website<\/a>. But these performances supply an imperfect impression of what happened when David Taylor played Schubert\u2019s sonata with an ensemble of 22 intrepid strings.<\/p>\nI first heard David Taylor play the Arpeggione Sonata in my living room, accompanying him at the piano. He had just come to the piece and was sticking to Schubert. In subsequent months, he took wayward possession of this music with a will. Tempos, dynamics, registers careened toward expressive extremes. The rehearsals with orchestra, courageously led by Angel Gil-Ordonez, were not reassuring. Following a wayward trombonist at the piano is a lot simpler than chasing him with an ensemble in tow.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, Taylor inflicted his insidious sonic imagination on Schubert\u2019s innocent keyboard textures. For the opening of the slow movement, he had the violins play in harmonics in imitation of a glass harmonica, the better to set off the low blasts of his instrument. <\/p>\n
The sheer virtuosity of Taylor\u2019s command of Schubert acrobatic showpiece was never in doubt \u2013 he can play it, and beautifully. But Taylor\u2019s virtuosity is divinely wed to an idiosyncratic musical personality wholly his own. A lot of head-shaking and head-scratching followed that dress rehearsal. <\/p>\n
The program began with a set of Schubert dances for strings. The Arpeggione<\/em> Concerto came next, then \u2013 sans intermission \u2013 the sublime Adagio from Bruckner\u2019s String Quintet (with string orchestra), followed by two Schubert songs with bass trombone and strings: \u201cDie Stadt\u201d and \u2013 Taylor\u2019s specialty \u2013 \u201cDer Doppelganger.\u201d<\/p>\nAbout a minute into the concerto, it was suddenly obvious that all would be OK. The performance was a bewildering success. The program as a whole moved clairvoyantly from light \u2013 the dances and concerto \u2013 to dark: the solemnity of Bruckner (magnificently rendered; Gil-Ordonez studied for years with Sergiu Celibidache in Munich); the anguish of the two late Schubert songs. <\/p>\n
None of us had anticipated the shock of \u201cDoppelganger\u201d in this context \u2013 it was Taylor\u2019s first opportunity to open up and blast us full force. In the audience, bodies bobbed as if electrocuted. Watching the response of the musicians onstage was a rare pleasure: I have never seen members of an orchestra react as vividly, or visibly, to a soloist\u2019s entrance as on this occasion. We invited the audience to stay for a post-concert discussion; the vast majority did, for fully half an hour.<\/p>\n
The days of the performance specialist are numbered. More and more, important instrumentalists will again \u2013 as in the days of Liszt and Paganini \u2013 be spontaneous creators of their own music.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
For a variety of reasons, raw spontaneity is less common at symphonic performances nowadays than in the nineteenth century and before. In the days when they were also composers, performers were of course more prone to improvise. In the days before recordings and airplanes, there was no centripetal norm for interpretation. PostClassical Ensemble\u2019s \u201cSchubert Uncorked\u201d […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-437","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2QLHN-73","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/437","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=437"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/437\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=437"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=437"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=437"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}