Twenty years ago the music of Carl Nielsen was undergoing a revival. The centenary of the Danish composer`s birth was observed in 1965, occasioning many performances and recordings on both sides of the Atlantic. But, as would later happen in the cases of Alexander Scriabin and Charles Ives, widespread interest was not maintained. Today we hear their music all too seldom.
Leonard Slatkin`s concerts with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra this week attempted to redress the grievance by including the fifth–and finest–of Nielsen`s symphonies. This is the work that musicologist Deryck Cooke once proclaimed the greatest symphony of the 20th Century, and while arguably an overstatement, it nonetheless gives an idea of the music`s stature.
Such distinction was apparent only intermittently when Seiji Ozawa and the CSO first played the score in 1965 at Ravinia, but two years later at Orchestra Hall, guest-conductor Sixten Ehrling gave a wholly idiomatic account that set a standard. For quite different reasons that standard was not surpassed either by Henry Mazer (1970) or Slatkin.
Ehrling, it must be admitted, has never been a highly exciting conductor. Yet, as is revealed by a broadcast tape of one of the Nielsen performances, he knew exactly where the stresses should fall and conveyed a keen sense of atmosphere.
Slatkin`s approach was to begin loud and get louder. And in the way that is so common to his musicmaking, the increasing dynamic levels were not accompanied by a heightening of tension. Instead of dark intensity or lyrical fervor one heard a blare that at moments of climax simply was swamped by more decibels, usually from the percussion.
The crisis of the first movement occurs when the player of the snare drum is asked to invent a nine-bar cadenza that goes against the rest of the music, as if wildly trying to stop it. This is an extraordinary passage that seldom fails to make a dramatic effect, though it failed Thursday. Gordon Peters`
improvisation had little invention, and at the desolate close of the movement Larry Combs` clarinet solo was similarly prosaic. Throughout the symphony there was an absence of both finesse and spontaneous feeling.
Earlier, violinist Cho-Liang Lin gave an account of Max Bruch`s
”Scottish Fantasy” that was bold of attack and secure in intonation but a bit short on affection. Admittedly, the work often lapses into empty note-spinning, though there also are moments of nobility and aching nostalgia. Lin played it as a virtuoso piece. Slatkin ably accompanied. Perhaps the character of their interpretation is best conveyed by how they both made the most of the designation for the last movement that translates ”warlike allegro.”
The program opened with a CSO premiere of Irving Fine`s 1951 Notturno, for Strings and Harp, whose three brief movements are indebted to neoclassical Stravinsky. The Bruch Fantasy gave much more of a workout to harpist Edward Druzinsky, but his contribution here was beautifully cool. If only the string playing of his colleagues had been as tidy.
The program will be repeated at 8 p.m. Saturday.
