SWR Stuttgart Symphony ★★★✩✩
Director: Andrés Orozco Estrada. Place and date: L’Auditori. Ibercamera Season (12/II/2024)
Go ahead, and that's all I need, my absolute respect for the tastes of music lovers. They are the public that comes and supports these important cycles of concerts managed with seriousness and commitment to the difficult task of programming. It was music lovers who made it possible for large orchestras like Vienna to exist, or the Palau de la Música or the Liceu itself, created from private initiatives and support. And sometimes it is said that criticism goes against “taste”, a very personal experience worthy of the most absolute respect.
No, art criticism alludes to reflection, which is in another dimension, neither better nor worse than tastes, but another. What better feeling then for those of us who respect this sensitive area such as concert music, than to share the applause and ovations and joy at the end of a symphonic session. Welcome. The concert has its ritual almost sacralized, which is why misplaced or untimely applause or bravos sometimes affect the unity of an artistic expression, and are the product of foreign enthusiasms that have little to do with art.
Criticism appeals to another, more internal dimension, which sometimes even goes against one's own emotion, hence its minority nature. I therefore ask that whoever values only that dimension of taste, so respectable and which concerns us all, divert their attention here - or respond with their valid considerations - because we are entering another field.
We have enjoyed a musical session with a good orchestra, with sections of great quality, as the string in Elgar's tip showed, and an effective conductor for his objective – or taste – of swimming on the sunny surface of the Symphony Pastoral, which has it, despite the internal storm, or in the same outer layer of The Rite of Spring, in its aspect of fireworks of rhythm and color. Two composers who allude, one to the interiority of poetry and the other to the exterior of the show. Each one with its indisputable and profound values, although a brilliant version of the Consecration deserves another treatment – always within the indisputable technical efficiency that Mr. Orozco printed. Many of this music-loving audience will remember Gergiev's work on this stage.
Well yes, one of them is going to squeeze the works in their total values; the other, on the surface, colorful and pleasant, always in the sun. But when Beethoven conceived the 6th Symphony he did so already suffering from a serious personal drama, and Stravinsky presented Le Sacre a year before one of the most terrible wars in Europe. There cannot be only – as in this version by Orozco – the colorful and salonnier play of the surface of the Pastoral, with dancing gestures that did not indicate internal tensions, the aforementioned Beethovenian vectors. That is not the phrasing or the dramatic intensity that this score asks for, always within the excellence of the musicians, their clarity of exposition, their warmth of sound, and their virtuosity in Le Sacre, a work that suits Orozco better for its eloquence of surface.
