COURTESY OF PRINCETON SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA
Mahan Esfahani plays harpsichord with The Princeton Symphony Orchestra.
Does classical music always have to be so serious? The Princeton Symphony Orchestra put it to the test with a program of contemporary pieces steeped in the traditions of the 18th Century, and the incongruity was often humorous.
The common thread was the harpsichord, a period instrument from the 1700s, used in new and unconventional ways. The program, called “The Harpsichord & Stravinsky’s Pulcinella,” unveiled the world premiere of Julian Grant’s Vaudeville in Teal for harpsichord and small orchestra, featuring harpsichord superstar Mahan Esfahani.
The concert also included Viet Cuong’s Extra(ordinarily) Fancy, a concerto for two oboes; and the complete version of Igor Stravinsky’s Pulcinella with guest vocalists. Concerts, conducted by PSO music director Rossen Milanov, took place March 7-8 at Princeton University’s Richardson Auditorium.
Humor in classical music is nothing new. One go-to eccentric is 18th century Austrian composer Joseph Haydn, whose humor was based in the unexpected. He was fond of using rests in unlikely places, or repeating the same chord or note over and over, which earned some of his pieces nicknames like “The Joke Quartet” and “The Surprise Symphony.”
At the time, he was criticized for mocking the formal seriousness of his predecessors, including J.S. Bach. Luckily, we have come a long way.
COURTESY OF PRINCETON SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA
Lillian Copeland, left, and Erin Gustafson play oboes with The Princeton Symphony Orchestra.
Cuong was clearly in a Haydnesque frame of mind when he wrote Extra(ordinarily) Fancy in 2019-20. His inspiration was the double oboe concerto of the Baroque era, and the composers who wrote them, including Vivaldi and Pergolesi. Cuong’s piece tells an amiable short story of dueling oboes, here starring PSO principal oboe Lillian Copeland and Erin Gustafson on oboe II.
Cuong is a master renovator, taking familiar things and giving them modern updates, or approaching old music in new ways. For example, Extra(ordinarily) Fancy uses multiphonics, an extended musical technique that creates a distorted, complex sound with two or more pitches. On double-reed instruments, it involves using technically incorrect fingering: basically playing the instrument in a way it was not meant to be played, producing squawks and squeaks — usually dreaded sounds in the woodwind section.
The work begins in a stately manner and then spirals into the oddities of multiphonics. Soloists have the additional challenge of radiating amusement while performing it, and Copeland and Gustafson pulled it off, bickering and mocking each other with their instruments before finally reconciling in the finale.
In unskilled hands, Extra(ordinarily) Fancy could sound vulgar and burlesque, but it is anything but that. It bubbles with impishness and whimsy, all sassy and raucous uplift. And it is funny on so many different levels. It is a work of humongous personality but scored for a small ensemble, and there is humor in these sorts of juxtapositions. It also grafts an unexpected exuberance onto a genre that is characteristically restrained. And, even funnier, it uses the oboe — an instrument that is usually regarded as introspective and melancholic.
The biggest laugh comes during a moment of seemingly misplaced fermatas. The harpsichord (plus pizzicato strings), while waiting for the dueling oboes to revisit their heated argument, pluck a single note over and over like a metronome counting down the seconds, which continues for way too many measures. It is very Haydnesque.
COURTESY OF PRINCETON SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA
Composer Julian Grant, onstage with The Princeton Symphony Orchestra.
Grant’s suite of six pieces, Vaudeville in Teal, explored similar devices of comedy, although in more subtle ways, despite the title’s theatrical roots. It was inspired by the popular genre of variety entertainment in the early 20th century that mixed comedy, music, acrobatics and magic.
Grant named it after the teal-colored keyboard that he composed the work on (a modern reproduction of an 18th Century model by William Hyman), which he had rented, then bought. It was not used in the concerts.
Instead, to literally set the Vaudevillian stage, the harpsichord that was used in Cuong’s piece was wheeled out and replaced with Esfahani’s preferred model, an ornate black beauty with gold trim and a double keyboard. The lid was opened to reveal an idyllic seascape painted in Neoclassical style. It was positioned parallel to the stage as if it were a modern concert grand, instead of the perpendicular position that the traditional harpsichord, in the typical basso continuo role, usually takes. It made quite a symbolic statement.
