Utah Arts Review

This weekend, David Robertson, the Utah Symphony’s creative partner, makes his first of two Masterworks series appearances in a program of Schoenberg, Mozart and Brahms. Joining Robertson on the Abravanel Hall stage in Mozart’s captivating Piano Concerto No. 17 in G major is his wife, Orli Shaham. 

At Friday’s performance the concerto started out promisingly. Robertson coaxed crisp, clean playing from the ensemble in the opening movement that was mirrored in Shaham’s well articulated and expressive playing.

Yet while the two did capture some of the charm and lightheartedness of the work, the interpretation overall left much to be desired with a heavy-handed style and over-the-top shifts in character.

The slow movement, unfortunately, lost all its lyrical tenderness in the bold and overly dramatic account. The couple seemed to be trying to turn this into a Beethoven concerto, and consequently the work lost much of its grace and lyricism.

This lack of subtlety carried over into the third movement’s theme and variations. Shaham’s playing felt rushed, the rapid passages sounded muddled and she frequently overpowered the orchestra. There was little cohesiveness or refinement in either Shaham’s playing or that of the orchestra.

Surprisingly, Schoenberg’s Chamber Symphony No. 2, which opened the evening, fared much better.  Schoenberg began the work in 1906, not long after completing his first chamber symphony, but did not return to it and complete it until 1939. In the intervening 33 years, Schoenberg’s musical style had changed dramatically from lush late romanticism to developing his own 12-tone technique. However, the two-movement Second Chamber Symphony hardly reflects this change in style. The music is still a product of expressionism, highly chromatic and with bold lyricism and intense expressiveness. 

Robertson elicited nuanced playing from the orchestra in the slow, densely orchestrated opening movement. His broad gestures underscored the sweeping lines of the violins and also defined the interplay between the strings and the rest of the orchestra.

Schoenberg lightens up the orchestration quite a bit in the second movement. Robertson captured the dark seriousness and rhythmic vitality of the music with his fluid direction that brought depth and insight to the movement.

The concert concluded with Brahms’ Serenade No. 1. Schoenberg admired Brahms greatly and these two works were an apt pairing of the two composers.

The serenade is an early work, written when Brahms was just 26, but though higher in scale and expression, demonstrates the facility and romantic fervor that would define the composer’s mature works to come. 

Robertson coaxed a full, warm sound from the orchestra that underscored the  expressiveness of the music and also emphasized the wide range of moods across the six movements. 

Among the highlights of the conductor’s interpretation Friday were the insightful ways in which he captured the bright high spirits of the pastoral charm of the opening movement, the richness of the third movement adagio, the playfulness of the two minuets and the energy and drive of the closing rondo.   

The Utah Symphony program will be repeated 7:30 p.m. Saturday. utahsymphony.org