Quiet beauty springs from deep sorrow
CONCERT REVIEW
By William Glackin
Sacramento Bee Arts Critic at Large
Reich: Three Movements
Stravinsky: Violin Concerto
Gorecki: Symphony No. 3 "Symphony of Sorrowful Songs"
Carla Trynchuk, Violin
Julia Lindsay, Soprano
Camellia Symphony Orchestra
Zvonimir Hacko, Conductor
Henry Gorecki's Symphony No. 3, a work of unusual stillness and simplicity that was given its first local performance by the Camellia Orchestra in its opening concert Saturday night, begins in the depths of the string basses and climbs out very slowly.
It becomes clear that these are also the depths of the Polish composer's feelings, as he contemplates the loss a mother feels for a wounded son, the prayer an 18-year-old female prisoner inscribed on a Gestapo wall sometime after Sept. 25, 1944, and his own recollection of a youthful visit he made to Auschwitz, the infamous concentration camp not far from where he grew up.
He called the work a "Symphony of Sorrowful Songs."
The low, repeated bass phrases that begin the first of the three movements are the start of a dark counterpoint that mounts inexorably but unhurriedly toward the light. One after another, the other string sections join the basses -- the cellos after four minutes, the violas after seven, the violins after nine. At last, as we feel the sound lighten, we realize the canon has become more complex and beautiful, and the basses are now playing in their upper registers.
After 17 minutes, the harp sounds a note, echoed by the strings, which is the signal for the soprano soloist (in this case, a superbly powerful and expressive singer from Michigan named Julia Lindsay) to sing the first sorrowful song, for a son who perhaps is dying. The melody is a 15th century song known as the Lamentation of the Holy Cross Monastery.
Afterward, the strings begin the canon again, this time leading downward to end in the depths of the basses where it began. The journey has taken us 33 minutes -- a little longer than the next two movements combined.
The second begins like a shaft of sunlight in that cell, with a phrase in harp and strings. The song is briefer than the first, a prayer to the Virgin Mary, with the strings echoing the soprano's tune. It ends on a single note of anguish and faith.
In the final song, still slow but with a feeling of more movement, a few voices in the rest of the orchestra join the singer in a folk song about the mother searching for her son's unknown grave. Again, the keynote is simplicity; the tune doesn't wander far from its favorite chord. At the end, the mother asks the birds and the flowers to find her son and surround him, so that he may sleep happily. Magically, the music modulates again, and as the song dies away, ends in the sunshine of a major home chord, with a quiet, conventional cadence, in strings, harp and (possibly) piano.
Guest conductor Zvonimir Hacko, who had marshaled all this with a masterful ear for its basically slow pace, held the final silence after that cadence for a long time, letting the accumulated feeling sink in. The orchestra, for its part, showed great sympathy and concentration in the work, and Lindsay received the applause that her heartfelt, beautifully sung performance deserved.
The work is remarkable in several ways -- in its slowness; in the simplicity and conventionality of its terms (Gorecki, in 1976, had a 20-year-reputation as a radically avant-garde composer); and in its worldwide hit status (the 1991 recording, with Dawn Upshaw, sold more than 600,000 copies). Once you accept its slowness and length, it becomes more and more effective.
The evening's other admirable soloist was violinist Carla Trynchuk; who survived the sometimes overpowering acoustics of the Westminster Presbyterian Church with the spirit and energy and precision of her performance of the Stravinsky's Concerto (1931).
With the winds up in the back, as usual, the shell of the altar threw their sound forward in overpowering ways. In the opening Toccata, the brass obscured Trynchuk's very strong playing at times, through no fault of their own. Solo voices accompanied her in Aria I that followed, and the full beauty of the movement could be heard. The playful final Capriccio, difficult and full of high spirits, was very strongly done.
Steve Reich's Three Movements (1986) relieves the overt repetition of minimalism with small changes that get more frequent as it goes along. The finale benefits from the jazzy feeling that marks the set of Reich's work. The piece, which requires four marimbas and three pianists, was well done.
December, 1997
________________