CD Reviews #2 - Theofanidis Violin and Viola Concertos

Performers: Chee-Yun, violin | Richard O’Neill, viola | Albany Symphony | David Alan Miller, conductor

Record Label: Albany Records

Composers/Works: Christopher Theofanidis - Concerto for Violin and Orchestra, Concerto for Viola and Chamber Orchestra

Favorite Track: Theofanidis Violin Concerto: II

Richard O’Neill won the Grammy in 2021 for Best Classical Instrumental Solo for the Theofanidis Concerto for Viola and Chamber Orchestra, and it is understandable why. Anytime a violist wins a Grammy I ought to listen.

Do we really need a high hat in a viola concerto?

My main motivation for listening to this album was to do some recon on the Theofanidis Concerto for Viola and Chamber Orchestra, since I am a violist in a chamber orchestra, to see if I might want to learn and perform it some day. Also, Richard O’Neill won the Grammy for Best Classical Instrumental Solo in 2021 for this recording. Anytime a violist wins a Grammy I ought to listen.

First off, the playing from all parties, Chee-Yun, Richard O’Neill, and the Albany Symphony under the direction of David Alan Miller, is fantastic. Richard O’Neill especially impressed me with an enviably solid and clear sound, and spectacular articulation. It is very understandable why he won that Grammy.

Secondly, I think Christopher Theofanidis is what one might call a “Neo-Romantic" composer. I am not entirely certain what “Neo-Romantic” means, and I have mostly heard it as a put down from young composers who write edgy music with lots of of 3/4-flats and scratch tones and complain about the composition faculty at Juilliard (Theofanidis does not teach at Juilliard - he teaches at Yale). But I do think the phrase gives a fairly good impression of what Theofanidis is about, and what one will encounter on this album; lush orchestral scoring, tunes, large forms, and the courage to express grand emotion and sentimentality. There were moments and movements I loved, and others that just made me ask, “why?” 

My one intrusive thought while listening to this CD was “why so much auxiliary percussion?” Do we really need a high hat in the viola concerto? Snares, bass drums, cymbals, xylophone, tam tams, high hats, other stuff… are a lot for a violin or viola concerto. I do not want to accuse Theofanidis of this, certainly not at the exclusion of accusing others, but sometimes *insert weird percussion noise* feels like a gimmick and cop-out in lieu of real compositional depth, creativity, and craft. Is that just the sound you need there? Beethoven and Brahms managed to do fine in their concertos with just timpani. On the other hand, the triangle in the last movement of the Dvorak Cello Concerto does add something, and the xylophone in the Shostakovich Violin Concerto makes the last movement. I blame Shostakovich for opening the Pandora’s Box of auxiliary percussion in string concertos. The artist in me is rarely convinced by a battery percussion, and the pragmatist in me cringes at it; it is expensive, makes pieces harder to program, and causes balance problems. 

Violin Concerto 

If you are looking for a play-by-play description of the concertos and their movements, I commend Theofanidis’ notes (not exactly the same as those in the liner notes). I will not regurgitate them here.

My thoughts while listening to the violin concerto, in brief -

First movement: Why? Checking the watch bit. But the tune is lovely and beautifully scored and varied when it returns.

Second movement: Listen to this! Gorgeous. Elides and combines wonderfully a (gentle) scherzo and adagio feeling. Theofanidis wrote the tune on the day of his daughter’s birth, and it is accordingly inspired. This is good stuff. 

Third movement: Generic finale. That is probably unfair, but mentally, as I was listening, I was checked out and on to the Viola Concerto. 

One final note about the Violin Concerto. I read in the program notes that it was premiered by the Sarah Chang and the Pittsburgh Symphony in 2008. I actually may have been at the premier weekend! I do remember seeing promotional materials for that concert, but cannot recall for certain if I was there.

Concerto for Viola and Chamber Orchestra

This concerto was written from my teacher, Kim Kashkashian, and the Pro Arte Chamber Orchestra in Boston (shout out to Frank Olney, who I know is reading this!). But I only came to know of the piece because of the Grammy win and a recent write-up about the Concerto in the Journal of the American Viola Society. As I said, as a violist in a chamber orchestra I should probably listen to this thing, and might even play it some day.

Inspiration for this piece came from a collection of Navajo poetry that Kim Kashkashian sent to Theofanidis. Each movement takes its name and character from particular lines of poetry. Again, I commend Theofanidis’ programs notes for more about that.

My thoughts -

First movement: I was wondering “why?” a bit. I felt like this was trying too hard. Deserves another listen.

Second movement: Fantastic. A stream of consciousness soliloquy. Maybe the larger, fixed forms are not Theofanidis’ thing?

Third movement: Fantastic. I love his use of bass instruments to evoke something threatening and dark, with the solo viola set against them, with nothing in between. This was also done in the first movements of the Viola Concerto and the Violin Concerto.

Fourth movement: The ending was ecstatic and beautiful - exactly the sort of thing that would get me excited to play this piece! 

So, do I want to play it? It is a Definite Maybe, which is very different from a Hard No - which is the most likely outcome of assessing a new and daunting piece like this for the first time. It is a reaction certainly no worse than my first time hearing the Bartók Viola Concerto when I was thirteen and could not make heads nor tails of it. There were more than enough wonderful moments in the Theofanidis to make me eager to give it a few more passes and try make sense of all the stuff in between the wonderful moments.