Royal Philharmonic at the GMU Center for the Arts

Some soloists, conductors, and perhaps even entire orchestras just aren't cut out for performing music written in certain styles or periods.  They are just not generalists.  Such was the case last weekend with the Pinchas Zukerman leading, from the violin, the Royal Philharmonic at George Mason's Center for the Performing Arts.  They opened with Bach's A-minor violin concerto, and it was quite likely the most boring Bach I have ever heard.  The orchestra's playing was baby-bottom smooth, with a dynamic range narrower than a bigot's mind.  This is music that cries out for playfulness and zest and can sustain almost unlimited amounts of experimentation and irreverence, but the Royals sawed away like automatons for the entire concerto.  Zukerman himself, his technique as smooth and characterless as that of his troops, looked bored, just standing there with no expression on his face (except maybe that of mild disdain) and consequently none coming from his fingerboard.  If you care so little for this music, why play it?

Zukerman and Co. followed up, less radically than it sounds on paper, with Schoenberg's Verklärte Nacht, Op. 4, scored for strings, and although I do not know the work intimately, it was obvious from the first few moments, that the group was much more in their element than on the Bach.  The smoothness and “of a piece” nature of their sound served the orchestra exceptionally well as Schoenberg's diffuse and mysterious score moved between the sections.  Written when the composer was on the cusp of his twelve-tone breakthrough but not yet there, this is gorgeous music, the the Philharmonic did it full justice.

The coup de grace of the concert came in the second half, as Zukerman and Canadian cellist Amanda Forsyth attacked Brahms' Double Concerto, Op. 102.  Clearly, Romantic symphonic material (the Concerto started out as the composer's Fifth symphony) is where both the soloists and the orchestra were fully at home.  The dynamics, so constricted on the Bach, were sweeping, and the tutti sections were delivered with unshakable authority.  Zukerman played well, but, for my money, was blown away by the glamorous and talented 47-year-old Forsyth (incidentally, Zukerman's third wife – what's with young soloists falling for cranky old conductors?).  Her tone was beautiful, yet full of character, with just enough juice in the attack to make her 1699 Testore cello sound distinctive on every note.  Spectacular performance of one of my favorite works by one of my favorite composers.  By the end, I was perfectly happy to forgive Zukerman and the gang their strangling of the Bach, though I must insist that the credit for lifting the violinist and his orchestra to such soaring heights go primarily to Forsyth.