3.6.12 Miscellanea after a New Mexico Symphony Orchestra concert

The New Mexico SO played Saturday at the University of New Mexico’s Popejoy Hall, with music director Guillermo Figueroa at the helm. Having only just moved to the beautiful state of New Mexico, the ensemble, the venue and the conductor were all unfamiliar to me, so I will have to confine myself to a few general observations:

First on the program was Dvorak’s 7th Symphony. At this late date it would be beside the point to mention that the structure of this symphony strikes me as bloated and mystifying, and I cannot claim a deep familiarity with the piece, so it would be better to confine myself to the performance: Figueroa conducts the entire orchestra as if it were a keyboard under his own fingers, focusing on phrasing and expression. When it works, he creates a remarkably subtle and flexible line. The only quibble would be that the beginnings of movements, fermatas, and other unsupported entrances are sometimes ragged for lack of clear rhythmic guidance. (From our seats the balances were lovely and the sound clear, with the possible exception of a weakness in the lower ranges of the cellos and the bass fiddles.)

After the intermission we heard a clear and solid rendition of Sammy Barber’s famed string arrangement of the middle movement adagio from his first quartet. I can happily report that Figueroa resisted the temptation to play the piece with the slow, drippy sentimentality to which so many have succumbed, and that the piece came off superbly.

After the introversion of the Barber, we heard a rare bit of musical candy by former UNM music department chair and all-around renaissance-man, John Donald Robb. Of Robb, the program notes claim a birth in 1892, soldiering in the Great War, and practice in law, politics and ethnomusicology—his interest in the latter of which led to the notation of a series of Mexican folk tunes which formed the basis of tonight’s work, Dances from Taxco. The little orchestral suite consisted of three short movements, of which the first seemed generally most structurally sound. Robb’s writing sports clarity of orchestration, a jaunty sense of rhythm and a friendly good humor (not to mention an unusual fondness for the tuba). The piece is certainly not one I would mind to hear again.

Finally on the agenda was Shostakovitch’s Festive Overture, a work I can barely stomach. One cannot help but to imagine the gun, figuratively or literally, to Dmitri’s head as he dashes off the score. Somehow it seems even more tragic than most, as unlike his other ‘populist’ works, this one seems entirely without guile or sarcasm. He seems to be saying, Yes, I can write a brass fanfare, yes, I can write stepwise melodies, yes, I can write simple, straightforward triadic harmonies; please don’t send me to the Gulag. Of course, we love to wallow in that image of poor Shostakovitch, and in fact the worst of the Soviet days were past when he dashed off the score. Maybe he just felt in good spirits that day—I don’t know, but certainly it is the only of his works, of which I am aware, that really does seem to deserve the criticisms of pandering sometimes leveled at the composer.

Yet for all that, with the possible exception of the Barber, the work shone out as by far the most structurally satisfying—as the work felt most to be a musical whole. It made a fine finale to the evening; the undergraduate trombone players from the UNM Wind Symphony stationed in the wings played the final bars with, if not precision, certainly much furor and the whole group made a wonderful noise.

2007.10.6