NEW YORK TIMES - September 30th 2007

NOT JUST ANOTHER PICKUP BAND
By DANIEL J. WAKIN

A POWERFUL wave of sound coursed from one side of the stage to the other at the end of Mahler’s monumental Third Symphony. With a skyward gesture of his baton, the conductor, Claudio Abbado, sent the final chord soaring into nothingness, like a flock of birds flying heavenward.

Roses, carnations, zinnias and gladioli rained down on the musicians. The audience cheered and the players hugged one another after the performance, which took place in mid-August.

This was the orchestra that will open Carnegie Hall’s season on Wednesday, and it was not the Berlin Philharmonic, the Chicago Symphony or any of the other big names that usually do the honors.

It was the Lucerne Festival Orchestra, perhaps the greatest orchestra almost nobody has heard of, an ensemble of all-star musicians that blooms once a year for two weeks by the side of Lake Lucerne. It may well be one of the finest pickup bands ever assembled.

The Carnegie concerts were to include Mr. Abbado’s triumphant return to the United States after a six-year absence. But three weeks ago Mr. Abbado, who had undergone surgery for stomach cancer in 2000, canceled all performances for the near future, citing an unidentified illness. The festival improvised a solution, drafting David Robertson to conduct Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony on Wednesday and Thursday, and Pierre Boulez to conduct Mahler’s Third on Saturday.

Mr. Robertson and Mr. Boulez will face a highly prepared group of fine musicians. But Mr. Abbado is the reason most of them are there, and the inspirational glue that has held them together. His absence throws an element of uncertainty into the enterprise. How the musicians react to the new conductors will be fascinating, as is the story of the orchestra itself.

Just five years old, it includes soloists, members of string quartets and players from major orchestras like the Leipzig Gewandhaus and the Royal Concertgebouw of Amsterdam. Many give up their vacations to take part. Some come for the experience of making music with Mr. Abbado. Some chamber and solo musicians want to see what it’s like to play in a professional orchestra. Others jump at the chance to perform the music of Mahler, who wrote little for soloists or small forces and is programmed every summer.

The Lucerne Festival offers the perfect chance for players to dabble: it’s brief, the setting is beautiful, the colleagues are stellar. There is none of the week-in, week-out grind of a full-time orchestra.

“Everything is always fresh,” said Ilya Gringolts, a violinist. A young soloist with major management and concerto dates, Mr. Gringolts is buried — happily — in the first violin section.

“Playing Mahler’s Third — the whole sound of the orchestra, the colors, the timbres, the sound scheme — is new,” he added. “I’m drinking in this sound, embracing this sound. You start understanding something. Something about life, maybe.”

But is it a great orchestra? And if it is, how is that possible in a field where greatness typically stems from long-lived tradition and decades of close-knit association? How does this motley group find its unified voice? And will that voice exist without Mr. Abbado?

To dissect the Lucerne Festival Orchestra, observed over a week last month as it rehearsed and performed the Mahler Third, is to uncover the anatomical principles of that complex being, the symphony orchestra. It is a unique and paradoxical cosmos of performance and personality, a place where at its best all strains of musicianship are on display: virtuoso solo playing, sensitive chamber music conversations and monumental blocks of sound.

The Lucerne orchestra has its own system. It begins rehearsals by section, working on basic questions of coordination and intonation but also on deeper issues of color and nuance. Prominent members, like the concertmaster and the principal trumpeter, lead. String section leaders, in consultation with Mr. Abbado, make seating assignments, often mingling passive and aggressive players.

Then Mr. Abbado takes over. On Wednesday, Aug. 15, he led a three-hour rehearsal. He spoke quietly in German and Italian, depending on the object of his comments, but referred to measure numbers in English. His finger often flew to his lips asking for less; Mr. Abbado’s performances are famous for the extreme hush he can draw from an orchestra. Many of the musicians watched him intently, even when they weren’t playing.

The musicians returned on Thursday, ready for another rehearsal, the last before the dress on Friday. Backstage, the solo clarinetist Sabine Meyer, known for being nervous before concerts but calm onstage, fretted about her reeds. Natalia Gutman, a cello soloist, sat by herself, practicing passages of Mahler. Violins tuned, and groups chatted in different languages. Jacques Zoon, the principal flutist and an orchestra veteran, breezed in at the last minute.

ANY discussion of the Lucerne Festival Orchestra must start with Mr. Abbado, the 74-year-old maestro who has achieved old-master status through his long leadership of the Berlin Philharmonic, the Teatro alla Scala and the Vienna State Opera, as well as his knowledge and deeply sensitive approach to conducting.

