What's the deal about bow ties?

Setting: The Concert Hall of the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.

Action: The ninety-eight or so members of the National Symphony Orchestra, over half of whom are male, are sitting on stage, ready to play a concert. The men are all attired in tail coats with formal white bow ties.

Enigma: Famed conductor and NSO musical director Leonard Slatkin enters and takes his place at the podium, wearing a tuxedo suit with a black bow tie. Huh? What is wrong here?

Enigma 2: Featured soloist, the internationally renowned violinist Pinchas Zuckerman, makes his entrance. He is wearing a tail coat, but he has on a white shirt with a banded collar and no tie. What is going on here?

Thus, we have the rather disconcerting issue which prefaced tonight's National Symphony Orchestra concert. The music was quite fine (more on that later), but I found the mystery of the ties to be quite engrossing (that plus the mystery of why two different styles of chairs were being used haphazardly for the orchestra).

Things became more complicated at the intermission. As I headed back into the hall, who should I run in to but the conductor of the Bartlesville Symphony and the former executive director of the OK Mozart International Festival, for both of whose groups I've sung in the past. And, of course, as I encountered each of them, they both had to run up to me to say hello. As it turns out, they were there with a tour group of about 30 people from northeastern Oklahoma. Which brings me to enigma 3, which is, why is it that everywhere I go, I always manage to run in to people from back home? Those of you from small towns know how quickly the gossip and news travels. In fact, it was not at all uncommon when I was in high school and college for my parents to have heard where I was and with whom before I even got home. Well, tonight when I got home from the concert and dinner, I was surprised that I didn't have an email from my mother wanting to know who I was with at the Kennedy Center tonight and why wasn't I wearing a tie!

What's the deal about ties?

Anyway, I had a lovely evening tonight after an unexpected invitation this afternoon from the charming and gracious Fr. Steven, who had an extra ticket to tonight's concert. I'll blame him for my decision to be tieless tonight. He was determined to shed his suit and tie and go in a glen plaid blazer and blue jeans with no tie, so I took off my tie, blazer, and khakis I'd been wearing earlier today and opted to wear a green cotton sweater over an ecru Oxford-cloth button-down with some navy blue Armani trousers and my too-small-but-ever-so-fashionable black Ferragamo loafers. But no tie.

It was also a pleasure to see Mr. Zuckerman again. About five years ago, I sang a world-premiere opera with his daughter that Ransom Wilson and Jean-Michel Damase had put together. Haven't heard a thing about her since, so I don't know if she is still singing or not. Unfortunately, we didn't have backstage passes, so I didn't get a chance to go back and talk to him.

The concert opened with an orchestral transcription of Bach's "Chaconne" from Partita in D minor for Unaccompanied Violin, BWV 1004. It took the orchestra about a minute or two to get warmed up, but eventually they got things together. I often think they don't really play well for Slatkin, even though he's been their music director for ten years. Tonight was the first time I've seen him lead the orchestra from a vantage point where I could really watch him conduct—we were on row G in the lower orchestra right section. I have to say he looks like he's extremely difficult to follow! He uses a lot of curved and circular conducting motions (they really weren't regular enough to call them "patterns") with the tip of his baton making a lot of extraneous motions. Since he doesn't use a regular vertical conducting pattern, I couldn't quite determine the ictus of the beat, and even on those limited occasions when he did have clear down beats, the orchestra was definitely not playing at the bottom of the beat.

The second work of the first half of the concert was fascinating. When I saw "Concerto for Violin and Orchestra by Alban Berg" on the program, I cringed a little, since Berg was a protègé of Arnold Schönberg and he is known for his atonal works and 12-note serialism. This particular concerto was composed in the months shortly before Berg's death in 1935. As it turned out, though, this was the best part of the entire evening's concert. The violin part was fiendishly difficult, requiring Zuckerman to play the random intervals of atonal music in some sections, in other sections to play two notes simultaneously, and in yet other sections to play pizzicato (plucked) notes whilst simultaneously playing long melodic lines with slow bowing technique. The concerto was about 25 minutes long, but it seemed like the time just flew by. It was a brilliant performance by both NSO and Zuckerman.

Intermission was interesting, aside from the aforementioned encounters with Oklahomans. By the time we made our way out to the lobby, got in line for a cocktail, and were almost up to the head of the line, some ushers started ringing the bell and announced that the second half was starting soon and there would be no late seating once they started. Well, we didn't want to have to swallow our cocktails in one gulp, so we gave up and went back inside without our alcoholic fortification for the Berlioz to come.

The entire second half of the concert was devoted to a single work, Hector Berlioz's infrequently heard Harold in Italy, Op. 16. Harold is, in essence, a symphony based on Lord Byron's epic poem Childe Harold's Pilgrimage with four movements: I. Harold in the Mountains. Scenes of Melancholy, Happiness, and Joy. II. March of the Pilgrims Singing Their Evening Prayer. III. Serenade of an Abruzzi Mountaineer to His Mistress. IV. Orgy of the Brigands. Reminiscences of Earlier Scenes.

Berlioz, who is probably best known for his tone poem Symphonie Fantastique, tends to write in a very effusive, melodramatic way, and Harold was no exception. The interesting thing about this work, though, was an obbligato part for solo viola, and soloist Zuckerman switched to a viola for this portion of the concert. The work, though, is very formulaic, and the "big ending" met with the intended crowd approval. Tonight's audience was an interesting mix of musical enthusiasts and musical sophicates, with about half the audience standing for the final ovations and about half the audience rather pointedly and stubbornly remaining in their seats. Given what the performers had to work with, though, the symphony was good.

There is one more performance of this particular concert program remaining on tomorrow (Saturday) night, and I encourage everyone to go hear it, particularly for the Berg concerto.