A Fairy Tale Conductor

By FRED KIRSHNIT

Sir George Solti used to say that a good orchestral musician could come from anywhere, but for the finest training they must study in America. He was specifically referring to three institutions of higher musical learning: The Curtis Institute in Philadelphia and our own Manhattan and Juilliard Schools of Music. On Thursday, Juilliard inaugurated its concert season with a vital and dynamic performance.

The Juilliard Orchestra is the top instrumental ensemble and tends to house the older students, many of whom are pursuing advanced degrees. They are the cream of the world’s crop, and they sound it. Here’s a surprise: The obligatory modern opening piece, a Bernstein-like fanfare by Robert Beaser, was dominated by more than a dozen percussion instruments. Mr. Beaser has embraced tonality, which is admirable. He has also discovered brevity, which in this particular case was very much appreciated. The players tore into this work with disciplined intensity; I don’t suppose that it will ever be performed again as well as it was this night.

James DePreist is a remarkable man. Not just a fine conductor and educator, but a truly remarkable man. In 1962, he traveled to Thailand as a member of a State department tour and contracted polio. Having recently undergone kidney transplantation surgery, Mr. DePreist, a very large individual, now conducts from a power wheelchair. This makes those long arms of his seem all the more imperial after he elevates his chair electronically in a fine bit of anticipatory theater before each appearance. His students love him; not out of fear but rather deep respect, they simply wouldn’t dare make a mistake in front of him.

Beyond the technical prowess of these musicians is their total commitment to the music. They are, in several significant ways, already at the peak of their powers, able to infuse these masterful scores with impetuosity and unbridled enthusiasm, tempered by the strictest of training regimens. The nagging corollary thought, though, is that these are the same people who devolve into the American professional orchestral member, as likely to be at least as concerned about union benefits and parking garages (one of the sticking points that killed the move of the Philharmonic back to Carnegie Hall) as the execution of the music itself.

The all-star team of orchestras has a new mix of personnel every semester, as well as various conductors with different approaches. I have heard them all, and Mr. DePreist gets the most out of his charges year in and year out. Delicacy was on the agenda this evening, as he led a dignified and measured Sinfonia concertante K. 364 that allowed the two highly synchronized soloists to shine without any false or undue romanticism or exaggeration. Violinist Miho Saegusa and violist Chihiro Fukuda meshed as well as any soprano and mezzo combination in the opera house.

Many conductors have developed their own compendia of scenes from Prokofiev’s “Romeo and Juliet” for use in the concert hall, but Mr. DePreist is one of the few to arrange the music of “Cinderella” in like manner. This is not your Disney or Rogers and Hammerstein Cinderella, but a horrifying nightmare of paranoia and shattered dreams, written just after the lowest point of Stalinist persecution of musicians in the 1930’s. Prokofiev’s genius is to make the dances themselves the villains of the piece; the ball constitutes not Cinderella’s flowering but rather her doom, a subtle coup de theatre for a ballet.

This particular compilation was notable for its emphasis on these evil dances, interspersed with softer and more lyrical passages from the ballet, which are themselves imbued with a neurasthenic energy. The performance was stunning: It is simply amazing that a string section that has been together all of four weeks can sound so lush and yet so taut at the same time.

The highlight of the evening – and of the complete ballet – was the waltz that leads up to the famous clock scene. Prokofiev loved this piece and included it in another of his works, the Waltz Suite, his own grouping of dances from “Lermontov,” “War and Peace,” and “Cinderella.” The music begins in the lowest possible register and the subsequent swirling rhythms become more and more diabolical as the dance reaches its conclusion, the blood-curdling striking of midnight made all the more hollow by the masterstroke of orchestration that employs the wood block as the clacker. The composer, literally on trial for his life, cannot resist a final sardonic laugh, entitling this section “Cinderella’s happiness theme.”

Very few orchestras in America – Philadelphia, Los Angeles, Pittsburgh, and maybe Cleveland on a good day – could have performed this section with any more fire and controlled intensity. This was simply a magnificent effort, filled with little touches of tonal color and disciplined inner passagework. And everyone was on board. Woodwind solos were crisp and the brass section, so vital to Prokofiev’s atmosphere of insecurity, was confidently eloquent. When was the last time you saw the tuba player take a solo bow?

