Bell’s The Elements and Jaap’s Lame Duck

It’s a suite, not a concerto!

So the program note for The Elements, a new commission by Joshua Bell for violin and orchestra, clarifies. Bell’s idea was a “themed piece with movements that could each stand on their own, a la Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons or Holst’s The Planets.” An interesting idea, but fraught without the right context. Vivaldi wrote sonnets to provide context for his seasons, providing hints such as “birds with happy songs” (Spring’s opening Allegro) or “horns, guns, and dogs” (Autumn’s final movement). For The Planets, Holst gave us not only the name, but the title or role of their deity in Mars’s “God of War” or Saturn’s “Bringer of Old Age.”

These concepts are somewhat vague without being oblique. Vivaldi could suggest real bird song or ask players to mimic a rough growl on low strings without being too obvious in mimicry. Years later, Messaien would transcribe bird sounds as precisely as possible and insert them into his music. Vaguer still, yet capable of recognition, Holst’s “Mars” is aggressive, while “Mercury” is quicksilver fast.

However, choices must be made that an audience could relate to more or less than Holst’s perception Though love can be interpreted many ways, and I don’t think Holst seeks to represent elements of love as much as the idea of it, his music for Venus feels like a warm hug. An audience member suffering from a recent breakup may not interpret Venus, on that evening, as sweet of a mistress. Jupiter could be vengeful and philandering, as the myths often portray but instead Holst’s music is full of joyous, bouncy tunes.

All to say, it’s pretty easy in the case of Seasons or Planets, with the help of choice descriptions, to understand what is implied. When we get to something as subjective as the Elements (Earth, Water, Fire, Air, and Space—rather than the classical ether), the ideas are harder to generalize, and the composer’s role as aural painter becomes exceedingly difficult. Does one choose to emphasize the destructive aspect of fire, or the heat we use to cook food and warm shelter? How exactly does space feel—few people have the privilege of knowing literally—and is it a vast emptiness or closer to the atmosphere, full of humanity’s satellite trash?

If I had to put money on which composer would be the most successful in their elemental depiction, Edgar Meyer would be the last on my list. A composer more familiar to me through non-orchestral idioms, he nonetheless provided detailed imagery—both written and musical—that gave the clearest picture of his take on Water. He describes a South American waterfall, a single particle of water “hurled in seconds down into the swirling silt and slide at the bottom.” 

Overall it sounded much like a generic James Newton Howard film score (The Village, perhaps, featuring Hilary Hahn’s falling scales), but with obvious form and pleasing to the ear. His cascades for solo the solo violin certainly evoked of a speedy plunge, but the sludgy waterbed—rapid low strings competing with dissonant brass—were unsuccessfully orchestrated.

An orchestra with a greater complement of strings (there were only five basses, to give an idea) might have clarified the muddle. It’s interesting that both Jake Heggie (Fire) and Jennifer Higdon (Air) attempted similar textures, which in my mind violate Orchestration 101 as in most cases the strings just can’t compete.

I adored a trio-feeling moment where Heggie let the bassoon, accompanied by pizzicato strings, play the main tune before passing it along to the violin soloist but, to continue the reference to film scores and from the lips of a friend, it mostly recalled Danny Elfman in the short, buzzy exclamations of brass and winds. (Albeit—my take—more elegant, and all the better without treble chorus.) His accompanying text mentioned consumption, fascination, destruction, metaphysics, and spirituality—a bit much altogether to essay in his six minutes of music.

Jessie Montgomery’s Space left me feeling unmoored. Despite the chromatic mediant chords that could have been take from a Star Wars score, I wasn’t sure what she was trying to say about space. Her text mentions the sheer difficulty in scope of her task (agreed), but ends with a is impossible to engage with multiple hearings or score study and, like Heggie, seems like much to do in just too little time.

Musically, the most successful and striking movements of the piece were from Kevin Puts (Earth, plus its reprise) and Jennifer Higdon (Air), though not necessarily because of what their texts say the set out to do. (Again, matching music to text, Meyer wins outright.) Puts’s bright, gossamer orchestration often feels like it’s taking off, though a four note ground bass-like figure in the harp, beginning the first movement and returning altered in the final, serves as an anchored mile marker. I certainly heard the violin taking off into the atmosphere (“high energy and swirling notes”), then soaring through moments of “breathing and quiet reflection” like a bird gliding through thermal currents. Occasionally, the brass hummed chorale-like ideas—a classic Higdonian touch—which I imagined as mountain peaks.

Joshua Bell’s performance was strong and characteristic. His tone is limpid silver through the entire range, and he chose to use less vibrato than you might hear him use in Romantic fare. Bell makes tricky passages full of double stops sound simple, but will sometimes miss the mark of intonation. Thankfully, this comes off as a rush of passion and not poor preparation.

Yet, it’s not a concerto. It may seem trivial to fuss over this, but there’s something to the assignation—or refutation—of traditional categories. What does the choice imply? There’s a precedent for multi-composer concerto, Jan Vogler’s Three Continents commission, featuring Nico Muhly, Sven Helbig and Zhou Long.

Curious to me, but small potatoes in the long run. Five new works by contemporary composers, across different publishers, working styles, and schedules, is no small feat. The logistics of future performances (securing rights, allowing the composers to give input on rehearsal) will be hard still, but I hope the work receives many more performances and future listeners may hear something more cohesive or descriptive than I.

It’s difficult to write about the performance of Copland’s Third Symphony because, quite simply, I did not enjoy it. After hearing Gustavo Dudamel’s interpretation with the Los Angeles Philharmonic last season, I was left with a hollow ache to rush ahead into his tenure, rather than living through Jaap van Zweden’s lame duck season.

Jaap don’t dance, and Copland’s Third requires it. There’s an idea in music, perhaps mostly dance or popular-oriented fare, of the “big beat,” which receives the emphasis, and smaller beats that move around it. Essential to the second and third movements are a feeling of flow, of push and pull. It isn’t quite Romantic rubato, but a more modern groove, where hitting the big beat and letting the smaller beats move is essential to pulling of the sound. Copland himself may question the terminology, but I think his interest in the popular idioms—especially jazz and dance— support the concept. Van Zweden’s conducting is just too fussy, too prim and proper. His hips don’t move, his shoulders look hunched, and his left hand is often just mirroring the right. As a player, I’d want more; and with his early exit secured and successor in line, it might feel nice for Jaap to loosen up.