World premiere

Today was a work day. Hardly worth the effort—I'd say well more than half of the people in the building were out of the office for whatever reason. I think they fled Washington because of the inauguration. I would have written my review of last night's concert performance when I got home from the inaugural balls last night, but I did have to go to work today. Anyway, about last night.....

The National Symphony Orchestra performs in the concert hall of the Kennedy Center, which is a "shoebox" shaped auditorium with a virtually flat orchestra section and the four levels of seating around the three auditorium sides. The stage is dominated by the pipes of a big organ, and there is chorus seating by the pipes on the upper level of the stage. The room is bright, due largely to the seven decorative chandeliers hanging from the ceiling, and there are a lot of smooth wood surfaces around the hall. The orchestra was clad in white tie and tails with the chorus men in tuxedos and the women in what appeared to be matching, flowing, burgundy tops with burgundy pants, though I could not really see that clearly.

Phillip Glass is an internationally famous composer, known largely for being a champion of what is called "minimalism," a movement in modern music dating from around 1970. Minimalism is typified by the repetitious repetition of a simple musical phrase or pattern, and I often find myself very bored, wondering when it will do something. Glass is particularly known for an opera called Einstein on the Beach, which, along with John Adams' Nixon in China are neither one some of my favorite operas. So, I went in to the concert not expecting a lot, and going just to be able to say I'd gone to a Glass world premiere.

The program notes said that this symphony—Glass's seventh—was called "A Toltec Symphony," and was based on musical ideas from the Toltec culture in Mesoamerica. The Toltecs are the people who are believed to have built the great pyramids in Mexico City before the Aztec culture took over that are. Glass gave his three movements colorful names: The Corn, representing the "link between Mother Earth and the well-being of human beings," The Sacred Root, which is "the doorway to the world of the Spirit," and The Blue Deer, representing "a vision, a voice that one might hear, or a thought uninvited by present in the mind of the practitioner."

From the outset, the music turned out to be quite pleasant and listenable. I think it was largely because Glass used a little bit longer musical phrase for his repetitions and there was a lot of melodic and thematic development. In some portions, I thought it even sounded like a motion picture score. The chorus appeared in the second movement singing what sounded like a unison chant in either some other languages or perhaps just vocables, and it wasn't until the end of the movement that there was a little bit of harmony and descant involved. The 31 women and 25 men from the Master Chorale of Washington just didn't have enough ummphf or volume to be heard and their diction was not crisp at all. Personally, I would have been just as happy to have cut the chorus from this movement, since I found the orchestral part (which was doing its own thing and not just doubling chorus parts) to be much more interesting. There were also a few spots where it seemed the orchestra was not cutting off phrases together, with the occasional sound sticking out. Movement three proved much more interesting for all concerned. Glass's music transported me to thoughts of Lord of the Rings-type movies or perhaps some medieval knight epic. Towards the end, he kept building up the music to these big ringing chords, only to abruptly halt the sound, have a grand pause, and then start all over again. When the symphony ended, it was rather low key and soft, and somewhat anticlimactic.

Mr. Glass was in the house and was brought up on stage, where he and the orchestra received two curtain calls. Unlike Tulsa, only maybe a quarter of the audience stood for the ovation.

After intermission, the chorus was gone and a much smaller orchestra remained on stage to accompany Matthias Goerne singing eleven of Gustav Mahler's "Songs from Des Knaben Wunderhorn" Goerne is an operatic baritone from Germany, and also has a good reputation as an interpreter of lieder (German art songs). I was not impressed at all. He wandered out on stage in a black suit and white shirt with an open collar! That was quite a contrast to the orchestra's white tie and tails. Goerne has also packed on some serious poundage since his program picture was taken, and he reminded me a lot of Larry Drake (remember Benny, the retarded mail clerk on L.A. Law?). He just didn't seem to command the stage, and his only stage movements were the occasional crouch, while he kept his hands together, fingers touching, almost the whole time. There was just something vaguely creepy about his stage demeanor.

The music itself was rather boringly repetitious, and I wonder if that was the connection to programing Mahler art songs with a Glass symphony! ;-) The lyrics were largely about leaving sweethearts behind and death. Goerne's mid range voice was very nice and rich, but he lacked volume on the lower register and his head voice was just present with no real excitement to it. I probably should have followed the example of about a quarter of the crowd and left at intermission! Of course, what particularly shocked me was that Goerne got *three* curtain calls with a somewhat larger (but still less than half) standing ovation, then he sang an encore (I have no clue what it was) and got two more curtain calls.

After the house cleared, there was to be a question and answer session with Philip Glass and Maestro Slatkin, but I didn't stay, since I was off to the balls. All in all, though, I'm glad I heard the Glass. It was worth the price of the ticket.