Sibelius' Symphonies No. 2 and No. 7, Atlanta Audio Society, Sept. 2004

Delos Spotlight

Classik Reviews Atlanta Audio Society, September 2004 Phil Muse

DePreist's Sibelius: passion well-paced

Delos DE 3334

It's a pleasure to see James DePreist's determined visage on a Delos booklet cover once more. He has been a comparative stranger on the American label in recent years, when he has been a very busy (and highly decorated) conductor of orchestras around the world. Now, as Music Director Emeritus of the Oregon Symphony Orchestra, he returns to the scene of the crime in Portland, leading the orchestra in performances of Jean Sibelius' Symphonies No. 2 and No. 7 that benefit from his genius for grasping the whole design of these works and pacing them to an exhilarating conclusion.

The two symphonies are quite a contrast, even more than we might expect from the span of more than twenty years between them. Sibelius had been moving in the direction of greater serenity and more concise statement, the ultimate expression of which was his Seventh Symphony, in one continuous movement played without pause. In the opening section, a somber adagio, a theme for solo trombone emerges that will be a motto for the entire work. It makes a reappearance in the scherzo section and again in the turbulent finale, which ends calmly and triumphantly.

The Second Symphony, by contrast, is a sprawling work on a grand scale, its powerful emotions as overtly expressed as the Seventh's are subdued and understated. But its scale should not deceive us into thinking of it as formless, and DePreist has a profound understanding of the ways Sibelius develops the relationships between seemingly unrelated, radically different musical ideas (he starts at least a dozen such hares in the opening movement alone), clarifying their relationships in a highly satisfying way. The other thing this conductor does very well is pace the work through its entire length, which is very important for a composer who typically holds back his climaxes until the last possible moment for maximum impact. The great example here is the transition between the third and fourth movements played continuously, when the majestic theme first introduced by the horns bursts forth in all its glory. (With the advent of digital technology, I always get a thrill watching the track counter readout change dramatically at this movement!)

Details in the score, such as the deft pizzicati in the lower strings at the opening of the slow movement, the five almost inaudible beats of the tympani and the plaintive oboe melody that follows in the scherzo, are beautifully executed and recorded. And in the coda to the finale, the entire orchestra, marching through a blazing firestorm of triumph, ends this work in as convincing a conclusion as I have ever heard.

STRAVINSKY: The Rite of Spring
The Firebird Suite (1919)
Oregon Symphony James DePreist
Delos 3278

Click to enlarge

The Right Rite

"Along with a sumptuous, suitably late-Romantic look at the 1919 version of the Firebird Suite, the DePreist Le sacre du printemps is something quite special. In addition the requisite savagery - the "Dance of the Earth" and concluding "Sacrificial Dance" are especially hair-raising - there is a refinement (one is almost tempted to call it a delicacy) in the playing that makes this one of the most individual and physically beautiful recorded performances that Le sacre has yet received. The exemplary contributions of the Oregon Symphony and the Delos engineers are fully worthy of the interpretation."

Jim Svejda
KUSC Program News
June 2001

A welcome new Rite of Spring that brings out its balletic rather than its savage qualities

Major players in the recording world currently shy away from repertoire like this, affording an opportunity for the less 'obvious' to make their mark. And how refreshingly unobvious the results are here - an impressive showcase for Oregon and its long-time music director, but in no way merely a virtuoso showpiece Rite. Rather it is, in the manner of Stravinsky's own Columbia Symphony Orchestra and Pierre Monteux's Paris Rites, a very balletic one, with vivid projection of the inner voices (principally woodwinds) and judiciously selective presentation of the often too dominant outer ones (the brass and percussion) …………and the engineers relay the orchestra in a way that ideally combines concert-hall realism with the necessary audio-only presence and sharp focus ………… a quality product.

Jonathan Swann
Gramophone
July 2001

I have long admired James DePreist and was both greatly looking forward to his Rite of Spring and rather apprehensive about it with such superlative accounts in the catalogue……….any new Rite has to be exceptional. DePreist's isn't that, not quite, but it is very good, with commendable clarity in such difficult pages as the 'Procession of the Sage', real impact unhampered by showy excessive speed in the Sacrificial Dance' and orchestral playing throughout that is both virtuosi and characterful. DePreist has built the Oregon Symphony into a very fine orchestra.
……….The Firebird Suite………. is much better, especially in the way that DePreist allows his solo players space to phrase beautifully. The orchestral sound is often ravishing, and the Firebird's first entrance after the heavy darkness of the Introduction has vivid colour and dancing lightness. The orchestra's (and the recording's) powerful bass does not inhibit the
malign energy of the 'Infernal Dance" and the finale has great splendour ……….it provides further evidence of the Oregon Symphony's quality and of DePreist's gifts and further reason to look forward to their future recordings together.

