HALEKULANI MASTERWORKS CONCERT
Featuring Arnaldo Cohen and Liszt's Piano Concerto No. 2
Also: Stephen Warbeck's "Princess Ka’iulani Suite"
4 p.m. today, Blaisdell Concert Hall, $16-$70; 877-750-4400, www.ticketmaster.com.
On the Web: honolulusymphony.com.


Guest Conductor Gerard Schwarz did not set out to become a conductor: “I always wanted to be a trumpet player, ever since I was a little kid.... but at 30, I stopped playing trumpet and began conducting full-time because I couldn’t do it well if I only did it part-time.”

Conducting has kept him busy, leading the Seattle Symphony Orchestra, running the Mozart Festival and winning Emmy awards and Grammy nominations. Along the way, he has become well-known for promoting contemporary, especially American, music.
When asked to conduct the world premiere of Stephen Warbeck’s “Princess Ka’iulani Suite” during his appearance with the Honolulu Symphony, however, he hesitated. He has not done film music “because it’s not what I do,” but when he saw Warbeck’s score, he agreed, describing it as “lovely.”
The “Princess Ka’iulani Suite” is from the film “Barbarian Princess” that premiered Friday night at the Hawai’i International Film Festival to controversy over how it portrays Hawai’i’s history.
There is no controversy in the music, however: it is indeed lovely and consonant. It is excellent mood music, but without symphonic direction.
Schwarz might well have been describing the “Princess Ka’iulani Suite” when he said that film music “is not heavily developed music. It comes in bits and pieces, 30 to 40 seconds, a minute at a time. The only two places the composer gets to write anything is the titles and ending. The rest has to fit the film.”
Not having seen the film, I cannot say how well Warbeck’s music works, although it sounds like beautiful background music of the “Ken Burns documentary” type. On its own, the music of the “Princess Ka’iulani Suite” seems to need the story. Movements sound excerpt-y, their endings coming at the ends of pages, rather than closure.
Warbeck does, however, offer beautiful solos: listen for Concertmaster Ignace Jang, pianist Thomas Yee, and clarinetist Scott Anderson.
The focal point of the concert was Liszt’s Piano Concerto No. 2 featuring Arnaldo Cohen, originally from Brazil, now living and working at Indiana University.
Tall, slender, distinguished, Cohen tore through Liszt’s legendary technical challenges with grace. His double-octave chords thundered, not with performers’ usual wild gesticulations and sweated brow, but with fierce concentration and controlled power. His arpeggios rolled smoothly, and his light filigree seemed to float above the orchestra.
Cohen displayed superb technique (bring binoculars) and played Liszt without the slightest impression of trying to play Liszt, quite simply performing the extraordinary as though it were ordinary.
In his Concerto, Liszt does now and then, as he was want to do, slip into bombast and effects for the sake of effects, which musicologist Abraham Veinus called “orgies of cheap display.” But Liszt lived, after all, amidst the rising adulation of “star” performers, a phenomenon that continues today – and that display became a part of who he was.
It is also part of what makes concertos exciting. In Cohen’s hands, Liszt’s excesses were thrilling, but were also folded into a coherent musical whole that highlighted Liszt’s compositional invention.
As Schwarz pointed out in the before-concert talk, Liszt’s Concerto ranks among the most innovative of concertos: “Liszt was a great innovator and, you know, great innovators ... are not usually the greatest composers; likewise, the greatest composers are not always the greatest innovators,” and went on to give examples by Bizet and Chopin, in addition to Liszt.
Liszt composed Concerto No. 2 in 1848, surprisingly early considering its innovations. It is a true symphonic poem concerto (but without a program), composed in a single multi-section movement. Liszt also created a fluid relationship between piano and orchestra, in which they take turns leading, first one then the other, sometimes playing together and sometimes in opposition.
Schwarz closed the evening with Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 6, the “Pathetique,” which he described as having “a brooding quality ... but soulful rather than tearful.”
Tchaikovsky composed the Symphony shortly before his mysterious death (possibly a suicide) and left notes suggesting the music’s program may be life itself. That may explain why the triumphant finale arrives at the end of the third movement, instead of at the end of the fourth.
In describing the work’s four movements, Schwarz explained how unusual the fourth movement is: After the first movement, an unusual five-beat waltz (waltzes have three beats), and then an exuberant march, “you realize something is missing, and it is the slow movement (which is usually an inner movement). The fourth movement is the slow movement.”
Instead of a triumphant close, the Symphony ends somberly, with a low brass choir (trombones had religious connotations) and pulsing string basses fading away unto death.
At the end of the third movement, the audience erupted into applause – of course, because that’s where the applause belongs in this work and who could resist?
Leaving, one patron commented, “I’ve never seen a conductor accept applause between movements like that. (Conductor Georg) (CQ) Solti would have dropped dead – except that he already has.” Fortunately, Schwarz was more reasonable and welcomed the audience’s response.
There was much to applaud, including some terrific solos by clarinetist Scott Anderson, bassoonist Paul Barrett, and Daniel Alexander on piccolo. In his reading, Schwarz focused less on arch and elegance than on effects and impact, and delivered an exciting performance.