Grant wrote the work with Esfahani — the world’s leading harpsichordist practitioner — in mind. The commission came about through Anne Manson (music director of the Manitoba Chamber Orchestra in Winnipeg), a longtime friend of Grant. She had bought a new harpsichord for the orchestra and was looking to feature it more than just in the traditional “continuo” manner of Baroque music. Grant stepped up to the daunting task — there are only around 50 concertos for harpsichord and orchestra in existence.
A big challenge in writing for the harpsichord is that it plays one tone — metallic and crisp. When a period instrument is involved, the trick is to find a way for the music to come across with no loss of conviction or interpretive power. An artist of Esfahani’s caliber is able to produce different shades of tone, and he did just that in the last two miniatures (“Spiel” and “Follies”), handling the sensitive solos with a stunning range of legato and blurred colors, followed by a showstopping virtuosic cadenza.
In classical music, the first bars of the piece usually set the mood. This one began with opposing moods between tunefulness and agitation, eeriness and humor. A plucked bass solo (that repeats throughout the work) was followed by a harpsichord line that slithered along quietly into surging ornaments and bel canto curlicues. Moods mixed and mingled freely and were contrasted in bizarre expositions, sudden and unexpected.
Keyboard registration rode sharp to maximize dissonance and bite, creating an inner tension and anxiety to it all.
Humorous devices were most apparent in the second variation, “Tarantella,” with repeated motifs and a tug of war between the orchestra and harpsichord. Strings were thickened with the help of a bass clarinet and a bassoon to heighten tone colors and contrasts.
The third miniature, “Threesome,” featured a trio between the harpsichord, bassoon and bass.
At the March 8 performance, Grant came out afterwards for a well-deserved bow. This was the third piece of his that the PSO has performed. He is a longtime Princeton resident and sits on the Orchestra’s board.
“Vaudeville” coupled up well with Pulcinella. Both are pastiches that aim to entertain. Pulcinella often appears as a condensed orchestral suite, but here it was in its complete form from 1920 (sans ballet), which included the solo arias and trios.
The work marked the beginning of Stravinsky’s neo-classical period, bringing together music of wildly different eras into one piece and transforming it into something new. Stravinsky took unfinished bits of 18th Century music by Giovanni Battista Pergolesi, including arias from three of his operas and two harpsichord suites. He wrote it for Sergei Diaghilev’s Les Ballet Russe, with the libretto and choreography by Léonide Massine.
COURTESY OF PRINCETON SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA
From left, Nicholas Nestorak, Aubry Ballarò and Hunter Enoch sing with The Princeton Symphony Orchestra.
Soprano Aubry Ballarò and tenor Nicholas Nestorak, both go-to collaborators of the PSO, were reliably sensitive, Ballarò especially with a masterly use of head and chest voice in “Contento forse vivere.” Bass-baritone Hunter Enoch’s generous, lyric voice and darkly stained color made for a beautiful “Con queste paroline.”
Stravinsky instructed the singers to stay out of sight in the orchestra pit, but the tradition is rarely followed, nor was it here. They made a dashing trio dressed in black tie evening wear.
While Pergolesi’s 18th Century style always dominates the masterful score, it is one of those pieces that can withstand many different treatments. Some conductors like to run with the “neo” cues, giving it raucous and angular phrases; Stravinsky himself conducted it fast and lively, almost with an American swing. Others latch onto the leaner and cleaner Baroque qualities.
Milanov kept mostly away from any modernistic colors and bite, and aligned himself more with Stravinsky’s classical roots. This was a symphonic treatment with airy, graceful Baroque melodies, lush and sweet. Expressive dynamics that present themselves in the score were not heightened; the trombone played it straight with no comic excess.
Stravinsky and Diaghilev chose the subject matter of Pulcinella — based on the stock character from the Italian commedia dell’arte, also known as “Punch” — specifically to entertain weary post-World War I audiences. While Milanov appeared happy on the podium, his formal approach didn’t always strike the right tone for a piece that was created to entertain.
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