Written by Gábor Tóth
Location: Oradea Philharmonic Hall
Date: February 13, 2025, 7 p.m.
Show:
Alban Berg – Violin Concerto
Charles Ives - Central Park in the Dark
Debussy – The Sea
Conductor: Andrej Vesel (permanent conductor of Oradea since last year)
Soloist: violinist Fedor Rudin
Audience: almost full house, surprisingly full compared to the bold program in Várad – with many young people, I was positively surprised by the audience organization, the recruitment for Berg and Ives was not bad.
Viennese or “old” innovations – well, Berg or Ives from across the ocean is both old and new, meaning that a hundred years have passed, and new orchestras and new audiences still do not know these composers well enough. Now the opportunity was here, thanks to Andrej Vesel, a young Croatian conductor who graduated in Vienna and was hired as a permanent conductor here in Várad last year.
I still remember the time when the Várad orchestra (in terms of age composition, it was not the same as the current one, but in terms of percentage, it was an older group), about 20 years ago, successfully protested against the performance of a conductor, fearing that they would have to play Berg and Webern, and similar “monstrosities” of the early 20th century. Berg was indeed over-intellectualized from the perspective of certain older musicians, and also from the perspective of the audience, which was spoiled exclusively by classical-romantic music, and that is why what Andrej Vesel has just done together with his friend Fedor Rudin is worth appreciating.
Andrej from Zagreb, who studied in Vienna, also enthusiastically likes to present the Berg work in an educational way to the audience in the introduction to his concerts. That is, he also introduced the Berg work in terms of content/inspiration, and in addition, he sang the basic themes processed by Berg with 16 members of the Várad Philharmonic Choir (Carinthian Melody and the heavy Bach: Es ist genug) - these are connected to the story of the girl who tragically died at the age of 19, to whose memory Berg ultimately dedicated the concerto, the faces of Manon Gropius' life and then agony, her final surrender. Cruel lyricism. Shortly after, after composing this piece, fate overtook Berg himself, the sad irony of the name, that he was bitten by an insect on a "mountain" trip, which later caused such an infection that Berg died from it.
In any case, it is a contemporary musical lesson that it takes courage to present a nearly 90-year-old, second Viennese school expressionist swan song, both from an orchestral and institutional perspective – the Philharmonic took this step beautifully and at the same time boldly, and as I wrote, there was even a large audience for it. The orchestra now played cautiously but conscientiously.
The soloist journey of Moscow-born violinist Fedor Rudin (1992) is also unique: he made his debut in Berlin, then after years in Paris, moved on to Cologne, Salzburg, and Vienna, and is also active as a conductor. The young soloist's intonation was ethereal.
It is of course difficult to determine how effective the oral introductory audience education was in the midst of Berg's transfigurations, and whether the audience took to the page, whether it was the stacked cross motifs of the second movement or anywhere else, but somewhere we need to start bringing some higher culture into the Várad repertoire, that is a fact, and the implementation that Andrej occasionally sneaks in here is commendable.
What is even more special is that although there was apparently a large orchestra on stage, Berg lyrically articulates the episodic, sophisticated chamber moments within the large apparatus: small life rafts in the sea of appearances. My favorite is also the opening of the first movement, the empty fifths, the soloist's "violin tuning", but in reality the prediction of the tragic emptiness that will occur. Of the life rafts, I would highlight the trees from the final chorale, played with elaborate softness, in dialogue with the violin theme symbolizing dying vs. passing away. But unfortunately, the full violin ensemble became false towards the end. I also heard the flutes at the very end, in the second part, but I prefer not to talk about that anymore...
From a stage-acoustic perspective, Andrej continues to work with the Viennese orchestral arrangement, with a few compromises (e.g. the physical location of the basses).
There was also an encore after the two-part/two-faced violin concerto: yes, this is where the much-suffering young angel, Manon, moved to heaven – in the Adagio of Bach’s G minor sonata. As I already mentioned Fedor’s intonation, this was even more ethereal (if ethereal can be enhanced), an amazing lesson learned, I’m out of breath, I can’t say anything about the violinist, there are no words for that clean Bach intonation conclusion effect…
Then came the American Ives, who was initially less known as a composer than as an insurance agent. We could hear the strangely cunning impressions of the artist-eccentric who later became famous, which even rhymed with the rising intervals at the beginning of Berg.
Berg's 12-notes, and then Ives' serious poly-structured jokes, ultimately managed to overwhelm the orchestra's hearing so much that at the beginning of the Debussy sea, the tuning itself became fundamentally false. So, at first, there was more of a waking puddle at the beginning of the development of the ensemble's ability to hear each other.
Debussy deliberately calls these overwhelming orchestral movements symphonic sketches, modestly avoiding cliché and tradition. But when it comes to France around the turn of the century, I am reminded of Satie, who wrote to Debussy after the 1905 premiere, referring to the plastic process of the first movement of From Dawn to Noon at Sea, that the best part of it is between half past ten and three quarters past ten. Here in Várad, the second movement was more successful than the first or third – I feel that the orchestra and the conductor found each other more in the middle, and I even felt a Viennese wave waltz at the climax of the second movement. At the end of the third movement, it was also nice how the double bass soloist, acting as a “second conductor”, played the percussion…
I also regret that in a county where tunnels, ring roads, concrete and asphalt are the priority, a county maintenance institution does not give enough money to its owned or usurped philharmonic to finally have enough for a normal harp... However, I respect the pianist, who was as perfect and routine as possible in his harp imitation on a digital plastic instrument. I am just a little afraid that as a result of the precedent-setting that has fallen into the hands of the "experts", the strings may eventually be replaced with a synthesizer, the clarinets with a tárogató, the brass with a "foaie vergye", the trumpets with a higyegy, the piano with a tango accordion, and who knows what else...
To put it more cheerfully, conductor Andrej Vesel always smiles, always knows what he wants, always brings something from the flavors of Vienna, this time he will continue his Várad Philharmonic concerts here next week with Beethoven - but Berg was a taste of another Vienna this time...
Vesel is also always polite and enthusiastic in terms of protocol, observing the order in which the orchestra leaders, other members, and parts are lined up and celebrated. Here, from the perspective of the audience, it is always very funny rhythmically to see where the applause arrives due to the spontaneous stochasticity of the audience – of course, never where it would be most deserved.
I also owe thanks to Zoltán Thurzó, from whose carefully documented family archive of Várad music history I learned that on January 29, 1968, Ervin Acél conducted the Berg Violin Concerto with the Várad Philharmonic Orchestra, with Mihai Constantinescu solo, on a Monday evening.
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