NSO

Went to hear the NSO Saturday night. Interesting program – Webern’s Langasmer Satz, Shoenberg’s Verklärte Nacht, and Brahms’ Fourth. The Webern’s piece did not sound familiar, Shoenberg’s did, but I was pretty sure I had never heard it performed, only mentioned. So I expected the kind of twelve-tone thing that the composers are known for. I was looking forward to the show more for the idea of Webern and Schoenberg – the radical modernism expressed with the fewest possible notes – than because I genuinely expected to enjoy the music. I could not have been more wrong.

Langasmer Satz is an extremely early work, written when Webern was only 21, never published (hence no opus number), lost shortly after it was completed and not re-discovered until the 1960s. Originally for string quarter, the NSO played a string orchestra arrangement. It was gorgeous – lovely melodies, lush, Mahlerian strings, and only slight hints of the tension that would become Webern’s stock in trade a few short years later. The original quartet version was no doubt fascinating, but the orchestral rendering we heard worked perfectly – I would not take away a single part.

Schoenberg was also lush, beautiful and Mahlereqsue. My only complaint was its length – at over half an hour, it was too long by half, I thought. This was program music through and through, based on a poem by Richard Dehmel, so he needed the two separate development sections to match the narrative arc of the poem. Better to have stuck the violin arpeggios from the end into the first half and closed early. But that’s just me.

The Brahms, needless to say, was glorious. His Fourth is one of my favorite symphonies ever, if not the favorite, and hearing it live was nothing short of magic. Even though I know my recording (Solti leading Chicago) forwards and backwards, you can’t help but hearing more detail live. The forte sections pressed you into your seat with sheer energy, the flute solo in the closing movement took on a whole new dimension, and the trombones in the same movement sounded even more medieval and mysterious than they do on recordings. Great, great stuff all around.