Earlier today, I was returning from a grocery shopping trip, and I had to change buses outside the Benaroya Hall, the home of the Seattle Symphony. A poster caught my eye, and on a whim I went inside to the box office. $52 dollars later, I had a ticket for this evening’s concert:
Mozart: Piano Concerto No. 22, K. 482
Schubert: Deutsche Tanze (piano solo)
Schubert, arr. Webern: Deutsche Tanze
Mozart: Symphony No. 36, K. 425, “Linz”
The Seattle Symphony Orchestra was conducted by Christian Zacharias, who also played the piano in the first two pieces.
I’d been to the hall once, for an Amazon.com company all-hands, but this was the first concert that I’d attended there. So how was it? Read on for my review…
The first thing to say is that I expect to become a regular attendee at the Seattle Symphony. They have an imaginative program of events, and it’s incredibly convenient. (When I’m not lugging groceries, it’s a 15 minute walk to or from my apartment.) However, it’s going to take me a few visits to get past two overwhelming facts.
Benaroya Hall is not Symphony Hall, Boston.
And the Seattle Symphony Orchestra is not the Boston Symphony Orchestra.
As Joni Mitchell sang, “Don’t it always seem to go / That you don’t know what you’ve got ‘til it’s gone”. I was so spoilt for all the years I lived in the Boston area. Symphony Hall, Boston, is one of the top three concert halls in the world, and the BSO is one of the very best orchestras.
“But wait,” you will say (or you will if you’ve read the PR material), “Benaroya Hall is a masterpiece of modern acoustic engineering! It floats on rubber thingies to isolate it from traffic, the train tunnel just below, and any earthquake in the vicinity!” All true. But (kiss of death) it also has boxes: serried ranks of angled structures that completely kill the reflection of the sound off the sides of the auditorium. I was sitting one level up in the back, and although the distance to the stage was not large, the sound was definitely muddy. No bottom end, all the corners knocked off the brass and woodwinds, and (horror!) a hint of “tinkle” in the higher piano arpeggios. (This article on the state of contemporary concert hall acoustics may be helpful.)
The acoustic issues make me hesitant to speak about the orchestra. Although they sounded to me a bit vague as to their timing, and some of the sweeping Mozartian string passages came out a bit shapeless, the acoustics didn’t help them. Whereas the BSO always sounds like a oligarchy, run by the first violins, the Seattle Symphony came across as a democracy. It leads to a different sound – not necessarily worse, just different.
In future I will plan to sit as far forward in the orchestra as I can afford, cross my fingers (not really), and rely on direct sound from the stage.
So to tonight’s concert. It was an interesting program: Schubert wrapped in Mozart. Even more intriguing was the idea of playing Schubert’s Deutsche Tanze twice: first the original, solo piano piece, and then Webern’s orchestral arrangement after the intermission.
I enjoyed the second half much more than the first. I was unimpressed by the interpretation of the Mozart piano concerto, and Christian Zacharias didn’t shine at the keyboard. As for the Schubert piece, it was lost until 1930, and the world was not greatly improved by its discovery. It falls between two distinct Schubertian styles: it is neither lyrical nor transcendental.
However if Schubert’s original is unimpressive, the same is not true of Webern’s arrangement. I’m not an expert, but to me it sounded as if Webern was using this piece to explore the relationship between formal Romanticism and folk music, especially Gypsy tunes. It was fascinating to compare the original with the interpretation. (Furthermore this style of music was less badly affected by the acoustics than the rest of the concert.)
And finally the “Linz” symphony. This piece is always overshadowed by the last four symphonies, but it still has a lot going for it. Zacharias took the first part of the Adagio very slowly, and the timpani in the final movement were extraordinarily loud, but apart from that it was a conventional reading, and none the worse for that.
And now I must go and move all my clocks forward.
UPDATE: Re-reading this, it comes across as more negative than I intended. The important thing to remember is that it’s all relative. I really enjoyed the second half of the concert: a nice orchestra in a visually stunning auditorium. And I plan to return for more performances by the Seattle Symphony – though probably not with Mr. Zacharias.