Lamsma stuns with Shostakovich and Märkl shows Tai-chi-like moves in Debussy

Dutch virtuoso Somone Lamsma delivered a mesmerizing performance of Shostakovich’s Violin Concerto on Saturday (Jan 8) with the Oregon Symphony and conduct Jun Märkl at the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall. The dusky, moody, yet warm lines that she played in the opening movement were hauntingly etched against the somber accompaniment of the orchestra. From my perch in the balcony, it seemed that Lamsma’s playing hypnotized the audience. There wasn’t a peep or a cell phone beep or anything to disrupt the trance-like state that she had induced. In the midst of this, she coaxed her instrument into delivering the most tender sentences, accented at one point by the celeste and later assuaged by the rumbling bass clarinet. And at the end of the movement, the sound from Lamsma’s violin climbs to the heavens. It was magical.

She then created an agitated, almost angry tone in the second movement, which stirred up the orchestra to join her in the mayhem. Together they broke into an energetic, fast dance, closing on a high note that caused listeners to break into applause.

The third movement featured Lamsma playing high above the fray of a subtle passacaglia of the orchestra. The orchestra gets about as soft as I have ever heard at the Schnitz with pizzicatos and Lamsma finishing with a delicate thread, leading again to a high note.

In the fourth movement, Lamsma took everyone’s breath away with an awesome performance of the fiendishly difficult solo cadenza. It was so wild and crazy that it made me wonder how anyone can possibly play it – and how did Shostakovich concoct it in the first place! After the orchestra joined her, they skipped along with an optimistic, more lighthearted spirit to the finale. Enthusiastic acclamation erupted from the audience, bringing Lamsma back to center stage at least three times.

Before performing Debussy’s “Images,” Märkl and the orchestra introduced it with a demonstration of some of the impressionistic passages. This demo maybe went on just a little too long, but it effectively showed how Debussy used various colors from the orchestra to paint feelings and images that travelled from England to France and ended up in Spain.

Conducting from memory, Märkl wonderfully guided the ensemble with gestures that reminded me of graceful Tai chi movements. He and the musicians took listeners into the mist of Britain – with kudos to Karen Wagner oboe and Jason Sudduth oboe d’amore. The French movement evoked images of the seashore with changing breezes. Iberia was filled with mystery and enchantment that included a terrific solos by principal horn Jeff Garza and concertmaster Sara Kwak.

The concert began with Missy Mazzoli’s “These Worlds in Us.” In the program notes, Mazzoli stated that the piece was inspired by her father, who served in the Vietnam War. It started with a somber invitation from the marimba and melodicas (mouth keyboard instruments that you blow into). Slow glissandos upward and downward from the strings suggested an introspective sadness, but it was briefly lifted before shifting back to a lamenting emotion and finally a return to the marimba and melodica. The music fit the thoughtful atmosphere of the other works, and all was masterfully led by Märkl.

Oregon Symphony Delivers Marine Sound Feast Centered around Debussy's La Mer

Fingal's Cave
Thomas Moran, 1884 oil on canvas

Saturday the 22nd at the Schnitz the Oregon Symphony played a concert that was largely marine in theme, with works by Mendelssohn, Debussy, and an American premier by Toshio Hosokawa. The lone exception was the Violin Concerto by Benjamin Britten, featuring soloist Simone Lamsma and directed by the excellent Jun Markl.

The opening work was Mendelssohn's The Hebrides (Fingal's Cave).The famous see-sawing, sighing opening theme immediately giving the evening a nautical footing, and the orchestra transitioned nicely to the stormy motive and back again, conveying a sense of disquiet, and a restless sea.

Simone Lamsma returned to the stage for OSO for the first time since her smashing performance of the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto last year. She plays strongly, insistent yet not without delicacy. She clearly has something to say, and makes that plain from the start. Her technique is spectacular and wide-ranging: a fierce chordal spiccato, intensive sawing in the low range yielding to nimble, dance-like moments further up. The many tragical moments of the work were not yet drowned in sorrow--her instrument sang with a voice that could not be repressed, nor yet weighted down by sadness. Other sections demanded a fierce, saucy pizzicato, reveling in two-note dissonances.

