October 5, 2005
Lynn orchestra to raise Katrina aid with Vieuxtemps, others
Hurricane benefits continue this week as the Lynn Philharmonia Orchestra opens its new season Friday at the Boca Raton college with a program of music by Haydn, Brahms and Schumann, as well as a concerto by the 19th-century Belgian violin virtuoso Henri Vieuxtemps.
The soloist for the Vieuxtemps (the Concerto No. 5 in A minor, Op. 37) is a 15-year-old Orlando boy named Nelson Hsieh, who in June won Lynn's Young Musicians Competition for Strings. Like Wieniawski and Paganini, the Vieuxtemps concerto is a piece by a great violinist who tried to write something that would show off his skill and be a serious work of art as well.
Chopin attempted to do the same thing with his two piano concerti, and they are masterpieces. While the violin concertos in question don't reach that transcendent level, they're well-made works. In them we have a good marriage of display and depth, and that isn't the easiest thing in the world to do.
I would think if you're a soloist who can play anything, and you want to write a piece that shows you off, you're going to make sure you get every other piece of baggage out of the way so you can do what makes you the big money. But Vieuxtemps, although he doesn't break any new ground musically, and while he does make sure the orchestra plays a supporting role most of the time, still manages to craft an attractive and exciting concerto to listen to.
I guess it falls under the category of Day at the Office Art; a piece needed for the touring routine, one that would be a sure-fire entertainer for the audiences you were going to meet, and one that wouldn't be too tough for some provincial orchestra you might encounter on the road to Bruges and points elsewhere. It gets the job done, which is what it needed to do, whether or not it survives after it's outlived its useful life.
And a lot of these kinds of concertos are deader than dead, and already were when Vieuxtemps was writing (the Fifth Concerto was composed in 1858 and 1859). But his concertos survive, and there seem to be more recordings of his work these days than I can remember in the recent past, which might have something to do with the explosion of young violinists in need of something challenging to play (I'm listening right now to Sarah Chang's recording of the Fifth Concerto, made in 1994).
Take the Vieuxtemps for what it is: A 20-minute work, essentially in one movement, replete with virtuoso display but also some fine musical material and a strong sense of structure — and taste. It would be so easy to be vulgar if you could anything you wanted with the instrument, but Vieuxtemps had more compositional chops than that, and we can be grateful he did.
Other works on the progam include the Surprise Symphony (No. 94 in G major) of Haydn, Brahms' Haydn Variations, and the Fourth Symphony of Robert Schumann (one of the favorite pieces of his friend Brahms). Albert-George Schram conducts the concert at the Spanish River Church in Boca Raton. Here is some more information from the school's Web site.
Most importantly, proceeds from the concert go to the American Red Cross for Hurricane Katrina relief. Those folks still need help, and it's good to see musicians continue to stand up and lend a hand.
