Baltimore Symphony Orchestra presents a waltz through Vienna
Or how Vienna is a bow that ties together Homer Simpson, Syphilis, musical listening pills, and Mozart sampling incredible Turkish beats.
My fiancé recently played with the Baltimore Symphony, and I had the pleasure of seeing the performance in both halls that the Symphony plays at:
- the Joseph Meyerhoff Symphony Hall in the heart of Baltimore, and
- the Music Center at the Strathmore, servicing the suburbs of DC.
Putting it all together
The Orchestra’s Director of Artistic Planning gave a talk, allowing the audience to understand the reason behind the way he put together that evening’s program. Abhijit (“Ab”) Sengupta, thank you! I’ve borrowed heavily from the pages of notes I took during your talk.
It started with the conductor (who the director played within Houston about 4 or 5 years ago) when the conductor was still early in his career: in the Houston Symphony’s summer series. A series Ab nicknamed the “Young Conductor Make it or Break it” series. David Danzmayr made it, conducting wonderfully, and certainly making an impression.
After being invited to play with the Baltimore Symphony, the director and he wanted to plan a program, deciding to base it around the Maestro’s home town of Vienna.
Vienna was the center of the classical music world (I guess they just called it music then) from the 1700s to almost the 1900s, after money flooded in from the Habsburgs, financing a multitude of commissions and a rich music ecosystem. It was a city where, as Ab mentioned:
the shadow of empire looms large.
But just before the First World War, so much began to change in art and culture, culminating in the Vienna Secession. The movement that thrived with impressionism, symbolists like Klimt, multimedia artists like Moser and more.
This wasn’t isolated to the visual arts, and Viennese music was just as Avant-Garde: take for example Webern’s modernism.
So a story of Vienna is a story of Granduous History, but it is just as much a story of progress. And this program told such a story.
The program was designed around two heavyweights: first Schubert’s Unfinished Symphony and then, Mozart’s Violin Concerto (№5 “Turkish”), with Stefan Jackiw as soloist.
Around this, two bookends were placed, starting the night with Webern and finishing with what is one of the most recognizable classical works, the Blue Danube.
Webern’s Six Pieces for Orchestra
Six movements in twelve minutes. Movements that supposedly call out motifs from Vienna’s rich history, but which my ear couldn’t really discern.
What I did feel was an intense and exciting discomfort. Not a pain, but interesting and engaging anxiety: kind of like watching an M. Night Shyamalan film. Whenever I started to get comfortable, whenever a rhythm or a melody became something I could recognize (and I could shift my focus from) there’s was a change.
This piece played with attention beautifully, and it kept me on the edge of my seat. It was unheimlich. And that’s kind of fun.
Ab mentioned that this music is like taking a pill before diving into the concert—whether you like it or not, it will sharpen your listening for the entire evening.
Mozart’s Violin Concerto №5 “Turkish”
Einstein said that Mozart was one of the only composers that sound as if they discovered their music from the universe, rather than forcing their music to exist. My fiancé said that it sounds as if his music is so sublime as to seem genderless.
And unlike most other pieces, the program notes (and Ab) tell a story that I can completely hear in the music itself.
The piece begins demurely, not with the soloist announcing themselves, but with the orchestra. It is as if you walk into a mansion (as a person might, back in those days in that Vienna), opening the doors and hearing a party—lively but a little distant.
The soloist then starts on their own rhythm and melody, coming closer and closer to the party as the music intensifies and the two trains of thought coalesce.
This piece culminates in the “Turkish”—a colorful appropriation honoring traditional Turkish melodies. This is a crescendo you could slam steins of Steigl on wooden tables to. And one where the orchestra and soloist are playing off each other and having about as much fun as you can have in performance black.
You can’t help but burst out of your seat after hearing this piece.
Encore
Stefan Jackiw gifted the audience with a Bach encore.
And moving from Mozart to Bach is incredible. The change to baroque, and the way that Jackiw played Bach’s harmonies, the timbre was so different that it almost feels like he is playing a different instrument entirely.
Schubert’s Unfinished Symphony
I don’t remember too much about this piece (lucky I’m seeing it shortly again in Columbus with Promusika), but Ab painted the most vivid story about the music’s composition: how this work traced the ups and downs of the composer’s battle with Syphilis and his untimely death at 31.
This work also reminded me of one of my favorite artworks: Michelangelo’s slaves. Similarly, there is an academic dispute regarding both pieces about whether they were truly unfinished, or whether in both pieces the artist felt that those works were completed. Or, as Ab mentioned, that
Schubert had decided that he had said everything he could artistically say in this piece, so he stopped.
Strauss’ On the Beautiful Blue Danube
As soon as this piece started, for me, it was 2001: A Space Odyssey, or Homer Simpson eating chips in space.
This piece is so iconic, that the second time I saw this piece, sitting next to a six-year-old, they exclaimed: “this is wedding music!”
My seatmate an I imagined how we would dance to this piece, and even tried to see whether the conductor would break into a dance as well (spoiler: he did, just a touch).
This is where the conductor’s Viennishness really shined, he performed this piece with the full enjoyment of the orchestra, and with originality—quite a feat for a piece that is so iconic.
Takeaways
- Active art consumption (notebook assisted) that worked so well in watching dance, works incredibly well in listening to classical music.
- Looking for a thread that ties a program together can dramatically change your experience of music.
- Much like food, a musical “amuse-bouche” can totally activate your ear for the entire evening.
- Listening twice can change the way you hear music. Don’t be scared to see the same concert twice.
- Go cross-disciplinary—history complements art and music.