Michael Oliver
International Record Review
July-August 2001

FANFARE
September/October 2001

Stravinsky The Rite of Spring . The Firebird Suite James DePreist, cond. Oregon S. DELOS DE 3278 (53.56)

James DePreist has proven to be a fine orchestra-builder. From 1980 forward he has crafted, from the then raw material of the Oregon Symphony, a formidable ensemble. He has also shown himself to be a potent guest conductor in a wide range of repertoire. His Delos recording of Shostakovich's 10th Symphony with the Helsinki Philharmonic has remained among my most favored readings.

My library contains 14 recordings of Le Sacre du printemps ranging from a rare and now largely forgotten Pierre Monteus Paris Conservatory Orchestra mono issue (RCA LM 2085) and Antal Dorati's early Minneapolis Orchestra performance (an awesome one) now available on Mercury 434 331-2, through Stravinsky's own performance, to most of the current practitioners. DePreist's version has to be counted among the very best of the lot. He doesn't approach this once iconoclastic piece in a way as to shock us anew. That has long since been done. Instead he dwells (as did Stravinsky himself) on the work's often overlooked, or at least underplayed, lyricism. I don't mean to imply that its wilder moments are in any way shortchanged. DePreist's vivid realization of them make this recording a certifiable lease-breaker. He is, however, in tune with the fact that a good deal of its melodic essence is derived from Russian folk music, albeit sometimes secondhand. Indeed Le Sacre's opening bassoon passage is almost note for note cribbed from Gritsko's poignant first-act aria in Mussorgsky's final unfinished opera, The Fair at Sorochinsk.

Unfailingly effective tempos, felicitous instrumental balances, razor-sharp attacks, and a loving attention to details often passed over distinguish this exemplary performance - a performance captured in sumptuous and highly nuanced sound.

DePreist's account of the 1919 suite from The Firebird is of a similar ilk. He finds the Rimsky-Korsakov elements, and realizes them beautifully without for a moment sacrificing the Stravinskyian magic of the score.

The result is Want List material.

William Zagorski

Respighi recording

Click to enlarge

GRAMOPHONE
November 2001

Respighi's Rome - Respighi's popular showpieces provoke virtuoso playing in a spectacular recording

    The first essential of any new version of this ideal coupling is to have brilliant recording to bring out the splendour and atmospheric beauty of Respighi's three musical picture-postcards. That term may have been used disparagingly once, but no longer when the glories as well as the limitations of these highly attractive pieces have long been recognized.

    On that first count of recording quality, Delos offers a triumph. The sound has a sensuously velvety, wrap-around quality that is both warmly atmospheric and finely detailed, helped by a sharp terracing of textures to make the sound both immediate and vividly realistic. Where usually the Pines of Rome, with its thrusting first movement of children-at-play, is presented first, DePreist has preferred the Fountains of Rome, with its gentle opening: the clean separation of the recording sound immediately conveys a fine sense of presence, even though the result is not as mysterious as with Jansons and the Oslo orchestra, who have even more spacious sound.

    DePreist, over the years since he became music director of the Oregon orchestra in 1980, has built it into a virtuoso band more than able to hold its own in any international company, presenting these showpieces with just the sort of panache that they need. Jansons' reading may have a degree more subtlety in tonal and dynamic shading, and Muti with the Philadelphia Orchestra is outstanding in the idiomatic feel of rhythm and phrasing, but DePreist and his players are no less brilliant. Often they gain from the extra weight of the bass response, as when, in the second movement of the Fountains, The Triton Fountain in the Morning, the pedal-notes from the organ have the tummy-wobbling quality usually experienced only in live performance. The brash last movement of Roman Festivals has sound slightly less vivid and immediate than the rest, but on any count this is among the finest versions of a much-duplicated coupling. (Edward Greenfield)

