumann Festival turned out to be as much about the orchestra as the composer. Perhaps that’s no great revelation, but it was an inspired choice all the same.
Robert Schumann is hardly a household name, but he could hardly be better suited for such an event. Besides the wealth of music he left behind, much of it unfairly dismissed during his lifetime, he endured the sort of mental-health issues and personal-life drama that would have surely made him a much bigger name had he lived just a few decades later.
Emboldened by his family’s move to the valley of the “holy Rhein,” Schumann was obviously in the grip of inspiration when he wrote his Symphony No. 3. Music director Andrés Orozco-Estrada’s interpretation Saturday night harnessed that same feeling of boundless confidence and creativity — if there were somehow a way to turn the sound off in Jones Hall, the conductor’s striking and demonstrative podium style might well lead one to imagine similar music based on his movements alone.
But what a waste it would be muting something this gorgeous. Nicknamed the “Rhenish” symphony, though not by the composer, Schumann’s third is Romanticism in full bloom, brimming with buoyant emotions and allusions to nature — the sun breaking over the lush Rhenish countryside or something equally picturesque. And that’s just the splendid first movement.
The second bloomed into a swooning theme accented by stunning horn calls. “Ah, morning on the Rhine,” enthused Alley Theatre actor Jay Sullivan, back onstage as Schumann, “my chance to breathe it all in.” The third, lyrical and tender, was reportedly the product of a bet
between Schumann and Mendelssohn over whether the former could transfer his friend’s concept of “songs without words” to a full orchestra. He could.
Reportedly, Schumann’s account of a ceremony he had witnessed in nearby Cologne’s Gothic cathedral, the fourth movement was fittingly solemn, its crawling melody elevated by luminous brass harmonies. The festive finale was remarkable for its orchestral unity — no one section or instrument stood out more than the others, although after it was over Orozco-Estrada asked the horns to stand first.
Schumann never lived to see his Cello Concerto in A minor performed live, but its brooding passages and feverish runs could have been written expressly for soloist Alisa Weilerstein. Recipient of a 2011 MacArthur fellowship,
she plunged in right away with a series of passionate, fingertwisting figures that took her to the upper reaches of her instrument’s fingerboard and back.
She hardly looked back, either. Outside a handful of mighty surges sprinkled throughout the first and third movements, OrozcoEstrada and the orchestra were left with comparatively little to do. Weilerstein dominated the stage so thoroughly that even while resting, in the rare chances she had, she turned the act of listening into its own sort of performance.
One moment in particular stood out. In the slower second movement, Weilerstein and principal cellist Brinton Averil Smith struck up an intriguing dialogue that lasted for several minutes, a graceful pas de deux that emphatically reinforced the notion that
the cello stands alone when it comes to sheer expressive beauty and smoldering tone.
After a rather late intermission, Orozco-Estrada closed the circle by leading the orchestra through Symphony No. 4. (They played 1 and 2 Sunday, as they had 3 and 4 the previous Sunday.) Schumann completed this symphony shortly a few months after the premiere of his first, in 1841, but couldn’t find a publisher until 1853, by which time he was working as the city of Düsseldorf ’s musical director.
The revised symphony seems to carry some of the residual psychic charge the composer accumulated during the intervening 12 years — it’s darker but livelier, qualities Orozco-Estrada and his musicians crystallized as the opening movement moved from melancholy to merry, an extended
romp eventually accompanied by majestic trombones and rousing tympani rolls.
Fine cello work and concertmaster Yoonshin Song’s spidery violin solo highlighted the moody second movement; the third was a stirring and dramatic scherzo. Minutes of spirited sparring between strings and winds marked the memorable finale, which feinted a couple of false endings before sprinting to the finish line.
It’s been quite a week. However much newfound appreciation for Schumann the symphony has managed to cultivate — quite a bit, in my case — it still wasn’t as strong as the feeling that this orchestra will gladly follow Orozco-Estrada wherever he cares to take them next.