Jose Serebrier, Live at Chester Cathedral (2007)
Program: MUSSORGSKY (arr. Stokowski): A Night on Bare Mountain; Pictures at an Exhibition; SEREBRIER: Symphony No. 3 “Symphonie Mystique”; WAGNER: Prelude, Act I to Die Meistersinger; BIZET: Farandole from L’Arlesienne, Suite 2 – National Youth Orchestra of Spain/Carole Farley, soprano/Jose Serebrier
Studio: Naxos America DVD 2.110230
Video: 16:9 Color
Audio: PCM Stereo
No region coding
Length: 84 minutes
Rating: ****
Recorded in concert 7 August 2007 from the Chester Cathedral, these performances capture the suave elegance of the National Youth Orchestra of Spain (founded 1983) while on tour under guest-conductor Jose Serebrier, appearing in triple guise as composer, conductor, and student-acolyte of his own mentor, Leopold Stokowski. Resembling a modern version of Willem Mengelberg, Serebrier sports a fluid baton technique, although he will abandon that instrument when emotional conditions require. He opens with a broadly articulate rendition of the Wagner’s Prelude to Die Meistersinger, the youthful flute and oboe among the attentive instrumentalists who never cease to attend to cues from their eminent maestro. Harps, trumpets, a trio of feminine French horn players, and the tympani join in the illumined pages of the fugato, with Serebrier often miming the violin fingering he wants. Clarinets, oboes, and tutti strings and brass usher in the Entrance of the Masters, as their clarion call rises over the sea of competing orchestral voices, a panoply of shimmering colors.
Jose Serebrier composed his Third Symphony (2003) in one week, scoring the piece as a string symphony with wordless soprano solo. The opening movement moves moto perpetuo, with repeated rhythms and a dark, legato melody amidst the nervous, metric thrusts. Cellos introduce the dirge-like Lento that proceeds on the basis of a half-step spread over several octaves. The concertmaster introduces a high-pitched plaint from afar, but the melancholia remains. The figures flutter and anxiously whisper, but no resolution ensues. The third movement Andante mosso begins with gloomy second violins and violas in shifting, amorphous figures, melodically undefined. An obsessive waltz emerges over pizzicati, the string part inflamed like Schoenberg’s Verklaerte Nacht or Britten’s A Simple Symphony. Abortive attempts to rekindle the melody end in resignation. The last movement Andante comodo re-introduces the Slavic theme from the first movement, darkly romantic in the manner of Shostakovich. Carole Farley intones a haunted vocalise, made visual by the camera’s focus first on religious icons and then Farley in the rafters, high above the congregation. A kind of rhapsodic chaconne, the movement achieves a disembodied, haunted character, the composer-conductor having abandoned his baton and closing with flittering fingers.
The opportunity to savor Leopold Stokowski’s treatments of Mussorgsky pays the entrance fee for this concert; and Serebrier makes no apologies for his taste. The Night on Bare Mountain–with its associations of Bela Lugosi miming for the benefit of the Disney animators of Fantasia, 1940–becomes a vibrant, Russian color piece in old modes; no soft touches from Rimsky-Korsakov to sweeten the brew. Gong, flutes, piccolos, each contributes to the orgiastic then lachrymose spirits who return to their daylight tombs after the revel. The baton-less Serebrier relishes the oboe solo, flute, and harp as the tremolo strings usher in a song of thanksgiving. Having rejected the Ravel orchestration of Pictures at an Exhibition as too Gallic, Stokowski retouched the piece himself (along with Lucien Caillet) in 1939, omitting two sections and allowing many rough edges to come forth. Russian liturgical modes combine with old-fashioned, romantic slides and portamenti to keep both players and auditors fastened on the panoply of musical sounds. Gnomus has a seditious fervor about it. The dwarf’s bassoon then takes us through the promenade to The Old Castle, where the troubadour’s song acquires some ghostly colors. The tuba’s Bydlo moves from Wagnerian oratory to a string symphony culminating in a paean to the Russian soil. First chattering chicks, then two obstreperous Jews enter into a Marxist colloquy on social class, the muted trumpets flourishing and the strings churning a commentary on the drama.
Dante or Liszt takes us into the Roman catacombs, an abyss rife with horrific visions. The promenade theme appears distilled into a dead but seductive language. Baba Yaga via Stokowski resembles Stravinsky Katschei from The Firebird – inflamed, menacing, vulgar, pestiferous. Finally, a broad, expansive canvas for The Gate of Kiev, an organ sonority permeating every bar for over eight minutes. The secondary clarion subject takes us deep into the Russian Orthodox Church for Russian Easter, whence the promenade becomes akin to the Sermon on the Mount. Acknowledging the unanimous applause, Serbebrier grants us one encore, the Farandole from Bizet’s The Girl from Arles, Suite No. 2, a rousing instance of pipes and full orchestra manipulated by a young ensemble obviously as enthralled with music as their gifted conductor.
— Gary Lemco
