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Wynton Marsalis brings All Rise to Boston
BY JON GARELICK
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Let’s get the most mundane question out of the way first: I don’t know whether it’s too long. Wynton Marsalis gave the Boston premiere of his all-genre behemoth All Rise a week ago Wednesday at Symphony Hall with the combined forces of the BSO (conducted by Kurt Masur), the Tanglewood Festival Chorus, the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra, and four vocal soloists. It began at 8:05 and ended at 10:25 (with a 15-minute intermission). During the break, an erudite wag-about-town argued that Gunther Schuller had accomplished a more convincing melding of styles in a 40-minute piece he conducted for Jordan Hall’s 100th anniversary celebrations a few weeks ago. I didn’t get to that show. But I am reminded of a pianist friend’s oft-made remark: "Sure the Schubert sonatas are too long — but where do you cut them?" By which I don’t mean to inflame the mixed-genre argument by putting Marsalis on the same plane as Schubert. But I can say this: I was not bored for a moment Wednesday night. Wynton does like to go long. His 1997 Pulitzer-winning "oratorio," Blood on the Fields, fills three CDs. His 1992 mostly instrumental "church" piece, In This House, On This Morning, is similarly massive. But those were pieces built for jazz bands and soloists. Over the course of the ’90s, Marsalis worked more and more with mixed forms, writing ballet suites and string quartets, among other things. All Rise, he says, is the culmination of those efforts, where all musics come together. And, by extension, where all people come together. Or as he put it in the BSO program notes, "When we finally find each other, the heat of recognition will cause our souls to rise." Not so different from baking bread, I guess. But I take his point seriously, too, especially after hearing the BSO performance. Last year’s Sony Classical recording of the piece with Marsalis, the LCJO, and Esa-Pekka Salonen conducting the Los Angeles Philharmonic gave a sense of the piece’s rapid juxtapositions of genres and styles. And Wynton is very specific in his notes about the devices he employs: fiddler’s reels, samba, bossa nova, Argentine milonga (like a tango), Afro-Cuban mambo, and, of course, blues, always the blues. He says that the piece’s 12 movements (themselves divided into four movements each) are meant to imply the 12-bar blues, and that in fact the blues are supposed to be the unifying, overarching form that contains all others. Maybe. But for the first half of the piece at least, the unifying thread was the asymmetrical rhythms, with their displaced, forward-driving accents, which were patently Stravinskian (as noted by both Marsalis and BSO program annotator Judith Tick). The tension of these sections often alternated with passages of easy jazz swing. The juxtapositions were always very clear, the references specific. The first movement especially shocked with how quickly the references flew by, how rapidly Marsalis moved through a variety of tones and timbres. After an opening invocation of an om-like "Ah-zum" from the chorus, the music flew from section to section, low and high strings playing a reel antiphonally, a Middle Eastern scale, some massed dissonance, a section of brass against violin with clattering percussion, and then a wonderful entrance by the LCJO’s three clarinets. Rhythmic-melodic figures were passed around, inverted, a soloist finishing a section’s phrase or vice versa. Throughout, Marsalis made his argument: all these styles were individually distinct yet still "fit." It was like a multi-paneled mural passing before your eyes, seen a section at a time. Not everything about All Rise thrilled me. Marsalis’s writing for strings was most compelling when most rhythmically agitated. When he settled into legato string passages at slow tempos, with slow-moving harmonies, the effect was a bit Hollywoodish. But these passages never lasted long, and even with the liberal dashes of Igor, I never felt that he was repeating ideas. He was always finding new instrumental combinations — violin against alto sax, jazz piano with violin section, a violin-cello dialogue, and the use of the remarkable BSO tubist Mike Roylance with just about anything, as one-man rhythm section, enveloping harmonic presence, tidal surge. The use of voices was often haunting. In the fifth movement, "Save Us," the chorus set up a rocking motion against the soloists, an effect that was cut off too soon, I felt, by Marsalis’s rocketing trumpet solo. And tenor Brian Robinson and soprano NaGuanda Miller sang with throbbing, churchified intensity. There was one other juxtaposition that left me unsatisfied — the supposedly crowd-pleasing move from the intensity of the last chorus ("Look beyond, look beyond. All rise") to a rocking New Orleans street-band finale. I would rather have been left with the high church. But no matter, here was orchestral music manifesting itself as a clash and confluence of varied, colorful personalities. Gunther is Gunther, but Wynton is Wynton.
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