Rediscoveries: Some Modest Gems And A Prodigious Opera

THE word Rediscoveries paired with a byline implies that the rediscoveries to follow will be autobiographical, like acquaintances lost over time and recently regained. Hearing in short order two Stravinsky orchestral pieces — the Symphony in Three Movements (in Orange County, Calif.) and the Dumbarton Oaks Concerto (at the New York Philharmonic) — took me back 40 years, to a young man making a right-hand turn in musical taste. More is good, these tight, spare, endlessly original pieces seemed to tell me at the time, but less is even better.

Aquiles Machado and Olga Borodina in the Met’s production of “La Gioconda.”

In October the Pacific Symphony, at its new Renée and Henry Segerstrom Concert Hall, could not quite get its hands around this difficult music, but a few days later the New York Philharmonic under David Robertson made the Dumbarton Oaks sound easy. The concerto appeared just before World War II, the symphony just after. For Stravinsky, ever the pragmatist and ever the chameleon, they stand historically between his so-called Neo-Classical period and his drift into serialism. Style and approach aside, economy guides both pieces. Music like this offered the possibility that more content could exist in, say, eight minutes of Schubert on the piano than in a two-hour post-Romantic symphony played by 110.

But in the interest of contrariness, I have to report great happiness at meeting up again with La Gioconda, Ponchiellis extremely grand opera, recently revived at the Metropolitan Opera. Sixteen years of absence and fading memories had not made this particular heart grow fonder, yet rarely was such fun to be had from such evil and bloodthirstiness. Excess and extravagance were everywhere, and the Met, with singers like Violeta Urmana and Olga Borodina in fierce competition for the audiences attention, wisely allowed Ponchiellis spirit to speak for itself. For someone spiritually married to Haydn and all he meant, La Gioconda controverts just about every principle I possess. Then again, husbands need the occasional night out.

Another word of thanks to the year 2006 for Ian Bostridges singing of Faurés Bonne Chanson at Zankel Hall in March. Listening to French songs, mainly through recordings of the great baritone Gérard Souzay, did almost as much to bend my young tastes as did Stravinsky. I have kept up with Duparc, Chausson and Debussy over the years, but Faurés exquisite sequence of nine songs had somehow drifted out of sight. The poems are by Verlaine, and in this performance a sextet of strings and piano replaced the usual keyboard accompaniments. Mr. Bostridges sense of this musics quiet humor and discreet melancholy restored an acquaintanceship much valued.

Since reticence and its opposite are the themes here, Morton Feldman as played by the pianist Aki Takahashi at Merkin Hall in October may be an appropriate closer. Mr. Feldmans music is more talked about than performed, but what a pleasure to hear once again its paradox of brief, quiet strokes laid over huge temporal spaces. That night Mr. Feldman seemed to me the Anton Bruckner of silence.

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