August 2, 2004
REVIEW
Philadelphia Inquirer
McFerrin's antics with orchestra fail to amuse
Jazz vocalist Bobby McFerrin has never been an unwelcome guest conductor with the Philadelphia Orchestra, but on Thursday at the Mann Center he crossed a line that polarized the audience more than usual and made me hope that he's not asked back. Even among couples, you saw one cheering and another grimacing at intermission. Stirring up a medium as obsessed with past centuries as classical music can be healthy, but the position you took on McFerrin may depend on why you were there.
If you were there for McFerrin, you were apt to enjoy his cheap-shot jokes and aren't-I-cool? affectations in this final concert of the orchestra's Mann Center season, which, incidentally, featured Prokofiev's Classical Symphony, Bernstein's Chichester Psalms, and Ravel's Bolero. If you were there for the orchestra, you were more likely to see McFerrin as one of those talented nonclassical musicians who have a mind to do their own unfortunate version of the Marx Brothers' A Night at the Opera.
McFerrin has long made his name with one-man-band improvisations, often consisting of him humming in an ethereal high voice with percussive effects achieved by slapping parts of his body. He did some of that Thursday with much wit and invention in the old Charlie Chaplin ballad "Smile." However, even at his most congenial, McFerrin lacks any emotional urgency. Yep, he's cool, even cold and self-absorbed. That reduces his musicmaking to a series of stunts. And stunts aren't what I prize about classical music.
During a series of choral improvisations, his call-and-response with the Philadelphia Singers Chorale at times lapsed into the greatest hits from The Wizard of Oz, which are always good to hear. But McFerrin's playfulness had an adversarial edge, as if to say, "I can do this and you can't."
Then there's his humor. Breaking into a thick Texas accent, he wondered aloud why you never hear conductors talk like that. Contrasting the earthy with the elevated is a tired laugh, and the joke is inaccurate. Though Texas drawls are few among conductors, some of the best Europeans (Franz Welser-Möst and the late Rudolf Kempe) have spoken in comparably provincial accents.
Purely as a conductor, McFerrin still displays self-serving stage affectations, but he took a well-considered view of Prokofiev's Classical Symphony. Tempos were slow-ish, textures heavy, and the usual effervescence downplayed in lieu of often-buried inner voices that give the piece more substance. Unfortunately, the orchestra's playing was ragged.Bernstein got the rambunctious Carmina Burana treatment, though the performance was memorable for boy soprano Juan Carlos Hernandez, who phrased with natural artistry and had a singularly full-bodied tone quality.Bolero marched by with lots of nice incidental moments but needing more long-term tension.
Posted by acapnews at August 2, 2004 10:05 PM
