How often will we listen to works like these in Valencia?
By Joaquín Guzmán
Culturplaza
November 13, 2022
VALENCIA. “Things only happen a certain number of times, really, very few. How many more times will you remember a certain afternoon from your childhood (…)? How many more times will you see the full moon come out? Maybe twenty. And yet everything seems unlimited”. Paul Bowles in his novel The Sheltering Sky, with a reflection on the real temporality of a life that we believe is unlimited. Even when one considers themselves young, this thought starts to reveal itself to them, occasionally, in the middle of memorable moments. This is not to say that the Orquestra de la Comunitat’s concert last Friday with its titular James Gaffigan is one of those, but indeed this idea of the finitude of great moments came to mind. How many more times will we listen to these two works at the high level of the best orchestras in the world? In my city, certainly not very many.
The program opened with a work by Óscar Esplá, the symphonic poem “Dream of Eros” debuted in Vienna in 1911. A very interesting work, formal and strictly musical in debt to Wagner’s Tristan prelude in a curious combination between Centro-European postromantic music (which received an important composition price in Munich in 1913) and the unmistakable popular, sunny and Mediterranean traits of the composer from Alicante. Again, a work from this great musician, whose quality does not correspond with its rare presence in concert halls.
The program continued, conceived around the figure of impossible love as West Side Story signified the move from the feud between the Montagues and the Capulets to that of New York’s young gangs in the middle of the last century and Prokofiev’s masterful ballet, which we all know was based on Shakespeare’s famous tragedy.
Gaffigan’s reading of “Symphonic Dances” from West Side Story was superb. One must notice that the New York Director decides to move by means far from overwhelming histrionisms or extreme dynamic contrasts to narrate Bernstein’s music. With these musicians, he could do what he felt like, but he opted for a greater resounding hedonism, a certain contention and flow in the phrasing. It is, of course, a vision with little or nothing to do with the historic interpretation of its own composer with the New York Philharmonic, which possibly will never be outmatched, in its much more theatrical, jazzy and “barriobajero” [“colloquial”] language. Why put oneself in a position to tie with Bernstein himself? Gaffigan, I think very intelligently, opts for a more symphonic and balanced language. It shows more than it tells, and the general sound is fabulous. Gaffigan praises the work, ennobles its writing, like the masterpiece that it is. As for the orchestra, it sounds just as fabulous with the whole as with all its soloists. The succession of memorable moments is unending: the excellent Bernardo Cifres in the solo of “Somewhere” and the subsequent and captivating entrance of the strings, one of the great moments of the night. The mambo, always inclined to exhibit humorous power, confirmed what we were saying before about Gaffigan’s refined approach to this work. Perhaps with this interpretation we were not witnesses to the rundown streets of a New York that was “occupied” by rival gangs, the knife blades shining in the darkness, but we do perceive the abstract power of music that carries away and intoxicates the ear.
Something similar happens with the interpretation of Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet in this theater’s main hall, and here we will take, as a subject of comparison, the unforgettable soiree that the Mariinsky Theatre Orchestra performed in the main hall with that Russian theater’s corps de ballet in 2012. A grim interpretation, without brakes, and more rhythmically marked, that trademark haste and luck of improvisation (surely without previous rehearsals). Gaffigan gives me the sensation that the direction of this selection of numbers is not contemplated by thinking strictly of the ballet, but with a strictly musical vision, in a certain abstract form (always within the programmatical character of this music, of course), with the rhythm not so noticeable, which could be seen clearly in, for example, the minuet or masquerades. Even the famous “Dance of the Knights” is not an outpouring of testosterone, but, within the inevitable spectacularity, is a stunning exercise of control with fewer rhythmic and dynamic contrasts than what we are used to.
A total and absolute success in a practically full hall and, what is more hopeful, a high percentage of young people in the audience.
Read the full review in Spanish here.
