Otto Tausk and the VSO deliver big with Harmonielehre

A great performance of John Adams’ most famous major work provides hope for future adventurous programming.

It’s almost hard to believe, given how integral his work is to the west coast classical music scene, that John Adams’ most famous major work Harmonielehre is only just making its BC debut this weekend (April 26/27). It’s a major work, one that really tracks the development of its composer almost in real time, and when it hit the Orpheum stage for the first time Friday evening it felt over due. Luckily the cliche of “better late than never” applies here as the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra under music director Otto Tausk delivered as great of a reading as you could ask for. This was indeed a performance worth waiting for!

Harmonielehre on paper is the kind of piece that would seem to suit maestro Tausk’s conducting style and tendencies. It’s the perfect mix of rhythmic sharpness and big romantic textures that requires a certain attention to detail in the orchestral balances. In execution Tausk and the VSO delivered on this promise and more. This was an intense, committed performance that gave the piece its due from the opening moments. Never have the opening brass blows sound so thunderous! The VSO has been playing phenomenally well under Tausk, especially in the last two seasons, and this was another great example of just how good the orchestra can be.

Perhaps the most impressive part of this performance though was just how well maestro Tausk had a hold of the overall structure of the piece. Best of all was the more abstract second movement which, under Tausk’s baton, felt like a vivid and eerie nightmare. There was real emotional weight to the performance and when the movement’s searing climaxes came they felt as devastating as they did inevitable. The same level of interpretative care given to the rest of the piece, Tausk and the VSO approached this with a real sense of forward momentum that ensured Harmonielehre’s more minimalist sections flowed organically and never got bogged down in the details. I don’t know why I am even a hint surprised at this point. Tausk has delivered fresh, exciting interpretations of big works all throughout his tenure. Something about this performance of Harmonielehre though felt special.

Unfortunately the first half of Friday night’s program was not nearly as strong. This was really a tale of two performances. Paul Huang’s Shostakovich violin concerto no 1 was rough going. It’s probably hyperbolic to call a performance from such a clearly talented violinist flat out awful, but it’s definitely fair to call his Friday night Shostakovich dull as dirt. Huang just didn’t have any sense of the work, showing no capability of even approaching the emotional requirements of the concerto. The first movement felt aimless, Huang seemed to have no idea how to go beyond just playing the notes. The second movement felt like it was moving through molasses both in tempo and sharpness. The big cadenza in the third went nowhere up until the late gymnastics and the finale ended as dull and lost as the piece began. Huang is clearly a talented soloist, his tone is clear and he gets through the athletic passages with ease. Perhaps this was a victim of high expectations, the last performance of this concerto in Vancouver was a phenomenal reading from Alina Ibragimova. Perhaps Huang needs to put this concerto away for a little while. Either way it didn’t work well on Friday evening.

The program began with the debut of Nicholas Ryan Kelly’s piece “Earth, Beloved” which unfortunately was as nothing happening as the performance of the Shostakovich concerto. I won’t go too hard on it, this is clearly a young composer who still needs to find his voice, but between bland orchestral textures and basic choral writing “Earth, Beloved” was nothing special. A little disappointing given VSO premieres and commissions (this was an Elektra choir commission) are a rare breed nowadays.

All of the criticism of the first half of the program didn’t ultimately matter by the end though. The draw here is an orchestra who continues to deliver excellent big works under their music director. Let’s hope in future years the orchestra’s programming can lean more into its adventurous side with interesting repertoire like Harmonielehre and less into its more stately “let’s do Beethoven 9 every ten minutes” side that next season seems to lean into a little too much. If it’s any solace to the orchestra big wigs the crowd at the orpheum didn’t look much smaller than the average masterworks program. More of this please!