American fans of Charles Ives tend to doubt that any foreign orchestra can do justice to his music. The Connecticut insurance executive/composer seems too thoroughly American to transplant; even his eccentricities could grow only on native soil. The doubts would not survive Sunday’s concert at Symphony Center by the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie. This 20-year-old ensemble, chiefly of young German musicians, made Ives’ picture-symphony “Three Places in New England” sound as authentic as clam chowder and a lot more exciting.
Under British music director Daniel Harding, the orchestra made a three-dimensional picture of Ives’ jam-packed, semi-abstract musical canvas.
The section called “The St. Gaudens in Boston Common”–referring to a sculpture of Civil War soldiers–began as a lightly tinted mist of tones slowly taking fragmentary shape. “Putnam’s Camp” was a boisterous march by a military band, or maybe two, a bit unsteady on their feet. “The Housatonic at Stockbridge” was a calm, foggy morning on the river, a hymn sounding from a distant church.
It was Ives, all right, a man who seems to have anticipated present-day “chaos” theory by some 70 years and even set it to music. The piece is like four people talking at once but somehow making sense, and only a superbly disciplined orchestra could do it so convincingly.
Besides discipline, the program of Ives, Beethoven and Mendelssohn called for enthusiasm and energy. It got them from the orchestra and pianist Emmanuel Ax, well matched in the Beethoven Concerto No. 3 in C Minor.
The opening movement lets the orchestra talk, telling a complete story without comment from the piano. With the piano entrance we get a new version, more pointed and detailed.
Ax’s muscular, polished playing put an edge on the clean-cut, confident sound of the orchestra. The extra dimensions he gave to the first-movement cadenza made it almost a piece by itself.
The second movement was as serene as a yoga breathing exercise, and the third, with its wicked, prancing theme, sounded like a Halloween prank.
Mendelssohn’s Symphony No. 4, the “Italian,” could serve as more background music for “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” It brought out the orchestra’s strong points of blend, nimbleness and precision. Harding took the outer movements extremely fast, requiring the winds to keep triple-tonguing at a fatiguing speed. They did it accurately and made it sound light as gauze.
Harding himself seems to over-conduct; he sweeps and swoops, giving his players more cues than they could possibly need. But one can’t quarrel with the results.