In the Vivace there were terrifying glissandi, and she handed off the haunting harmonic passages seamlessly to the piccoli, a difficult transition with a memorable effect. The cadenza was completely mesmerizing, including a difficult trick of bowing some strings while simultaneously plucking others with the left hand. The fantastically difficult chromatic runs of the finale she handled with ease, yielding to a meditative exhalation. Truly a spectacular performance.

The second half opened with the American premier of Japanese composer Toshio Hosokawa's Circulating Ocean, a programmatic piece also meant to suggest the cycle of human life from nothingess, to existence, then a return to non-existence. De niente, winds began to sound from an aspirated alto flute and other winds as gentle tinkling from tiny Japanese wind bells broke through the breathy atmosphere. A very evocative feeling of crawling mist grew, with the brass gurgling up, muffled as if from a great depth. Surrounding all was a ceaseless susurration from the strings.

This was a fantastically imaginative work early on for percussion: tam tams and bowed celesta, Japanese temple bowls and the wind bells and an antique cymbal featured among the instruments.  There was next to nothing by way of true melody early on: snatches here and there from celesta but later there were bits of half-themes and short motives from flute, bassoon and strings. It was really more of a great sound-picture, a reflection on impermanence. This was a work of stunning imagination, and this surely will not be the last time it is heard in the U.S.

Debussy's great symphonic work La Mer closed out the evening. The intro and moments later in the third felt almost rusty--what should at times have been mellifluous instead came off as stilted. All the pieces were there, just not perfectly fit together.  The second movement, the Jeu de vagues, really pulled together well. Much more effortless; the stunning, giant crescendo and fortissimo arrival was incredibly evocative and breathtaking.   The movement continued frenetic and moody, with wonderful work from strings--violins appropriately sentimental at times, and with grandiose yet subdued work from the cellos.

The entire evening was really incredible stuff--there was some fantastic noise being made that night, in the best sense of the term. This concert repeats tonight and tomorrow night at the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall.

Oregon Symphony's Russian program satisfies...ultimately.

Simone Lamsma

The Oregon Symphony played the final night of a Russian-heavy program at the Schnitz Monday evening, featuring Shostakovich's Symphony No. 1 in F minor  and Tchaikovsky's Concerto in D Major for Violin and Orchestra, featuring Dutch player Simone Lamsma as soloist.

The folks who were parking during the "parking overture" didn't miss much, unfortunately. Danish composer Carl Nielsen's Helios Overture was flat from the start, literally and emotionally. A sour start and continued pitch issues from the horns muddied what should have been a quivering, bracing opening, and the orchestra followed suit with an underwhelming delivery. Surprising, frankly, because this is the sort of thing at which the OSO usually excels.

Immediately following was the Shostakovich. This piece felt like it took a minute or two to get going, but because of its length it could afford an unfortunate if understandable 'warm-up' phase. With so many rapid-fire entrances and exits from so many sections, the orchestra had to be right on cue--constant attention to the conductor was key. They achieved this, and there were tasty treats from many sections and players, including second chair first violin...a solo executed with just the right blend of gusto and restraint.  The second movement featured brilliant switching between the principal themes as they were bandied about between the sections.

The opening of the Lento third movement featured an oboe solo floating gently like a bird soaring over a hushed sea of strings--lush and full bodied, the strings perfectly captured the mysterious spirit of the movement. The final movement closed in raging moments of brutal exclamations from the brass and percussion. Such rapidly and radically shifting moods throughout the piece required a steady and able hand, and resident conductor Paul Ghun Kim ably guided them through the treacherous course.

The second half consisted of the violin concerto, and Lamsma had the audience hooked right from the start. She opened with a fine, broad cantabile, featuring a rich lower range. Her technical brilliance was unmistakable from the start--she executed difficult chordal and scalar passages with exciting thoroughness and clarity. Her lengthy, spritely cadenza was intensely interesting, featuring daring harmonics and glissandi.

