James Galway Meets Nietzsche
Last night in the Kennedy Center Concert Hall, legendary flutist Sir James Galway shared the stage with the National Symphony Orchestra in a pleasing, if brief, concert. Galway is one of the few stars of classical music who has attained true celebrity status outside of the concert hall. In fact, his forays into popular music and crowd-pleasing stunts may cause some highbrow critics to look down their noses. That hardly matters to his fans, including serious flutists like one very close to me, who still calls Galway the greatest living flutist. Considering the appeal of Galway's name, I was surprised to see as many empty seats last night as I did.
Galway fans probably came to the concert to hear him play the second flute concerto of Mozart (D major, K. 314), a favorite among flutists and 20 minutes of pure joy. At 66 years old, grayer in the hair and broader at the belt, the Belfast-born Galway was still able to dazzle with his fingerwork, especially in the flashy cadenzas (not the standard ones, so he may have written them himself but those composed by Johannes Donjon, a flutist in the Paris Opera orchestra), silvery cascades of notes in utterly smooth legato or impossibly well delineated staccato. With his playful smile and his mesmerizing way of inviting the audience into the music, he made this virtuosic performance seem effortless.
The tone is perhaps not as flawlessly perfect as it was in his younger years, with slight airiness or breaks appearing at times, but it was still a joy to hear. Slight discombobulations of tempo were a minor distraction in what was generally capable work in the orchestra. When Galway reappeared for an encore, there was only one thing he possibly could have played, a schmaltzy arrangement of the favorite tune "Danny Boy," soaring up to a sigh-inducing and pristine high A, near the top of the flute's range. It made me Oirish eyes weep, it did.
Before the Mozart, Galway gave the world premiere performance of a new work for alto flute, harp, and strings by Norwegian composer Fred Jonny Berg. The title should have been warning enough. It certainly did not take all 15 minutes of Flute Mystery for me to feel embarrassed that a major symphony orchestra led by Leonard Slatkin was performing a piece that should have gone directly to the latest release from Windham Hill, perhaps with George Winston. Consisting mostly of soft, sustained chords, harp arpeggiation, and a harmonic palate about as varied as the score for the Lord of the Rings movies, this work was monochromatic and glacially dull.
The evening concluded with a stirring rendition of Richard Strauss's philosophical tone poem, Also Sprach Zarathustra, op. 30, based on Friedrich Nietzsche's ground-breaking book of that name. It begins with two of the most famous minutes in classical music, familiar from Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey. After a first half in which Slatkin seemed a little disconnected, he became an animated puppet on strings, bringing in the crashing large brass section, with its usual strong sound, and sculpting wildly different sections that Strauss based on the chapters of Nietzsche's book. One of the highlights of any performance of this work is watching a percussion player strike the huge low E tubular bell, during the stroke of midnight in the Song of the Night Wanderer. Last night, the player climbed a ladder up to the height of the balcony over the stage to do so.
That transcendent, bizarre conclusion was contrasted by the opening work, Rossini's overture to Semiramide. Although the two pieces were premiered only 70 years apart, they inhabit different worlds of sound. The NSO's performance was spunky and fun, with two of those trademarked massive Rossini crescendi. Sometimes it is good to have dessert before the meal.
The show will play again this evening at 7 p.m. and this Saturday at 8 p.m. Full-time students may still be able to purchase special $10 tickets for tonight's concert by bringing their ID to the box office and asking for the Attend! discount.