PRAGUE SPRING PREVIEW: ROBERT McDUFFIE

Rudolfinum

May 27 at 8

Boldly going where no violinist has gone before.

American violinist Robert McDuffie is nothing if not audacious.

When he was looking for a companion piece to The Four Seasons in 2000, he decided that American composer Philip Glass would be a perfect choice to write a contemporary version of Vivaldi’s Baroque classic. So he contacted Glass, who he barely knew, to pitch the project, telling him, “You’re the American Vivaldi.”

“Luckily, he bit,” McDuffie said in a phone interview last week from Poznan, Poland. “I don’t know if he liked that I called him the American Vivaldi, or agreed with that. But he loved the idea, and cheerfully agreed to take on the project.”

It was another seven years before Glass could find the time to actually compose what became his second violin concerto, The American Seasons. McDuffie premiered it in tandem with The Four Seasons in Toronto in 2009, and has been on the road with the program ever since. He will play it at the Rudolfinum Friday night.

“The premiere was in December, and by that time the following year, I had given about 40 performances of it,” McDuffie said. “It really turned out to be a big hit. Glass has his own following, which has helped – I can’t believe the number of pierced body parts I’ve seen in some places. But I find that traditional concertgoers also love the music.”

There are some connections between the pieces. Glass borrowed a few motifs as reference points, and as McDuffie noted, “Both of the composers use repeated bass notes, and both pieces have very seductive melodies up top.” But in almost every other respect, The American Seasons is a distinctly modern work.

“I wanted it to be serious, but in a showbizzy way, with a catchy theme that would attract presenters,” McDuffie explained. “In that sense, it was a business decision. I wanted something thoughtful, but accessible. I also asked Glass to give me a – I don’t know what else to call it – a kick-ass, rock ’n’ roll ending. And he completely agreed with that.”

There were discussions on other points, like whether to base the music on text, as Vivaldi did with the original. The poetry of Alan Ginsberg was considered before the text idea was scrapped. McDuffie and Glass also talked about making the new work a multimedia piece, adding another dimension with, say, a lighting artist.

“We went back and forth on that a lot,” McDuffie said. “Finally we decided that he would just write a piece that would stand on its own. It uses the same orchestration as Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, except with a synthesizer replacing the harpsichord, to give it his trademark sound.

“The only thing we couldn’t agree on what was to title the movements. His summer was my winter. So we finally decided, no titles – we’ll let the audience decide what season each movement is. Which is great, it brings the audience into the piece.”

While pairing a Baroque and modern work might be a clever marketing ploy, it presents a challenge for a serious musician. McDuffie is well-versed in the 20th-century American repertoire – he’s been lauded for his performances and recordings of Barber, Bernstein and Adams. But playing Baroque music properly is an entirely different discipline, and McDuffie admitted that he was lucky to have good teachers.

“When I first started touring this program, I was very fortunate to be with one of the best Baroque orchestras in the world, the Venice Baroque Orchestra,” he said. “It was an amazing growing experience for me. I was playing Vivaldi, I guess you would say with an American approach, whatever that is. They of course have their own approach – it’s in their DNA. And it’s very energetic and vigorous. So I was able to lock into that, and benefit from their experience.”

In Prague, McDuffie will be backed by the Prague Philharmonia, a young orchestra with the flexibility and range to accommodate both Baroque and modern music. This will not be his first experience with a Czech ensemble. That occurred in 1982, when he was 23 years old and the Czech Philharmonic was touring the United States under the baton of the legendary Václav Neumann.

“They were in Ames, Iowa, and needed someone to play Dvořák’s violin concerto,” McDuffie recalled. “I had never played it. But my manager lied, and said I had played it dozens of times. The night before the concert, I was still learning and memorizing the piece. I remember asking God, why am I a violinist? I felt like I was walking on a high wire without a net.

“I don’t remember much about the performance, it’s a blur now. I didn’t embarrass myself. Still, it was a huge risk.”

Fortunately, Prague Spring organizers have taken the risk out of this appearance.

“They asked me to switch the order,” McDuffie confided. “Usually I play Vivaldi first, and Glass second. In Prague, I’ll play Glass first, then Vivaldi. It’s okay with me, I trust the Prague Spring people. I’m sure they know they know their audience.”

Indeed they do.

For more on Robert McDuffie: http://www.robertmcduffie.com/

MAHLER & MAHLER

O2 Arena

May 18

Obecní dům

May 20

A refined sound in a distinctly unrefined space.

