[Dixielandjazz] The NY Philharmonic Has Soul.

[Stephen Barbone]

Definitely Not OKOM. BUT, A great read for the hoi polloi who like this
music as well as for the pseudo sophisticates everywhere in the world
who would take the joy out of it. Who says Classical Composers and
Musicians don't whoop it up? Three cheers for Joshua Bell, Andrew Davis
and the NY Philharmonic. (As well as for Dvorak and Tchaikovsky)

Now, how can we adapt this philosophy to our presentations of Dixieland?

Cheers,
Steve Barbone

January 6, 2004 - New York Times

REVIEW | NEW YORK PHILHARMONIC

Slavic Passion and Exuberance, With a Wink

By ANNE MIDGETTE

      New York Philharmonic subscribers might not think of their
orchestra as peasant entertainment. But on Friday evening the ensemble,
under Andrew Davis, showed how much earthy folk elements and cheap tunes
are part of orchestral tradition.

This isn't a bad thing. Dominated by Tchaikovsky's violin concerto and
Dvorak's Sixth Symphony, and featuring the violinist Joshua Bell, the
program was eminently enjoyable. Mr. Davis kept the whole thing moving
along, and the musicians hammed it up, almost enough. The audience
whooped. Toes tapped. You left the concert hall humming. This is all
good stuff. So what if it's not exactly highbrow?

Written within a couple of years of each other, in 1878 and 1880, these
Tchaikovsky and Dvorak works fell afoul of the German world's prejudice
against Slavic composers. Eduard Hanslick, the Viennese music critic,
famously slammed Tchaikovsky's concerto at its premiere for its Russian
vulgarity. Dvorak's symphony had to wait several years for its Viennese
premiere because the musicians of the Vienna Philharmonic didn't want to
sully their hands with this Czech music.

Today, we like the folk tunes, and schmaltz has become part of the way
people think about orchestral music. But both of these pieces go beyond
these elements to try to hook you, seduce you and show off with anything
they can lay their hands on.

Look, Dvorak says, I can do Beethoven, I can do Brahms, I can luxuriate
in this big full warm-timbred simple Central European orchestral sound,
and then, yes, I can make it play a peasant dance. Look, Tchaikovsky
says, at me, and cartwheels through elaborate goopy passionate ornament,
which Mr. Bell gave for all it was worth.

The tricky thing about playing this music in the 21st century is that it
practically begs you to strike a pose of cynical distance. Mr. Bell,
indeed, set quotation marks around his performance, even as he had fun
with it. He's one of those musicians able to manipulate time to give a
sense of unhurried ease even to a rapid melody, with room to insert all
kinds of extra fillips, particularly scoops up to high notes or down to
low ones. He carried this talent to the point of irony in the third
movement, a dashing tease as he extended to the breaking point the
moment before he plunged into the main theme. As seductive as the
composer, he found all kinds of ways to hold the ear.

The orchestra, which played well, didn't quite dig in to the same
degree. Mr. Davis, a pro, created a lot of surface activity without
overdoing things (but overdone is just what this music aches to be).

The program opened with Mark Anthony Turnage's "Quick Blast" (2000),
another piece designed to show off both orchestra and composer. Scored
for winds, brass and percussion, it avoids the obvious loudness its
title might lead one to expect. Rather, it's a more subtle, compact and
intricate swatch of music. Mr. Turnage is very good at writing for
orchestra with sophistication, but his musical statements are not as
interesting as his writing. Still, it was an apt illustration of how the
showman's tradition has extended to the present day.