During the Finale: Allegro vivacissimo she played with a rapidfire saltando that seemed at times to throw down a friendly challenge to the orchestra: just try and keep up! My tongue is planted firmly in cheek when I say she was having far to much fun for a soloist in such a serious work.

Lamsma stunning in Korngold’s Violin Concerto with the Oregon Symphony and guest conductor Francis

It was great to see British conductor Michael Francis back at the Schnitz on Saturday, October 11th. He turned in terrific concerts in his Oregon Symphony debut with only 24-hours’ notice in February of 2011 and again with just a couple of weeks’ notice in April of 2011. This time, he was on the regular schedule to lead the orchestra in works by Mozart, Stravinsky, and Richard Strauss. The highlight of the evening, however, belonged to Dutch violinist Simone Lamsma, who gave a breathtakingly beautiful performance of Erich Korngold’s Violin Concerto.

Completed in 1945, Korngold’s Violin Concerto is a late, late Romantic work with expansive melodies and room to emote. Lamsma opened the piece with a warm and inviting tone that swept up the audience into a lush, uplifting terrain. She was equally adept at creating a sweet sound in the slower second movement and brought out the emotional content of the subdued passages. For the third movement, her playing was carefree yet totally spot on as she whipped through the wickedly difficult prestissimo sections, including some deft transitions that featured whispery high phrases. Niel DePonte added just the right amount of additional sonic color with his contributions on the xylophone.

The odd piece on the program was Stravinsky’s “Orpheus,” which he wrote for Georges Balanchine as a ballet (premiered in 1948) in three scenes with twelve episodes. Some scholars feel that this work with its incredibly restrained and austere style represents the high point in Stravinsky’s neo-classical period. No kidding. Even with the help of projected titles it was difficult to experience the music in terms of telling the Greek legend of Orpheus going into Hades to retrieve his bride Eurydice only to lose her at the last moment. Except for one brief forte blast, the entire piece was played with the volume varying mildly between piano and mezzo piano. A bar of silence marked the crucial moment after Eurydice falls dead after Orpheus tears the bandage from his eyes and gazes back at her. And the Maenads (female worshipers of Dionysus)violent attack on Orpheus was conveyed by mild pizzicatos and dampened staccato lines. Perhaps this piece can grow on a person after being heard multiple times, but tepid and almost distant sonic qualities seem to be a week interpretation for such a potent tale. Apparently Balanchine wanted to choreograph the story in terms of stations like “stations of the cross.” So the arid, static style that Stravinsky created was just the right thing. In any case, the orchestra played with pristine clarity, and there were many highlights, including the weeping sound of Orpheus from Jennifer Craig’s harp, a duet by oboists Martin Hebert and Karen Wagner, a duet by concertmaster Sarah Kwak and flutist Jessica Sindell, solos by cellist Nancy , Kyle Mustain (English horn, flutist Sindell, and a mournful final lament from the horns and trumpeter Jeffery Work.

The orchestra delivered a spirited performance of Strauss’s “Till Eulenspiegels lustige Streiche” (“Till Eulenspiegel’s Merry Pranks”), delightfully shifting between the serious and humorous moods in the music. John Cox, principal horn, played the prankster’s signature tune with élan. The percussion battery raised havoc. The strings put a little extra sashay into the waltzy passages, the flutes danced about playfully, the bassoons grumbled, the brass and snare drums put their feet down, and clarinetist Mark Dubac, created the final squeal on behalf of Til.

The concert began with Mozart’s Symphony No. 32 is a little gem – a symphony in one movement that passes by in less than ten minutes. Francis chose to conduct the piece without a baton and that worked very well. Under Francis, the orchestra played with elegance and refinement, but it seemed that some of passages could have used more dynamic nuance (for example, push the tempo forward and bring it back) just to take things up another notch.

Overall, even considering the severe unemotional flow of the Stravinsky piece, the orchestra played extremely well under Francis, and it would be a pleasure to hear him and Lamsma again.