Concert review: PSO adventure less than wonderful
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If Lewis Carroll had directed Alice to an orchestra concert in "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland," it might have sounded like the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra Friday night in Heinz Hall. Sometimes confusing and often unintelligible, the PSO's performance of David Del Tredici's "Final Alice" was ultimately absurd, tossed down the rabbit hole by a faulty microphone.
What a shame that a night in which the PSO should be congratulated for performing the complete version of Mr. Del Tredici's 1975 setting of the "Wonderland" Trial Scene that the orchestra ran into technical malfunction. A loose connection in the microphone on soprano Hila Plitmann caused countless earsplitting explosions. Their unpredictable arrivals (eerily reminiscent of the infamous balloon gala) filled one with anxiety at first and then gave way to frustration.
The PSO under a champion of this work, conductor Leonard Slatkin, played on, but so many elements were out of sync -- from the grossly loud theremin to the oddly reticent bullhorn. When Ms. Plitmann's mike wasn't detonating, it failed to amplify her enough. The orchestra often overwhelmed her. This muted her compelling personification of the bizarre characters. A certain curious whimsy was lost even in the sections when she was accompanied by an odd grouping of accordion, saxophone, banjo and mandolin.
It wasn't just Carroll's delectable descriptions that were lost in the mix, but the subtle undertone that Mr. Del Tredici submits as his own evidence for Carroll's alleged obsession with young girls through lush Romantic themes and treatment. Projections on the back towers of the stage furthered this reading, presenting images of girls in dresses.
Perhaps this was Carroll's doing, reaching out from the looking glass to sabotage this insinuation. Perhaps it was the sound system. But most likely, it was just bad luck. And for that, the audience was denied a full hearing of a work as magical as the book it sets.
Opening the concert was a work that might well have asked, like Alice, "Who in the world am I?" The PSO presented Prokofiev's beloved "Peter and the Wolf" with a Pittsburghese twist -- a new text by Peter Leo. He is the former Post-Gazette humor columnist and a friend of mine. But his poking fun at Pittsburgh, however funny or well-articulated by narrator David Conrad, deprived the audience of the full experience of the work many loved as a child and remains a masterpiece.
The concert repeats at 2:30 p.m. Sunday.
First Published May 7, 2011 12:03 am
