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| Andrés Orozco-Estrada |
Anyone who doubts whether a conductor really makes a difference or who wonders what impact a conductor can have need only have attended listened to our Houston Symphony for the last two weeks.
It did not even sound like the same orchestra. Indeed, our Houston Symphony has not sounded this good, this capable, this powerful, this transparent, this precise or this exciting in a very, very long time.
Orozco-Estrada invited this orchestra into the type of musical collaboration in which conductor and orchestra influence each other to make spontaneous musical decisions in real time. He connected with the orchestra, and out of the resulting music, he made a warm connection with the Houston audience.
***UPDATE*** Sources tell me that the Sunday matinee was even better than Saturday night's performance. That is a very special thing indeed when an orchestra raises its game in the sonnaumbulistic forum of Sunday afternoon.
This conductor is the genuine article, and right now he should be at the top of an extremely short list. After the jump, a detailed review.
Roman Carnival Overture
When Berlioz composed these pieces, they were avant garde music. They were scandalous. Schumann, for example, wrote that he always felt like he needed a shower after reading a Berlioz score. But so many performances in our own century fail to commit to the extremes and oddities in the music. Orozco-Estrada, in contrast, invited that level of commitment from the orchestra and the orchestra delivered.
The overture begins with a sudden and rapid string and woodwind passage, marked "con fuoco," demanding incision and attack.
Last week that type of precision and fury was entirely impossible. This week it occurred from the first instant.
Then the orchestra must rapidly change color to transparently enfold the English Horn solos brought of to great effect by Adam Dinitz. It did so, no small feat in Jones Hall, which often manages to bury that which ought to be heard.
And while last week the comparatively simple accelerando required by Schumann 4 was out of reach, this week the orchestra was able to jam on the accelerator and zip instantly into passages like this.
Strauss Horn Concerto No. 1
Then to Strauss, who loved the horn probably like no other composer before or since. His First Concerto begins by handing Mr. Vermeulen one of the greatest and idiomatically perfect horn fanfares in all of Western Music. The piece grants the horn opportunity to sing and to engage in pyrotechnics, all of which Mr. Vermeulen did with aplomb. But for me, the highlight was the slow, interior movement.
In my view (and perhaps for Strauss as well) the horn is all about the sound, the tone that makes horn players fall in love with the instrument. The second movement allows player and audience to recline deeply into that tone, which Vermeulen did, sustaining and spinning out beautiful lines that begin with simply enough with rising and falling fourths or thirds, but then soar up the octave and more.
Besides exhibiting Vermeulen as soloist, this piece also exhibited Orozco-Estrada as collaborator and accompanist. I have played for several great conductors who, for whatever reason, were no great shakes as accompanists. Often they simply approached the task as trying to make the music line up vertically and not get in the way of the soloist. But "prevent defense" is not a very fulfilling way to make music.
Orozco-Estrada, in contrast, made the orchestra a capable and equal partner to the soloist--adding substantive content and coming to the fore when the horn was secondary or absent. As many times as I have played or studied this piece, I have never noticed countermelodies in interior lines that Orozco-Estrada emphasized.
I noticed last night and I enjoyed it.
And while this review threatens to go on too long or become too effusive, it would be wrong to neglect Symphonie Fantastique. Hearing this performance, I gained a real appreciation of just how avant garde this music must have seemed nine years after Beethoven's final symphony.
Berlioz was painting with extreme orchestrations, moment-to-moment tempo changes and a compositional pastiche that really weren't repeated to any great extent until Mahler exploded the symphonic form in the early 20th Century. While many performances manage to obscure what was unusual or even offensive in Berlioz's time, Orozco-Estrada invited the orchestra and listener to revel in it.
Orozco-Estrada gave us a real taste of Berlioz's opium-laden "Bad Romance." From the opening bars of the piece, Berlioz denies the listener the comfort of a reassuring meter--even a 19th century rubato meter. The tempo starts, changes then comes to a complete halt with a fermata over silence. Then starts again and stops again in silence, simulating the disorientation of an altered state.
That is a bear to conduct, starting, stopping, sighing, starting again, and keeping everyone on the same page. But no one on the Jones Hall stage seemed to have the slightest doubt about where the music was going or where it had been. The rest of the performance was similarly convincing.
Orozco-Estrada invited orchestra and audience alike into an energized stillness at the end of the first movement that seldom happens in pulmonary ward customarily known as Jones Hall. Berlioz's waltz actually danced a febrile lilt. And in the third movement, when he turned to conduct the off-stage oboe, I wanted to grab an instrument, so compelling was the invitation in his face. The brass and wind playing in the march to the scaffold and the witch's sabbath had bite, edge and power.
Nothing was stale in Berlioz's writing, and nothing was stale in the orchestra's performance. At points Orozco-Estrada turned on a dime and the orchestra willingly turned with him. No one was phoning this in. Had I been a Parisian circa 1830, I might have rioted or sniffed at the scandal. Instead, I thoroughly enjoyed myself, and by all accounts the orchestra did too.
What must it be like to make spontaneous musical decisions and be able to communicate them with a stage full of musicians on the spur of the moment, all whilst correcting the odd missed step and welcoming those players to join you out on the high wire with complete assurance that the risk is worth the reward?
I shall never know. I haven't the talent. I haven't the training. I haven't put in the years of hard work required to reach that level of virtuosity. But by my observation, Orozco-Estrada knows exactly what it is like. He did it last night because he does have the talent, the training and the virtuosity. And barely touching his mid-thirties, Orozco-Estrada has already put in 20 years of hard work conducting and building his craft.
Musicians want to move audiences with great performances. And audiences want to be moved. And yet it has it happened so seldom of late. When that moving connection is absent, orchestra performance can become a soul sucking assembly line job for the musician or a dreary cultural obligation for the listener. It was none of those things last night.
The musicians I visited with seemed reminded of why they love making music. The audience in which I sat reached across the footlights to make a real connection with its orchestra and the man who showed what they can do. That needn't be so rare as it has been.
Is this the guy? Quite possibly. Let's not propose on the first date. But for goodness' sake, give him your phone number or invite him to coffee.
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