Here’s a round up of the reviews I’ve spotted of our weekend of Classical 8 series concerts, featuring the Adams Chamber Symphony.
James McQuillen for the Oregonian:
From the opening bars Saturday, it was obvious that the Chamber Symphony is a ferociously difficult piece, requiring virtuoso playing with crazy rhythms and often crazy tempos. The performance had an edge-of-the-seat excitement about it, as though the players (mostly section principals) had at that precise moment run off the cliff, looked downward and frantically begun to run back before gravity overtook them. There was incisive playing by concertmaster Jun Iwasaki and principal percussionist Niel DePonte, seated at an enormous drum kit arrayed in an arc before him, and overall the ensemble, under the keen direction of resident conductor Gregory Vajda, was tight.
James Bash at Northwest Reverb:
John Adams has a sense of humor, but it’s one that requires a lot of hard work. In 1992, Adams wrote his “Chamber Symphony†after contemplating Schoenberg and being interrupted by the sounds of a Roadrunner cartoon that his young son was enjoying. I heard a 15-member ensemble from the Oregon Symphony play this exceedingly difficult piece on Sunday evening, and I came away impressed with the constantly shifting myriad of sounds and the rhythmic intensity.
Divided into three movements, the “Chamber Symphony†opened with a jazz-inspired “Mongrel Airs,†but this wasn’t loosey-goosey jazz. The atmosphere was tightly wound and seemed to relax only slightly when the brass laid down a sustained sound. An ascending series of chords gave me the impression of someone climbing a set of stairs, but that escalated quickly into a tornado-like blur that abruptly ended.
Last night we repeated this concert for the fourth and final time in Salem. I had my first chance since joining the orchestra in 1995 to actually listen to part of a performance from the seats in Willamette University’s Smith Auditorium.
Salem, you don’t know how good you’ve got it! You can actually hear what the orchestra plays! The difference in clarity during the Adams was nothing short of remarkable, at least from the middle of the balcony where I sat last night (sadly, having had no problem finding an empty seat). Great bass response for the first time – I could actually hear the bassoon, contra-bassoon and double bass for the first time, all the way through the piece, not just in snatches here and there.
Performers on stage reported being able to hear intricacies of the score that had eluded them on stage at the Schnitz, and the ensemble was blindingly tight last night, too. We’ve got a fine bunch of virtuoso principal players (and others, including assistant principal clarinetist Todd Kuhns, who played E-flat and B-flat clarinet; and acting-second clarinetist playing bass-clarinet Carol Robe) and they all did so well for the entire run.
I also feel like our relationship with Gregory Vajda has really stepped up a notch during this past month where we’ve worked with him for an extended period of time. He seems to trust us a bit more, and the feeling is mutual. We achieved some wonderful moments in the Schumann Fourth Symphony, especially some off-the-cuff instances where changes were done on-the-fly, with the orchestra showing superb flexibility and rapport with Mr. Vajda. Fun stuff!
If you’ve got some spare time, check out my viola comrade Robert Levine’s entry on great conductors, and more specifically, Herbert von Karajan. It’s a good and thought-provoking read.