Review: Brahms, Biss and Storgårds

Jonathan Biss

Our guest mystery critic attended the Houston Symphony’s third and final installment in a series of Brahms concerts. This Sunday Matinee featured the Second Piano Concerto in B-flat major and the Third Symphony in F major, with Jonathan Biss at the piano and conductor John Storgårds at the podium.  

Making allowances for the matinee sluggishness, it was still possible to tell something of the performers, including Storgårds. Perhaps most important to the task of conducting, our critic believes that this program exhibited Storgårds’ excellent sense of rhythm and clear understanding of the architecture of the two pieces on the program. Of course, he had tremendous help from an orchestra full of great musicians.

After the jump the guest review.

Second Piano Concerto
The horn solo at the beginning was lovely (and I have heard many performances where that was not the case), so hats off to the HSO horn section, which sounded consistently good.

I’ll admit to having some trouble digesting Brahms’ larger forms.  In the first two movements of the piano concerto, especially, it is a challenge for both the conductor and the soloist to keep things exciting. There is almost TOO much drama, and so dramatic moments lose their effect. It’s a challenge to keep audience members on the edge of their seats when they are oversaturated with intensity.

It is so important (but difficult) to move through all those harmonies and crashing chords without giving any particular one too much weight.  Brahms’ dense writing has a tendency to make you want to “place” (slightly delay) downbeats or cadences, but this is exactly wrong for his music. If you are constantly “arriving” then you are not actually getting anywhere. Long phrases partially help to overcome this.  Listen to the Leon Fleisher recording with Szell/Cleveland for a good example of that driving sense of line.

Biss and Storgårds did a good job with long phrases, but they could have done even better.  In the piano part, it’s very difficult not to “place” some of those chords, purely for technical reasons. Storgårds isn’t limited by such technical considerations. I think a (slightly) faster tempo may have also helped with this, but it really isn’t a tempo issue. (It is certainly possible to create a sense of line with more restrained tempi).

John Storgårds

Biss’ playing in the wonderful 3^rd movement was quite moving. I have always thought Mr. Biss was a good, solid, intellectual player, and I still think so. He’s not a technician—which isn’t to say that he doesn’t have technique. It’s just that he doesn’t have technique for the sake of having technique; he has just enough to play the music he wants to play. But he is an international artist because of moments like the beginning of the Andante, where he is able to fill a hall with his pianissimo.

His sound here was more appealing than the orchestra’s. I have never been a fan of the “single strand of horse-hair” type of pianissimo playing, though I have heard plenty of conductors ask for it.  It sounds thin, and the HSO string sound was thin here. I’m sure this is at least partially the fault of Jones Hall. The cello solo was beautiful, as was the woodwind playing later on in the movement (particularly the flute playing by Judy Dines).

The Allegretto grazioso was very well played. Biss really shines when he is playing as an 

accompanist to the orchestra (which happens quite often in this piece). I was disappointed that Biss didn’t play an encore, even though the audience clearly wanted one.

Symphony No. 3

Overall, Storgårds struck me as an excellent musician who understands Brahms’ aesthetic and delivered it thoughtfully. Storgårds made a strong impression in the Brahms 3rd Symphony by conducting in broad strokes: he showed the punctuation in the music, coaxed the dramatic changes in dynamics, character and tempi. Otherwise he allowed the piece to unfold simply and rhythmically, without micromanaging at all. The effect of this, from the audience's point of view, was that the Brahms' large-scale musical architecture became effortlessly clear. I'm sure the orchestra appreciated it as well. For my taste, the first movement should have been taken at a slightly faster tempo."

Since conducting is a collaborative rather than dictatorial art, it is sometimes difficult to know when to give the conductor credit, and when to give individual musicians credit.  If you can’t tell, then that’s a good sign that the musicians and conductor are working well together. For instance, at the pickup to letter B in the second movement of the symphony, the16^th notes in the oboe usher in a new section of motion. It may be a slight tempo change, but is more of a change in character. Oboist Anne Leek set it up just perfectly. There were many such moments throughout the symphony.

The poco allegretto (movement III) is in some ways the most difficult, because the beautiful melancholic theme first intoned by the cellos just keeps repeating over and over. This performance would have been improved by longer phrases, a more interesting balance (more inner voices), and more core to the string sound. Storgårds brought great excitement to the final movement, and ended with space and breath.

But A Word About Matinees

All that said, the concert had to be viewed through allowances made for a Sunday afternoon performance. A word about Sunday matinees:

Don’t go to them unless you absolutely cannot make it on a Friday or Saturday night.

The guest soloists and conductors have already survived two concerts already and are feeling pretty confident, so the excitement that comes with abject terror is lacking.  As an audience member, you really miss the abject terror when it isn’t there.

Even the audience is subdued on Sundays. Friday and Saturday nights are date nights. A symphony performance is the interlude between dinner/drinks and (one hopes) a little something extra later on. Sunday matinees are an interlude between a church service and an afternoon nap.

And Sunday afternoon for an orchestra with the day off on Monday is the corporate equivalent of trying to accomplish something earth-shattering at 4:30 on a Friday. The sparks just aren’t there, from anyone.

All this could be seen in sleepiness or sluggishness that would be less likely to occur in an evening event.

• Sleepy intonation. There were a few moments in the 2^nd movement of the Brahms symphony, in the woodwind section, where the chord did not quite settle.   This movement seems to be particularly hard to tune.  It has to do with the way Brahms wrote for the clarinet.  (This movement is ALL about the clarinet).  It may be that it is simply difficult to tune to a clarinet, or it may be that the players had mentally checked out while they were still playing the chord.   
•  Sleepy phrasing.  Similar to sleepy intonation.  You get to the end of a phrase, and you’re anxious to get on to the next thing, so the last few notes are completely lacking in energy. As a result, the phrase just sort of dies. This is one of those things that separate good performances from great performances.  The strings—more than the wind players—are the culprits in this.  It is easier to let the end of a phrase die when you don’t have to support it with breath. 
• Sleepy Pianism: It is almost impossible not to miss SOME notes in Brahms, because he simply writes too many of them.  Brahms expects you to bang out all these big chords while simultaneously playing a beautiful lyrical melody in the pinkie of your right hand.  However, Biss missed a few more notes than he should have (especially in the first couple movements), and it was a sloppier performance than anything I have heard from him before.  But there was also some gorgeous playing from him, and he is a good musician and experienced ensemble player, so he didn’t allow any of his little slips to derail him in the tempo or character department.  

Conclusion

Storgårds couldn’t quite overcome the Sunday afternoon sleepiness of a professional symphony, but few maestros are THAT inspiring (and probably no one can be all the time). But he led a beautiful concert that was worth attending and provided a satisfying finale to the Best of Brahms series.