Had enough of Mahler yet? At this point in the extended two-year commemoration of the composer’s birth and death, there seems little left to discover. But even for jaded listeners, a pair of Prague Spring concerts this past week offered something special: An opportunity to compare how European and American orchestras approach Mahler’s towering symphonies.

Getting to the first performance, at O2 Arena on Wednesday, required going through a metal detector and airport-style frisking. So it was a pleasant surprise to find a dignified atmosphere inside, with low lighting and enormous black drapes framing a huge stage erected along one side of the floor. It was quickly filled by two orchestras – the Czech Philharmonic and NDR Symphony Orchestra Hamburg – and seven singers on a raised dais. Above them, six German and Czech choirs filled several sections of seats normally packed with hockey fans.

The task of weaving all this into a credible “Symphony of a Thousand” (No. 8) fell to Christoph Eschenbach, whose 60-year career in classical music spans two continents and includes leading posts at half a dozen major orchestras. Visually, it was like watching a pygmy trying to wrestle an elephant into submission. Musically, it was sublime, with Eschenbach crafting a surprisingly nuanced performance with outstanding clarity, balance and sensitivity, particularly in the vocal and choral passages of the second half, as love triumphs and Faust’s soul ascends to heaven.

Given all the time he’s spent in America, Eschenbach might not be the ideal exemplar of the European style. But his treatment certainly had the grandeur and stately pacing of the European Mahler, with a monolithic orchestral sound that left plenty of space and accommodation for the soloists, choral passages that swelled, broke and receded like ocean waves, and an earth-shaking finish. As much as any Beethoven or Wagner work composed decades earlier, it was a grand and eloquent statement of Romantic ideals and spiritual aspirations.

And surprisingly, the venue helped. When the Czech National Symphony Orchestra mounted a production of No. 8 at Obecní dům in January, it sounded constrained, almost preposterously disproportionate not just to the space, but the very idea of a symphony. At the arena, where the music had room to expand and breathe, it was breathtaking in its scope and impact, like an enormous mosaic that comes into focus only at the proper distance. And the real stars of the show may have been the sound engineers, who miked the orchestra and the soloists (though not the choirs) and blended it all so well that individual voices and instruments were exceptionally clear, even on the far side of the arena.

New World sensibilities.

Back at Obecní dům two nights later, it was immediately clear that an American orchestra was onstage, with the musicians in their seats tuning up as the audience filled Smetana Hall. An orchestra director in Prague once suggested that his musicians follow that protocol, and they didn’t much like it, preferring to walk onstage to applause after the audience is seated. It’s a minor ego exercise, and perhaps a matter of tradition. But the atmosphere is strikingly different when the musicians are already onstage, charging the air with anticipation.

This was the third Prague Spring appearance for the San Francisco Symphony, and with Michael Tilson Thomas at the podium, the orchestra only seems to get better. From the opening notes of Mahler’s Symphony No. 2, the music throbbed with energy and vitality. Even the softer string and woodwind passages were remarkably robust, losing none of the internal dynamics and vivid colors that characterized the entire piece. Overall the sound was polished and bright, with a much higher gloss than one typically hears in Europe.

The performance never lost its Old World grounding, notable especially in the dances of the second and third movements. But there were some distinctly modern touches, with Tilson Thomas emphasizing deep bass lines and adding occasional reverb effects. He showed himself to be a master technician, capable of taking the sound from a tumultuous explosion down to a bare whisper with fingertip control. Unlike many European conductors who start at full volume, he also showed restraint, building the sound carefully to give the late orchestral outbursts a much smarter and cleaner impact.

One could characterize his orchestra’s sound as unremittingly bright – at least by European standards. But as the Czech Philharmonic Choir Brno joined in for the final movement, there was no question that two world-class ensembles had joined to create a thrilling synthesis, the conclusion of which brought a full house to its feet. In a charming display of international bonhomie, both the choir and the orchestra made a point of applauding each other during the three curtain calls.

This is what Prague Spring does best – bring together world-class talent in a framework that only a prestigious international festival can provide. And both Eschenbach and Tilson Thomas offered reminders that, even amid a glut of anniversary events, there is always more to hear and learn from a master like Mahler.

Michael Tilson Thomas talks about Mahler: http://www.youtube.com/michaeltilsonthomas

Christoph Eschenbach on Mahler: http://www.christoph-eschenbach.com/mahler/index.php?m=10&q=1