Schwarz’s Seattle Symphony on Record: Flexible, Tight-Knit

As the old, established American symphony orchestras become increasingly intent on pricing themselves out of the recording market, a few of what were once considered provincial orchestras are being actively courted. Not by the old, established labels but by the nouveau likes of Los Angeles-based Delos, whose existence is centered on the Seattle Symphony Orchestra under music director Gerard Schwarz.

Seattle comes to recordings relatively cheaply, a consequence of modest wages; grants from the pre-Serrano/Mapplethorpe National Endowment for the Arts; and freedom from financial restraints imposed by the American Federation of Musicians, which the SSO has dumped in favor of its own, home-grown union.

Anyone interested in learning how flexible and tight-knit an ensemble this is need go no further than Bartok’s hair-raising “Miraculous Mandarin”--the complete 30-minute ballet score rather than the usual suite (Delos 3083).

In live performance one can get away with all sorts of murder in this noisy score unless one leads it sluggishly. Schwarz hardly does that, keeping it appropriately tense: not through speed but through rhythmic and ensemble control, with the strings permitted their lyric moments rather than burying them under the braying brass and screeching woodwinds.

The coupling, however, with Kodaly’s oft-recorded “Hary Janos” Suite and “Galanta” Dances seems gratuitous.

Another release combines a pair of reputed musical monstrosities by Richard Strauss: his “Josephslegende” ballet and “Symphonia Domestica” (3082).

We are spared the hour-long “Josephslegende,” with its galumphing glosses on “Rosenkavalier,” and offered instead the composer’s 29-minute suite. The compression works wonders, exposing some liltingly delicate music otherwise lost amid the dross.

The “Symphonia” usually sinks under the weight of its bombast and leaden wit. Schwarz, surprisingly, takes the score at very moderate tempos (he was a speed-demon during his Los Angeles days) maintaining rhythmic clarity and uncovering a wealth of subtle instrumental detail, with the assistance of Delos’ illuminating sonics. The SSO strings and solo woodwinds shine throughout.

The least known music here is a program (3059) of works by Stephen Albert, a 48-year-old New Yorker and recent Seattle Symphony composer-in-residence whose Violin Concerto (“In Concordiam”) makes a neutral, if not unpleasant, initial impression. The score carries on a constant flirtation with tonality within its mildly dissonant framework, suggesting Ravel, Berg, Puccini and something vaguely Hebraic during its course.

The romantically virtuosic solo is powerfully projected by SSO concertmaster Ilkka Talvi, formerly of Schwarz’s Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra.

The longer, if not necessarily more substantial coupling is “TreeStone”, Albert’s James Joyce settings, in which Schwarz leads the New York Chamber Symphony, with vocal soloists Lucy Shelton and David Gordon.

A Schumann program combining the “Spring” Symphony, the Overture, Scherzo and Finale, and Opus 86 “Konzertstuck” is a delightful, instructive surprise (3084).

Braving exceedingly glamorous competition, Schwarz and his dedicated players make some potent points: above all, that they take the familiar symphony more seriously than the nominal big boys, not only executing with pinpoint accuracy but with extraordinary fidelity to Schumann’s score. Note the theme of the symphony’s Scherzo, here played legato, and sounding all the grander for it, than the usual staccato.

Finally, Schwarz does some preening with the “Konzertstuck” for four horns and orchestra. Its solo quartet, led by Robert Bonnevie, gives notice that it can blast, croon and negotiate Schumann’s trickiest hurdles at least as well as their counterparts in any orchestra, anywhere.