Leila Josefowicz and the San Diego Symphony Soar in Thomas Adès’ Violin Concerto
San Diego Symphony guest conductor Elena Schwarz opted for the best of both worlds in her Saturday program at the Jacobs Music Center. Devoting the first half of her program to two contemporary works by John Adams and Thomas Adès, she balanced challenge with comfort in Antonin Dvorák’s Ninth Symphony From the New World.
The Jacobs Music Center [Photo (c.) Richard Barnes]
Adès’ Violin Concerto Concentric Paths clearly rewrites the traditional script of a solo concerto, where the soloist and the orchestra typically gracefully alternate their takes on the composer’s themes. In Concentric Paths, Adès has the violinist and the orchestra in a constant duel, like two pugilists in a ring. Virtuoso Leila Josefowicz has championed this demanding concerto, and she gave an impromptu walk-through of the piece to the Jacobs Music Center audience from the edge of the stage before she and Schwarz started the work.
But even the combination of the soloist’s helpful onstage insights and Eric Bromberger’s substantial notes in the printed program could not adequately prepare an audience for the audacity of Adès’ Violin Concerto. In the opening movement “Rings,” the soloist produces an unrelenting barrage of high-pitched, whirlwind roulades against the pounding accompaniment of the full orchestra. Although Adès’ orchestra is modest in number—like a Mozart orchestra with additional low brass—it produces a mighty sound.
Adès makes his extended middle movement “Paths” the heart of the concerto, a complex but noble chaconne that provides the foundation for a labyrinth of winning solos not only for the violin, but for many other solo voices in the orchestra including the mighty tuba. In 2005, Adès wrote this concerto for the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the Berlin Festspiele immediately after finishing his opera The Tempest, and it is clear that in “Paths,” depicting vivid dramatic conflict was still on his creative mind.
Josefowicz’s gleaming sonority and command of her assertive themes in the finale “Rounds” capped this short, dancelike, percussion driven movement that returned the spotlight to the soloist, a welcome capstone to this challenging musical journey.
Unlike Adès, John Adams received his commission for The Chairman Dances (Foxtrot for Orchestra) in 1985 while he was composing his opera Nixon in China. The notion of Mao Zedong and Madame Mao dancing a foxtrot during the festivities of the Nixon visit came from the opera, but only a portion of the music of The Chairman Dances made it into the opera score. This bustling 12-minute score, now an iconic representation of Adams’ early propulsive yet harmonically static Minimalism, has become a popular opener for orchestra concerts. Calling for a robust, full orchestra, Adams’ score also deftly alludes to the suave melodies of 1940s dance orchestras. Schwarz’s bright tempo, careful attention to dynamic contrasts, and he acute sense of period style brought this piece into sharp focus.
The main challenge of performing Dvorák’s New World Symphony is making such a familiar work sound fresh and inviting, which Schwarz and the orchestra accomplished in spades. She engaged the dramatic contrasts of the opening movement’s “Allegro molto” by keeping its constantly changing textures and explosive cadences luminescent. Andrea Overturf’s poignant yet plaintive account of the second movement’s English Horn solo, arguably the most universally recognized orchestral melody, helped Schwarz craft the elegant simplicity of the “Largo.” After the “Molto Vivace,” a scintillating scherzo, Schwarz spurred the finale’s “Allegro con fuoco” with the fire and panache that brought the audience quickly to its feet at the final cadence.
This concert was presented by the San Diego Symphony at the Jacobs Music Center in downtown San Diego on November 16 & 17, 2024. The concert of November 16 was attended for this review.
Ken Herman, a classically trained pianist and organist, has covered music for the San Diego Union, the Los Angeles Times’ San Diego Edition, and for sandiego.com. He has won numerous awards, including first place for Live Performance and Opera Reviews in the 2017, the 2018, and the 2019 Excellence in Journalism Awards competition held by the San Diego Press Club. A Chicago native, he came to San Diego to pursue a graduate degree and stayed.Read more…