TANGLEWOOD HEARS TOP-NOTCH PERLMAN

By Richard Dyer, Globe Staff
07/19/2000
ARTS MUSIC REVIEW
BOSTON SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA
Seiji Ozawa, music director, and James De Preist, guest conductor
Tanglewood, Friday night and Sunday

LENOX - The afternoon after the night the Tanglewood audience got as waterlogged as Sir John Falstaff, Seiji Ozawa was back on the podium in the sunshine for another demanding program.Brahms's "Tragic" Overture came out, as it so often does, as Brahms's `Turgid" Overture, but the performance of Lutoslawski's Concerto for Orchestra that followed was sensational - this the kind of colorful, rhythmic, kaleido scop ic piece in which Ozawa is at his best, and he and the orchestra made it sound like one of the masterpieces of the second half of the last century.

There was a huge crowd because of the presence of Itzhak Perlman on the bill; the violinist remains Tanglewood's biggest box-office attraction. Perlman seemed a reinvigorated soloist in Beethoven's Violin Concerto. He has always been a generous player, but sometimes he has come to seem generously generic - all glamorous tone and not much else. But Sunday Perlman reminded us of why he became famous in the first place. The glamorous tone is still there, and Perlman was also generous with feeling and insight. The finale was a lot of fun, and the violinist was more punctilious about detail than Ozawa and the orchestra were. Perlman played Beethoven's marked tenuto on the second note of the rondo theme; conductor and band substituted the usual rough accent. Perhaps Perlman's recent activities as a conductor have refreshed his violin playing; he will make his BSO podium debut Aug. 19 at Tanglewood.

The best part of James De Preist's concert Friday night came at the beginning when the orchestra returned to what was once one of its signature pieces, Faure's "Pelleas et Melisande," which has not been heard at Tanglewood for nearly 20 years.

It was good to hear that the BSO can still sound like the "aristocrat of orchestras," as it was billed back in the 1950s, and play a score like this one with such a degree of subtlety and refinement. De Preist encouraged the orchestra to explore varieties of pianissimo and color, and the results were ravishing. Fenwick Smith played principal flute rather often during the long search process for a successor to Doriot Anthony Dwyer, but since the appointment of Jacques Zoon, opportunities to hear him in this capacity have not been frequent; he made an elegant contribution to the "Sicilienne."

De Preist is a complete and self-effacing musician who does nothing for effect. His performance of Beethoven's Seventh Symphony was notable for attention to detail, accuracy, honesty, and balance, qualities that were particularly helpful to the middle movements; the outer ones seemed a little sobersided and one longed for an occasional vulgar, crowd-pleasing moment, of the kind Beethoven knew how to create.

The soloist was Horacio Gutierrez, who played Prokofiev's Second Piano Concerto, a work programmed more often these days, probably, than people need to hear it. Gutierrez made child's play of the formidable challenges of the piece, which may have been counterproductive - it's supposed to sound hard. His sound was clear and powerful, if a bit monochromatic, and the pianist brings a natural and educated musicality to every phrase he plays. But he doesn't convey much investment in what he's playing. Year after year he comes round to perform one of the big bow-wow concertos, always pleasingly, but almost never memorably. It's as if he uses his superchops to conceal whatever he is thinking or feeling rather than as a tool to communicate emotion, thought, and experience. Afterward, in the line for the men's room, I overheard a father reviewing the performance for his young son. "Insipid," he said. "That means lacking energy and flavor.

top

BERKSHIRE DOWNPOUR COMPETES WITH `FALSTAFF' PREVIEW

By Richard Dyer, Globe Staff

ARTS MUSIC REVIEW
TANGLEWOOD MUSIC CENTER ORCHESTRA
Seiji Ozawa, Robert Spano, and James DePreist, conductors
The Tanglewood Shed, Saturday night

LENOX - Berkshire weather can unravel the best-laid plans, and that's what happened Saturday night at Tanglewood. Staged performances of Verdi's "Falstaff" are a principal feature of the schedule this summer, and they have been planned very well indeed. But Saturday night's preview performance of the third act was obliterated by a torrential rainstorm - 3 1/2 inches during the concert. The downpour lifted only toward the end - appropriately enough, during the unmasking resolutions at the close of the comedy, in time for the final fugue that says, "Everything is a joke." Nature had the last laugh, for during most of what preceded, the experienced ear could tell that "Falstaff" was being performed, and not something else, but that's about all.

