Pouliot excels with Mendelssohn - Edusei makes a splash with Zemlinsky's "Die Seeungfrau" in Oregon Symphony concert

Canadian virtuso Blake Pouliot

The Oregon Symphony’s most recent concert series introduced talented newcomers and turned the spotlight on a composer who is not as well-known as he should be. The newcomers, I heard on Saturday, March 25 at the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall, were violinist Blake Pouliot and conductor Kevin John Edusei, both of whom made the most of their debuts with a scintillating Mendelssohn Violin Concerto. The orchestra’s first-ever performance of Alexander Zemlinsky’s “Die Seeungfrau” (“The Mermaid”) provided another highlight of the program, which included a sterling rendition of Brahms’ “Academic Festival Overture.”

Although his bobbing shock of hair accented many phrases, it didn’t detract at all from the Pouliot’s stellar playing of the Mendelssohn. The young Canadian violinist has technical virtuosity to spare. His exceptionally fleet fingers raced through the piece at breakneck speed, which was quite astounding to witness. Perhaps he could have just eased up a tad at times to create a little more contrast. Nevertheless, he played each note with immaculate, breathtaking accuracy, including some brilliant pizzicatos during a blitzing cadenza in the third movement.

The audience lapped up Pouliot’s performance, and the hall resounded with cheering. Pouliot responded with his own rendition of the Gaelic song, “The Last Rose of Summer.” It was tender and full of heart, with gently placed grace note, and that was a wonderful way to close out the first half of the concert.

Zemlinsky’s fantasy for orchestra, “Die Seejungfrau” filled the second half with a cinematic style that reminded me of Erich Wolfgang Korngold, except that it is the other way around, because Zemlinsky was 26 years older that Korngold and wrote “Die Seejungfrau” in 1902 when Korngold was only five years old. And if you consider that Zemlinsky had probably never seen a film, then his accomplishment was all the more remarkable.

Well, here’s another tidbit. According to Alex Ross in his book, “The Rest Is Noise,” Zemlinksy in “Die Seejungfrau” and his pupil Arnold Schoenberg (in his symphonic poem “Pelleas and Melisande”) were the first to write glissandos for trombone in orchestral scores.

Zemlinsky’s piece was inspired by Hans Christian Anderson’s fairy tale of the same name. In it, a mermaid rescues a prince and falls in love with him. After bargaining with a sea-witch, the mermaid trades her voice for a pair of legs, but her quest fails. The prince marries someone else. The mermaid returns to the ocean and begins to dissolve into seafoam, but then things change and she is transfigured into a heavenly spirit.

Although Zemlinsky revised his original score, removing some plot points, a lot of it seemed to parallel the story fairly well. There were stormy passages for the shipwreck and the rescue scene. Concertmaster Sarah Kwak delivered several brief solos, which suggested the mermaid. In the second movement the brass and woodwinds created some oddly humoresque phrases that had a hint of darkness, which could easily be associated with the sea-witch. Later in that movement a graceful duet between Kwak and principal clarinetist James Shields, and that seemed to evoke the love interest between the mermaid and the prince. In the third movement, Kwak’s solos were in the lower register and the mood of the piece darkened and began to sink, but the harps changed all that, and the the impression of ascending as the spirit of the Mermaid rises into the spheres.

Edusei adroitly led the orchestra to make an excellent impression with “Die Seejungfrau” and Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto. He also turned in a buoyant Brahms. The German-born maestro maintains a busy schedule in Europe and the U. S. where he is the principal guest conductor of the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra. It would be great to see him and Pouliot at the Schnitz in the near future.