By Lawrence Toppman
Professors in journalism school warned me never to say never, as it’s almost impossible to prove something hasn’t ever happened. But I’m pretty sure I’m right, so I’ll plunge ahead: The Charlotte Symphony has never offered back-to-back Classical Series concerts where virtuoso composers played concertos they’d written for themselves.
Three weeks ago, double-bassist Edgar Meyer offered his introspective Concerto in D. This weekend, Spanish-born cellist Andrea Casarrubios brought us “Mirage,” four movements that moved from catchy melodies to concentrated meditation.
Yet perhaps the biggest news of the week was the rehiring of Christopher James Lees, who just extended his nine-year tenure by four more years. Lees leads some 70 performances annually: family gigs, pops outings, movie nights, summer shows at SouthPark, immersive concerts, mobile appearances with CSO Roadshow. But as resident conductor, he gets few chances to show what he can do on the classical mainstage, and he took advantage of this opportunity.
He’s generally displayed a flair for Latin-themed music, and his opening suite from Manuel De Falla’s ballet “The Three-Cornered Hat” had bite and lyricism in the right proportions. He accompanied Casarrubios helpfully – more about that in a minute – before moving on to two heavyweights, Igor Stravinsky’s “Symphony of Psalms” and Claude Debussy’s “La Mer.”
Lees, an amiable speaker from the stage, jokingly pointed out that the Boston Symphony asked Stravinsky to write something without voices for its 50th anniversary in 1930; instead, he gave them something with voices but without violins. (Stravinsky also omitted violas and clarinets but wanted two pianos, along with loads of woodwinds and brass.)
Nearly 100 years later, this remains a difficult piece, even when the Charlotte Master Chorale delivered dynamically nuanced vocals and the musicians played with conviction. A Bach-like double fugue wends its way through the middle movement, and celebratory sections of the third come through mostly in unmelodic murmurs.
After that, “La Mer” reminded us of one literal meaning of impressionism, a word Debussy disliked: musical impressions, often fleeting or fragmented, of a mood or subject. Here that meant the sea, which in Lees’ hands was an ever-changing entity, a place where swimmers couldn’t float or bask but would constantly be battling the waves. This muscular interpretation ended in a storm segment that built quickly and urgently to a tremendous climax.
The emotional heart of the show remained Casarrubios’ four-movement concerto, which she has worked on for a decade. (She promised the latest revisions would be the last, so it qualified as a world premiere for the CSO.) She spoke beforehand of yearning, disorientation, a sense of renewal, and you could hear all of that in the music.
If you know the compositions of Astor Piazzolla, you might have thought of them after listening to the string orchestration and syncopated rhythms of the opening movement – titled, like the piece itself, “Mirage.” Yet she has her own voice.
She inverted the beginning of the third movement of Brahms’ Piano Concerto No. 2, where a cello holds sway until the piano asserts itself. In her case, a gentle piano started her second movement – “mensajes del agua,” or “messages of the water” — and held another colloquy with the cello later in the concerto. Bongo drums and castanets enlivened her third movement, as the soloist went her steady way, and even the aggressive strings of the final movement could not disturb her equanimity.
Was Casarrubios saying everything in life is a mirage except our own internal realities, a very Buddhist idea? The calm, deep voice of her cello and her warm-hearted tone, stubbornly projected through all the orchestral changes, made me think she might be.