James Conlon has a knack for bringing the unfamiliar to the concert hall, which is matched by his skill in addressing the audience to prepare them for the unfamiliarity without drowning them in details. For his visit to Davies Symphony Hall as guest conductor of this week’s subscription concerts, this talent was applied to a presentation of Antonín Dvořák's triptych of concert overtures, published with the consecutive opus numbers 91, 92, and 93. Of these three only the middle, “Carnival” (Opus 92) receives frequent performance and recording; but, as Conlon demonstrated, it continues a thematic path first established in Opus 91, which then continues through an abrupt mood shift into Opus 93.
Dvořák's original idea was to publish all three overtures as Opus 91 under the single title, Nature, Life, and Love. However, because each of those nouns captured the primary theme of its respective overture, Dvořák later decided to publish them separately. The “life” overture became “Carnival,” preceded by “In Nature’s Realm” (now Opus 91) and followed by “Othello” (now Opus 93). One might think that an overture based on this particular tragedy by William Shakespeare would offer a rather dark view of love, and this is definitely the case. However, it is hardly Dvořák's only effort to explore the darker side of human nature towards the end of his life. (Think of his 1900 opera Rusalka and the symphonic poems based on sinister folk tales from the preceding decade.)
In spite of this rather neat sorting-out of the original title, the point that Conlon most wanted to stress in his opening remarks is that all three of those nouns are operative in all three of the overtures. Thus these three fundamental concepts unfold as an integrated unity over the course of a “cycle” of three compositions, using those quote marks to approach the set as a smaller-scale analog of the ambitions of Richard Wagner’s Ring cycle. While this may strike some Dvořák lovers as a bit of a stretch (if not preposterous), it is worth remembering (as Conlon did) that in 1863 the young Dvořák played viola in three concerts conducted by Wagner which, according to Klaus Döge’s article in Grove Music Online, “included his Faust overture, the overture to Tannhäuser, the prelude to Lohengrin and extracts from Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, Tristan und Isolde, Die Walküre and Siegfried.” (The Wikipedia entry for Dvořák also gives a rich account of Wagner’s influences on Dvořák’s compositions.) This Wagnerian rhetoric also emerges in the three overtures by beginning with a leitmotiv for nature that becomes a key element in the overall unity.
Conlon also stressed that the San Francisco Symphony had never performed these overtures as the cycle that Dvořák had conceived. Indeed, “In Nature’s Realm” has received only two performances, both of which predate Davies. The first was in 1914 under Henry Hadley, followed by another in 1925 under Alfred Hertz. “Othello,” on the other hand, had to wait until 1995, when it was conducted by the visiting Marek Janowski. (“Carnival” received its last performance in 2007.)
Having made his case verbally that these three works constitute a single package and having then requested the audience to withhold applause until the end of Opus 93, Conlon then made the same case on musical grounds. His presentation of the nature theme during his introductory remarks could only suggest the broad diversity of guises that the theme would assume in the course of the episodes of each overture. Most important, however, was its role in “Othello,” in which the theme is associated with Iago, thus presenting him as a brutal force of nature, perhaps in the Nietzschean sense of being “beyond good and evil.” (For the record, Döge’s article gives no indication of Dvořák having any exposure to Friedrich Nietzsche’s writings.) The result was a performance that was as musically fulfilling as it was informative, providing a point of view of Dvořák that was long overdue for San Francisco audiences.
In the context of Dvořák’s experience under Wagner’s baton, Conlon’s selection of the opening prelude to Wagner’s Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg could not have been better. (It is hard to imagine that this was not included in those “extracts” cited in Döge’s account.) This selection was also the perfect example for demonstrating Wagner’s skill in working with an extensive repertoire of thematic resources, each of which refers directly some element of the narrative that is about to unfold, climaxing in a coda in which all of those thematic elements are played simultaneously by different sections of the orchestra. Conlon brought a clarity to all of this complexity that presented this prelude as an expository introduction to the entire opera, leaving the listener hoping that, through some bizarre violation of the laws of space and time, the curtain was about to rise on the church scene of the opera’s first act.
Between Wagner and Dvořák Conlon programmed Max Bruch’s Opus 26, his first violin concerto in G minor, with Joshua Bell as soloist. This fit nicely into the historical context of the evening, since it was composed in 1866, while Wagner was working on Meistersinger. (The prelude had actually received its first performance in1862, but the entire opera was not completed until 1867.) Compared with Wagner, Bruch was very much a traditionalist; but there is a strong inclination towards the integration of the three movements of this concerto, which made it a bit of its own kind of prelude for the Dvořák cycle that would follow the intermission.
Musically, this is very much a showpiece for the soloist; and Bell is just the sort of soloist who likes to “show.” Conlon provided an excellent supportive role with his scrupulous attention to both balance and tempo. For his part Bell had a repertoire of expressive devices to make the journey through Bruch’s three movements a pleasant one. His only shortcoming was a tendency to rush through some of the more rapid passages at the expense of losing that underlying sense of pulse required to integrate with the orchestra.
Where such calisthenics were concerned, he was better off setting his own pace, which he did by taking as an encore the Opus 17 on Henri Vieuxtemps, “Souvenir d’Amérique – Variations burlesques sur Yankee Doodle.” I noticed that in 2009 there was a major discussion on Violinist.com about his decision to take this encore after having performed the Brahms violin concerto with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, but I subscribe to the school of thought that both performers and audience are entitled to a bit of fun from time to time. After all, taken as a whole, Conlon had arranged a rather heavy program; and one could appreciate Bell lightening things up a bit before breaking for the intermission.
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