The festival has been around since 1938, and though less celebrated than the Bayreuth and Salzburg festivals, it is considered by those in the know to be one of the finest showcases for classical music. Its original orchestra, which consisted mainly of Swiss musicians, gradually declined in quality and went out of business in 1993.

Mr. Abbado, who has a long record of building orchestras, suggested that it be revived. He would lead, and the ranks would be drawn from his “friends,” as he put it, around the world. Since 2003, the orchestra has released six DVDs and two CDs, drawn critical rapture and briefly toured to Rome and Tokyo.

The core consists of the 48 members of the Mahler Chamber Orchestra, itself an outgrowth of the Mahler Youth Orchestra, which Mr. Abbado founded. Those players anchor the string sections and play in the second wind chairs.

Other central players are former section leaders of the Berlin Philharmonic, which Mr. Abbado conducted from 1989 to 2002. They include Kolya Blacher, the concertmaster, a Juilliard graduate who was concertmaster in Berlin and now has a solo and teaching career; Wolfram Christ, the former principal violist in Berlin; Hanns-Joachim Westphal, the former principal second violinist there; and Ms. Meyer, the former principal clarinetist in Berlin.

Mr. Westphal, 77, is the oldest player in Lucerne. His Berlin tenure began in the early 1950s, during the Furtwängler era. Now retired, he travels to Lucerne every summer.

Here, “every day has an optimistic beginning,” he said. “You can guarantee that it will be a good day. Nobody is against another colleague.”

Mr. Westphal shares a stand with the orchestra’s youngest member, Raphael Christ, 24, and defers to him as principal second violinist. Mr. Christ is the son of Wolfram Christ, formerly the principal violist of the Berlin Philharmonic for 21 years, who, along with his wife and daughter, also plays in the orchestra.

The substitutions also raised deep curiosity among the players about how the performances might change. “Boulez, he’s such an incredible personality that I have absolutely no worries,” Mr. Abelin said before Mr. Robertson’s role was announced. “He actually goes into the piece first and takes it apart before setting it back together, which is not something Claudio does.”

Richard Morrison, the chief music critic of The Times of London, said that given the orchestra’s devotion to Mr. Abbado, it would be difficult for any substitute to step in. “Obviously they’ll play the best they can, but it won’t have the same magic,” he said in an interview.

Mr. Boulez is “grounded in real things,” Mr. Morrison said. “He will always make it sound as clear as possible. You go to Boulez if you want a more analytical performance that’s very clear and precise. Abbado gives you a spiritual dimension.”

BACK in Lucerne, the dress rehearsal arrived on Friday with all the formality of a concert. Cameras filmed for a DVD. Ms. Meyer and Mr. Blacher each slipped in and out of Mr. Abbado’s dressing room for last-minute consultations. The dress was formal.

After some discussion of lighting, Mr. Abbado launched into a taut, exciting performance, full of rhythmic inevitability and clarity. A growling contrabassoon could be heard perfectly. Trills were sharply etched. The wooden flutes had a striking mellowness. The solo playing was brilliant. But the violin section lacked the sheen of top-flight full-time orchestras, and the brass, while warm and musical, did not project the sound wall of longstanding sections.

But the players showed unusual enthusiasm. Reinhold Friedrich, the principal trumpeter, a voluble, deep-voiced man, bounded out of his chair when given a solo bow. “I am in a youth orchestra with adults!” he later boomed.

Shortly before the Saturday concert, the musicians were back in the dressing rooms. The brass players were tired from a midnight concert the night before. Wolfgang Meyer’s hand was bandaged, and his ribs ached from an in-line skating accident. Many of the musicians were shaking off drowsiness from the free wine on a long cruise on Lake Lucerne. The performance that night was different from the dress: a freer, looser affair. Maybe it was the wine.

On Sunday the musicians played their last concert in Lucerne, before a flight to London for the Proms concert. The performance had ragged edges, particularly in the strings. Perhaps, in this case, the players were tired after a grueling week.

But the solos, as usual, sparkled. There was an undeniable intensity of expression in the individual lines, and moments of obvious communication. In the last movement, the flute, clarinet and oboe play in unison, and it was as if a whole new instrument had been invented.

Afterward, the orchestra and its staff mingled at a reception area overlooking the lake. Latica Honda-Rosenberg, a violinist and conservatory professor with a growing solo career, searched for explanations for the orchestra’s success, settling as usual on Mr. Abbado. Then she added, “At the end, it’s chamber music.”

Creation date : 30/09/2007 @ 13:32
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Category : Abbado in the media
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