Orchestra gives Brahms fresh impact

By Steven Brown
The Charltote Observer

Christopher Warren-Green doesn't make a point of it publicly, but he's something of a historian. When he was trying out to be the Charlotte Symphony's leader, he had the orchestra use a mere handful of strings to accompany a Haydn cello concerto. Why? Because Haydn's own orchestra circa 1800 also had only a few strings.

Warren-Green's antiquarian streak came out again Friday in very different music: Brahms' titanic First Symphony.

Warren-Green didn't mention this from the podium, but in looking toward the concert earlier in the season, he noted that Brahms gave his stamp of approval to an orchestra that played his music with a smaller string section than orchestras typically set loose on it today. A main attraction is that the wind parts can speak out more clearly, enriching the music's texture and lyricism. One of Warren-Green's mentors championed this approach - which also affects how the players shape the music - and recorded Brahms this way.

With the Charlotte Symphony, looking at Brahms this way is also aiming to make a virtue of necessity. After all, this orchestra, too, has a not-so-big string section.

Friday night, the strategy worked. Warren-Green didn't parrot his mentor's version, but the outlines were similar and vivid. Warren-Green and the orchestra put the emphasis on momentum rather than massiveness; gliding, graceful lyricism rather than weightiness; guts rather than granite-block impact.

True, this didn't always pay off as planned. Letting the woodwinds shine through sheds the wrong light when someone gets off track - as happened in the symphony's introduction. But there were other spots, especially melodious ones, where the winds' mellifluous byplay enhanced the music's sweetness. And Warren-Green's pacing, along with the orchestra's gusto, brought out the first movement's fire as well as the finale's jubilation. The finale's big tune was almost jaunty.

The concert started jovially, too, thanks to the warmth and spirit the orchestra put into Brahms' "Academic Festival Overture." The overture's exuberance helped set off the very different tone of what followed: two rarely heard choral works, "Nänie" and "Song of Destiny."

They're akin to Brahms' "German Requiem," even though they're based on German poems rather than the Bible. Like the "Requiem," they're concerned with mortality and human travail. But as in the "Requiem," the glow and tenderness of Brahms' music deliver a message of consolation, not lamentation (which is actually what "Nänie" means in English).

The orchestra and the Oratorio Singers of Charlotte treated both works to tenderness and lilt punctuated with drama. The sweetness of the choir's sopranos was especially telling. And the orchestra, guided by Warren-Green, savored the serene opening of the "Song of Destiny."