"Falstaff" has been an obsession of Seiji Ozawa's for a long time; it is an opera indelibly associated with the greatest conductors, and all others aspire to join their ranks by conducting glorious performances of "Falstaff" too. In 1990, Ozawa led a performance of the third act to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the founding of the Tanglewood Music Center, featuring a cast of TMC students and alumni led by Thomas Stewart in the title role. Later he conducted a memorable series of fully staged performances in Symphony Hall with Benjamin Luxon as the rascally old knight.

For this summer's production Ozawa will have have a cast of current TMC fellows. "Falstaff" is a wonderful piece for advanced students, because it is an ensemble opera with interesting and musically challenging roles for just about everybody, and all but one of the parts can be taken on by an accomplished young singer without risk of shredding the vocal cords. An interesting twist in the programming was to add a "sneak preview" of Act 3 with an international professional cast, including four Italian singers and Michel Senechal, the world's ranking character tenor. The TMC orchestra had a chance to get a big chunk of the piece under its belt before opening night, and the TMC singers had the opportunity to work with, watch, and learn what to do, and perhaps what to avoid, from their elders.

Appropriately, Act 3 was performed during the annual Leonard Bernstein memorial concert - the fabled "Falstaff" collaboration between Bernstein and Franco Zeffirelli at the Old Met in the late 1960s did more than anything else to establish the opera as a popular favorite in America.

Tanglewood's scheduled Falstaff, John Del Carlo, dropped out at the last minute, so that wonderful veteran Paul Plishka emerged from the Thames-soaked laundry basket, 32 years after his Tanglewood debut. Plishka still has the vocal heft and physical presence for the part. When the music gives him time to organize himself, he can sing with steady and imposing tone. Lots of accumulated savvy and a vivid delivery of the words carry him over any other rough patches. His characterization of the endearingly seedy old lech was lively and detailed, and he brought Ozawa into the action as the innkeeper who supplies warming liquor after the dunking in the Thames; later Plishka mounted the podium to launch the closing fugue himself.

Bernadette Manca Di Nissa is now the world's ranking Dame Quickly.

It was fun to watch her bustle around, and good to see this part played by a vivacious and relatively young singer; she certainly boomed out vintage chest tones. But she also provided a different lesson to her TMC counterparts: If you sing this part too often, and cannon it out too much, you will soon be able to sing nothing else - and not even all of this part. The mezzo barely squeezed out the high notes. Christine Goerke was a delight as Alice Ford. This artist is seldom seen in comic roles, and she seemed to enjoy the scheming and scampering, and her wonderful voice soared and bloomed in this music. Heidi Grant Murphy was disadvantageously placed behind the orchestra for Nanetta's fairy song, when the storm was at its fiercest, but she proved again an old truth: A small voice, perfectly focused and projected, will carry over anything, and her lovely pianissimo top notes did. Senechal was a marvel to watch, creating a full characterization of Dr. Caius long before he had sung a note. The others - Monica Bacelli, Richard Clement, and Mario Luperi - were lively and fun. Tenor Gregory Turay looked suave as Fenton, in a Noel Coward sort of way, but his voice didn't carry over the storm. It was particularly interesting to see Roberto Servile, the splendid Figaro on the famous budget "Barber of Seville" recording for Naxos, as Ford, although his big moment comes in a different act. It looked as if Ozawa were leading an orchestral performance of pinpoint accuracy and bubbling high spirits, and one has already learned to trust this summer's TMC orchestra, but its work disappeared in the wash.

Conductor Robert Spano chose Bernstein's brief "Opening Prayer" written in 1986 to launch the concert, and Servile sang the solo part assigned to Sherrill Milnes at the only previous Tanglewood performance. The Italian baritone closed the fervent Hebrew benediction with a magnificent high note on which he executed an even more impressive diminuendo.

Then James DePreist came on to repeat Elgar's "Enigma" Variations from the TMC Orchestra opening concert of the season. DePreist had never led the work before these performances, but he had prepared himself as meticulously as he prepared the orchestra. Without minimizing the elements of splash, dash, and humor in the work, he once again secured a performance of remarkable subtlety of detail and depth of feeling, and the hushed opening of the "Nimrod" variation was Tanglewood's noblest moment of the summer, so far.

top