By Lawrence Toppman
I have been going over the roster of guest conductors since Kwame Ryan was hired, people who’ll fill his shoes until the 2025-26 season as music director, and I am trying unsuccessfully to remember a dud. Ruth Reinhardt, music director designate of the Rhode Island Philharmonic, joined the list of skilled interpreters this weekend at Belk Theater, guiding the Charlotte Symphony (CSO) through Josef Suk’s “Pohadka” (“Fairy Tale”), Robert Schumann’s only piano concerto and Edward Elgar’s “Enigma” Variations.
Perhaps, in her mid-30s, she has special sympathy with composers near her age: Suk was 26, Schumann 35 and Elgar 42 when these pieces premiered. Though she’s said to be a specialist in music of our time, she’s obviously sensitive to works from the mid-to-late 19th century. And she proved an able accompanist to pianist Olga Kern, holding the orchestra gently in check during Kern’s bravura rendition of the concerto.
Antonin Dvorak, Suk’s father-in-law, reportedly said “That is music from heaven” after hearing “Pohadka.” Well, some of it, perhaps, notably the dancelike intermezzo and darkly dramatic funeral music. Much of the rest sounds like a Middle Eastern tone poem in Dvorak’s weaker style, and the final “love conquers all” theme doesn’t make the same impact as the lighter parts. Reinhardt didn’t wallow in the romantic elements, a wise decision.
Schumann wrote the concerto for his beloved wife Clara to play, which made it an apt choice for Valentine’s Day weekend. The composer used to describe himself as two souls, the philosophic and reflective Eusebius and the passionate and more active Florestan. Kern, looking remarkably youthful for someone who’ll celebrate her 50th birthday in April, explored both personalities.
After an assertive opening to the first movement, she eventually drifted into a dream state Schumann would have recognized, rousing herself with another crash of chords. Her meditative but never dainty slow movement flowed powerfully into the muscular finale, played with a nervous energy that surely suited the composer’s mindset: In 1844, one year before he finished the concerto, Schumann’s doctor in Dresden reportedly saw him for complaints of insomnia, weakness, auditory disturbances, tremors and chills in the feet, plus a number of phobias.
Kern then blazed through two encores, Debussy’s final prelude (“Fireworks”) and Rachmaninov’s adaptation of Rimsky-Korsakov’s “Flight of the Bumblebee.” After those showpieces, we needed an intermission and some second-half calm.
The CSO provided it with Elgar’s “Enigma,” the piece that made his reputation. Reinhardt found all the moods in the music: refined, martial, shy, anxious, merry, warm-hearted, frisky and more. The orchestra responded with a satisfying tone and strong section work, especially in the brass.
The CSO had an excellent idea: It projected the names of people represented in the 14 variations on a hanging screen, explained their relationship to Elgar and provided musical background. I finally understood why twittering winds interrupt grave strings more than once in the fifth variation: One of Elgar’s friends was well-known for mercurially interspersing serious and irreverent thoughts. This kind of out-of-the-box approach will always be welcome.
As I read those supertitles, I remembered Elgar’s comment about the basis for the work, formally titled “Variations on an Original Theme: “The enigma I will not explain. Its ‘dark saying’ must remain unguessed.” Musicologists have spent 125 years trying to work out the puzzle; one intriguingly suggests the theme comes from Pergolesi’s “Stabat Mater.”
Might Elgar simply have been playing a cosmic joke? Anyone who has listened to his “Cockaigne” and “Falstaff” overtures knows he had a sense of humor, and one of the “Enigma” variations depicts a friend’s bulldog as he climbs out of a river, barks and shakes himself dry. What if there is no puzzle, and Elgar is chuckling at us all?
P.S. Elgar would not be chuckling if he knew audience members continue to be allowed into the hall during the performance, seating themselves obtrusively while the first piece flows on. I don’t care whether the CSO or Blumenthal Performing Arts set this stupid policy. It’s an insult to everyone who showed up on time, and it needs to stop.
Pictured: Ruth Reinhardt by Jessica Schäfer/ruth-reinhardt.com.