The Oregon Bach Festival, one of the world’s premier Bach festivals, presented a matinee of two works by early 20th century masters on a blisteringly hot Sunday (July 7) at the Hult Center in Eugene. Stravinsky’s Symphony of Psalms, one of the great sacred works of the last century, preceded Gustav Holst’s magnum opus The Planets (Op. 32), a work to which John Williams’ award-winning score for Star Wars owes an immense debt of gratitude.
The Stravinsky opens with its famous open E minor chord, and a somehow ominous peregrination from the piano cut through the texture right before the voices began. The chorus is to be commended for their clear and precise diction; the Latin was completely intelligible throughout; as they moved back up and down in a minor 2nd melodic motif, every word rang through effortlessly. This first movement comprised Psalm 38: 13 and 14, and when the choir arrived at “For I am…a sojourner, as all my fathers were,” the sicut patres mei was breathtaking, a thunderous yet controlled fortissimo that sent shivers up and down the spine.
A curiously thin, reedy oboe opens the second movement, with a flute then taking up the strange, intimate fugal subject. The balance between singers and players was always excellent, so the melodic lines never became lost or blurred as they wandered between groups of performers.
The third movement begins with a sweet Alleluia and staggered Laudates that flowed organically in a ghostly hemiola, and the choir really leaned into the warmer harmonies here, emphasizing the contrast with the stark opening movements. Swirling and beautiful, it gave a synesthetic feeling, like being wrapped in a whirlwind of gossamer and cherry blossoms in a Studio Ghibli film.
Bringer of jollity
A much larger orchestra took the stage during intermission, and a movie screen lowered from above the stage. As Holst’s famous Mars, the Bringer of War began, an image of the red planet slowly rose while the menacing threnody pulsed below. For a science/fiction nerd like me (as in, into science/science fiction), this was heady stuff. The CGI image zoomed into a drone’s eye view of the Valles Marineris, and as it did so the orchestra was delightfully sere and crisp—there was a sense of foreboding, of patience on the part of conductor Alevtina Ioffe, which meant that the music had somewhere to go as it built to the molto fortissimo with images of the Mars Rover (or maybe the Lander) crashing into the planet, and I swear the music was so reminiscent of a galaxy far, far away that I was waiting to watch the Death Star explode.
Venus, the Bringer of Peace was all pastoral sweetness. The orchestra was lush and pacific; it was the texture of a reverie, a dulcet, half-forgotten dream. The images for Mercury, the Winged Messenger were very cool: actual video of the little molten planet passing in front of the sun, a tiny black speck winging its way across the immense day star.
The other well-known movement from the work–Jupiter, the Bringer of Jollity–more than lived up to its name, as the players belted out the famous theme in all its jocundity. As images displayed of Jupiter’s Red Spot sped up to manic intensity, the coda was rich, broad and pensive. The interpretation was spot on and un-self-conscious; there was nothing left off out of fear of being too sentimental. Rather it was full of pathos, the ponderous tempo changes coming off as natural, unforced. As (ahem) mercurial as this movement is, Ioffe wove it all together nicely, and nothing was shoehorned in—it felt like it just sort of happened, which is exactly the way it should feel. It takes an excellent conductor to make sure that even great musicians don’t inadvertently get in the way of the music, and Ioffe’s keen insight into this was pivotal in this, the best live performance of this work that I’ve heard to date.
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Saturn, the Bringer of Old Age—ah, how I feel that old man hovering around my door more and more as the days go by, and this movement did justice to that sensation. The somber pulsing of the timpani, an unsettling reminder of the bell that will one day toll for us all, eventually degenerated into a syncopated cacophony. Strange images of moon- and planet-shadow falling across Saturn’s rings seemed a harbinger of further darkness to fall.
Piercing, alarming unisons from the low brass heralded the opening of Uranus, the Magician, a playful bit that showed that much as Williams may have borrowed from Holst, Holst was clearly familiar with Dukas’ symphonic tone poem The Sorcerer’s Apprentice.
Closing out this beloved flight of fancy was Neptune, the Mystic. A sonorous mystery—atonal at times, and sinuous, but never shy, its occult themes wove in and out of hearing such that I couldn’t always tell which combination of instruments and voices was producing the sound at any given time. Phantom choirs offstage and in the balconies behind and above intoned magical chants as an image of the cerulean planet, almost entirely occluded into a crescent, faded into the distance.
This was a fun bit of mixed media, and if the on-screen images were occasionally discontiguous with the music, it was mostly just right. Ioffe’s sure and steady hand at the tiller was evident throughout, and was the glue that held this tremendous performance together. This imaginative presentation was all a music lover could wish for, and well worth the long drive to Eugene through the hot afternoon sun.
