Orpheus Chamber Orchestra at Carnegie Hall with Alisa Weilerstein

This weekend we have a "battle of the chamber orchestras" in Carnegie Hall, as two of New York's finest perform back-to-back.  Tonight I heard the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra in works by Stravinsky, Tchaikovsky, and Beethoven.  Tomorrow afternoon I will hear the Orchestra of St. Luke's...

Orpheus is famous for performing without a conductor.  A "core group" from the orchestra meets to make interpretive decisions and provide leadership during the rehearsal process, but the emphasis is on playing every piece as chamber music - that is, as a collaborative process with all the musicians listening and interacting with each other directly, rather than through the mediation of a conductor.  It is amazing what Orpheus can accomplish.  I think they have some of the best recordings of complicated pieces by Schoenberg and Stravinsky, far surpassing recordings made by ordinary orchestras with conductors.

Tonight's program was less challenging in that regard, but only minimally.  Certainly Stravinsky's Apollon musagete, a ballet for string orchestra from 1928, throws plenty of interpretive curves at the orchestra, and Orpheus met them all with a silky-smooth performance that lacked only dancers to be complete!  Then the young cellist Alisa Weilerstein emerged in a bright red gown, providing a note of color among the black-clad orchestral musicians, to play Tchaikovsky's Variations for Cello and Orchestra on a Rococo Theme.  When the season was announced last spring, Truls Mork was to be the soloist, and the program book contained no explanation for the substitution, but Weilerstein was fully equal to the occasion, playing with great feeling and perfect coordination with the orchestra.  For an encore, she provided the Bourree I & II from JS Bach's 3rd Suite for Unaccompanied Cello.

After intermission, the demands of symmetry tossed up a piece for the wind players, Beethoven's Rondino, a student work from 1793 for pairs of oboes, bassoons, clarinets and horns, with a single double bass player providing a sonic foundation.  What impressed me most was how this tiny group of nine musicians could produce such a big, rich sound that really filled up Carnegie Hall!  Imagine how much they must be "holding back" to balance the strings in the orchestral pieces!  This was pleasant without being overwhelmingly memorable.  But Beethoven's music for the ballet "Creatures of Prometheus" is certainly memorable, and the ensemble provided excellent performances of the overture and several selections, ending, as did Beethoven, with variations on the theme he later used for the finale of his Eroica Symphony (No. 3).  A special shout-out here to the brilliant young oboist James Austin Smith, who took the solos in the Prometheus music and made them truly wonderful.  I look forward to hearing him play again. (Although listed as a member of the orchestra's personnel in the program book, his name and bio were absent from the Orpheus website when I checked after the concert, but he has his own website which shows a busy musician playing with many different groups, with a special emphasis on contemporary concert music, so I will certainly hear him again....)

As usual, a superb evening from Orpheus.  They recently announced their 2010-11 Carnegie Season, with a truly stellar line-up of guest artists, so it is definitely time to subscribe for next year.

Comments

[Dmitri]

I thought that Stravinsky was choppy and disjointed and lacked direction.
Alisa Weilerstein played with great feeling but lacked technique for what she tried to express. If she keeps practicing she will make a fine cellist in few years down the road. Her performance had too many holes for my ear. The best part was Beethoven in a second act. Orpheus orchestra sounded full uniform and rich. It was perfection.

[Art Leonard]

Obviously, we have some disagreement. I thought the Stravinsky was fine and I felt no lack of direction in it. I also thought Weilerstein's technique was up to the Tchaikovsky, a piece she's played numerous times in her career with major orchestras. (Although I would like to have heard Truls Mork, since I've got plenty of his recordings and still haven't heard him in a live performance.) That said, I certainly agree with you about the second half. Orpheus has a complete recording of the Prometheus ballet music on DG that is superb. DG has let it go out of print, but I believe ArkivMusic.com has revived it.

[Nardo]

I don't understand the comment about Alisa's technique. She's very impressive technically.What did you find lacking in her technique, Dmitri?

[Nardo]

By the way, Truls Mork canceled a couple of months ago because of a very serious health issue.

[Art Leonard]

This is the thing about anonymous comments on blogs - one never knows the credentials or motives of the commenters. Of course, anybody who attends a concert hears what they hear and is free to comment based on what they heard...