New director stakes out sacred symphonic ground

Stefan Sanderling's upcoming concert with the Florida Orchestra lays siege to Beethoven, the sanctum sanctorum, the touchstone - the ultimate challenge.

By JOHN FLEMING, Times Performing Arts Critic
© St. Petersburg Times
published October 8, 2002

[Publicity photo]

Stefan Sanderling, new music director of the Florida Orchestra.

Stefan Sanderling returns this week to conduct the Florida Orchestra for the first time since being named music director-designate in May. He'll be on the podium for works of Beethoven (the Egmont overture), Beethoven (the Emperor Concerto, with soloist Misha Dichter) and Beethoven (Symphony No. 7).

It's the first of two masterworks programs Sanderling will lead during the season before taking over officially as music director next summer.

The all-Beethoven concerts should be interesting because you always want to hear what a conductor brings to the ne plus ultra of symphonic music, works (with the possible exception of Egmont) that Sanderling and the orchestra members have performed many times.

How quick will Sanderling take the trio in the Seventh's third movement, a matter of ongoing debate among musicologists, critics and conductors? Will he omit some of the repeats Beethoven calls for in the symphony, an increasingly common practice that purists lament? How will he and Dichter collaborate on the piano concerto that pretty much defines the term "warhorse"?

There's something appropriate about getting a chance early in Sanderling's tenure to take his measure in Beethoven. But it's also ironic that he is making his debut with the orchestra this season in such a tried and true program, because much of his artistic effort in recent years has been devoted to unearthing and recording obscure French works from the 18th and 19th centuries. That's the sort of music rarely, if ever, heard in these parts.

Sanderling's interest in early French composers comes with the territory of his other music directorship, with the Orchestre de Bretagne in northwest France. On the ASV label, Sanderling and his orchestra have recorded one CD of suites and overtures of opera composer Andre Gretry plus two releases of symphonic works of Francois-Joseph Gossec. The latest disc, which came out this year, is of four symphonies, a gavotte and dance suite by Gossec.

Not for nothing is Gossec (1734-1829), a Belgian who became a musical fixture in Paris, known as the father of the French symphony. In a career that spanned the eras of Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven, he wrote more than 50 symphonies, and those I've heard display the characteristic Gallic virtues: lean textures, rhythmic fleetness, elegance and charm.

Gossec's orchestral music tends toward a poise verging on detachment -- or, as a note in the CD booklet puts it, "a sense of perfection attained." For all their well-crafted delicacy, his symphonies can be a touch monotonous, like tasteful wallpaper.

Still, wouldn't it be interesting to hear a concert with Gossec played in juxtaposition with a masterwork by Haydn, to point out the difference between French and Austrian music from the same period and the distance between mere superb proficiency and genius? Or paired on a program with the music of French composers who fell under his influence, such as Franck, D'Indy, Roussel and Honegger?

Stefan Sanderling

Louise Farrenc (1804-1875) is another neglected French composer Sanderling has championed, recording her three symphonies with his Brittany orchestra on the Pierre Verany label. It was very unusual for a woman to write orchestral music in 19th century France, and Farrenc's symphonies come as something of a revelation, with a graceful sense of form reminiscent of Mendelssohn.

Let's hope Sanderling will take it upon himself to introduce more French music to the Florida Orchestra and its audience, beyond the familiar pieces by Debussy, Ravel and Berlioz that get played to death. And that's coming from a listener who counts those three among his favorite composers.

Sanderling's eminent conductor father has been in the news. In September, Kurt Sanderling was feted in Berlin on his 90th birthday with a gala concert by the Berlin Symphony Orchestra. He was the BSO's principal conductor when it was communist East Germany's answer to West Germany's glamorous Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra.

The senior Sanderling, a German Jew, was that rare refugee from Nazi Germany who went East instead of West. He emigrated first to the Soviet Union, where he was co-conductor (with Yevgeny Mravinsky) of the Leningrad Philharmonic from 1942 to 1960. He moved to East Berlin to head the BSO from 1960 to 1977.

Kurt Sanderling won praise for his conducting of Shostakovich and Mahler, especially late Mahler. Berlin Classics recently re-released on two CDs a 1979 recording of Mahler's massive, death-haunted Symphony No. 9 in a typically rock-solid, unflamboyant reading of the work by Sanderling and the Berlin Symphony.

Young conductors tend to like to test their mettle on Mahler, and Stefan Sanderling is surely no exception. In search of insight into how he will approach the great symphonist, listening to his father's performance of Mahler Nine might be a good place to start.

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