Review: Elgar’s Enigma Variations at Belk Theater

By Perry Tannenbaum

February 14, 2025, Charlotte, NC – Russian-born pianist Olga Kern has now played in Charlotte at least five times, making her one of our most popular and welcome guest artists. Yet, it wasn’t exactly inevitable that she would someday sit before us in a Charlotte Symphony program headlined by the music of Edward Elgar. We’ve had distinguished artists here playing Elgar concertos, including violinist Nigel Kennedy and cellist Alisa Weilerstein, but Sir Edward’s fame has never rested upon his scant keyboard output, though his piano quintet is a masterpiece.

More predictable, perhaps, was the pairing of German-born guest conductor Ruth Reinhardt, the music director designate at the Rhode Island Philharmonic, with Elgar’s Enigma Variations (1899) – or with Robert Schumann’s Piano Concerto, since it was premiered in 1842 with Clara Schumann, the composer’s wife, at the keys.

Better yet, Reinhardt brought a piece with her by Josef Suk, a Czech composer we rarely hear in the Queen City. Suk was Antonín Dvořák’s most prized student, and his Pohádka (Fairy Tale) premiered as incidental music for Julius Zeyer’s play, Radúz and Mahulena, less than eight months before he became Dvořák’s son-in-law on his mentor’s silver wedding anniversary in 1898. Adding to the poignancy of this very romantic and dramatic music, Dvořák and Otilka would both die less than a year apart before Suk could ever celebrate his seventh wedding anniversary.

The opening movement, “The True Love of Radúz and Mahulena and Their Sorrows,” rearranged from Acts I and III, swept in with the warm cellos, dominating until the high winds and then the violins entered. CSO concertmaster Calin Ovidiu Lupanu had a lovely pair of solos sandwiched around the two sorrowful orchestral swells, the first triggered by the timpani and the second by the French horn. Since Suk was also a violinist, co-founder of the famed Czech String Quartet, it might be possible to imagine Lupanu as the composer serenading his bride-to-be with the Princess Mahulena’s theme, “Lovely Maiden with the Violin,” when the spotlight fell on the concertmaster.

Plenty of scurrying sounds sketched the “Game of Swans and Peacocks” intermezzo, apparently a game played by the young lovers (duck and goose, anyone?). The liveliness crested grandly into hints of massive carnival joy, bounced by the percussion, winds, and brass. While the printed program omitted the “Intermezzo” labeling from the ensuing movement, “Funeral Music,” you’ll find it preserved in the gorgeous digital program, where useful glosses on each section of the Enigma Variations also appear. Even before the twin tragedies would befall Suk, he a had natural talent for this lugubrious solemnity, initiated by the cellos and basses. There’s a uniquely queasy sound from the winds at this funeral that I jotted down as “nauseating” at first blush.

“The True Love” was long enough to elicit applause from audience members who weren’t following in their programs, but even though a percussionist pointedly rose at the end of “Funeral March” and readied his cymbals to launch the finale, more applause splurted forth to provide an extra gap before “Runa’s Curse and Victory of Love.” Subtitles above the stage cuing the beginning of movements could have prevented or muted these outbursts, which seem smilingly tolerated by the musicians rather than welcomed. The juicy story of Runa’s curse and the lovers’ escape, since Zeyer’s play will not likely ever be seen again, would have been a nice topping to the rising and falling episodes of the music, raucous in the wake of the cymbals before receding into a mellow calm with a lovely spot for clarinetist Taylor Marino.

Runa’s curse, the program or supertitles could have told us, turns the lovely Mahulena into a poplar tree and erases Radúz’s memory. Yet love – or fabulous luck – conquers all! The tragical Radúz somehow decides to chop down the poplar. Out pops Mahulena, breaking Runa’s curse and killing the witch. The last graceful decrescendo glided into a valedictory solo from concertmaster Lupanu evoking the Princess.

To be fair, adding supertitles to Reinhardt’s finely sculpted performance of Fairy Tale wouldn’t have come to mind if supertitles hadn’t proven to be such an enjoyable extra in CSO’s Enigma Variations, last given in 2010 with Christopher Warren-Green at the podium in an all-Elgar program – the program that featured Weilerstein’s Charlotte Symphony debut. Even if you had read the 15 blurbs from the digital program, occasionally condensed on the projections, you might not remember them all while the music was playing. As early as the second section, where the opening Andante slides smoothly into Variation I – (C.A.E.) L’istesso tempo, dedicated to his wife, you could lose track of where we were.

When we reached Variation XI (G.R.S.), for example, we could more fully be in the moment knowing that the piece wasn’t really about organist George Robertson Sinclair but about his bulldog plunging into a river. No doubt Elgar was purposely (needlessly?) cryptic in his Enigma dedications, as in the penultimate Variation XIII, dedicated to (***) rather than Lady Mary Lygon or a previous fiancée. The last, dedicated to himself, is initialed E.D.U. Word of warning: though this towering finale should be crowned with an obbligato organ, the impressive array of upstage organ pipes have never made a peep at Belk Theater since it opened in 1992. Temper your expectations if they’re on a Westminster Abbey scale.

Warren-Green always had a wonderful touch with programmatic music, usually engaging and helpful when he lent his bass-baritone to witty and concise spoken intros. Reinhardt had no less sensitivity or success with the music, so the supertitles added zest, flavor, and purpose to the music. But she never spoke to us, missing the opportunity to shape the occasion or even briefly add extra coherence to the program. This was Valentine’s Day, and all of the listed works were inspired by a wife or a fiancée.

Kern certainly personified the theme, playing the grand work inspired by its first soloist, Clara Schumann. It’s easy to forget the Cliburn Competition winner’s first appearances in Charlotte when she pounded Rachmaninoff to raucous submission before her Symphony debut. Carolinas Concert Association subscribers were absolutely besotted with her beauty and power in 2006 and 2007. Only when Alan Yamamoto reined her in on the Rach 2 later in 2007 could I jump onto the bandwagon. In the outer Allegro movements of the Schumann, she was certainly the powerhouse that Stephen Hough was when he gave the concerto here in 2014 with Warren-Green, and almost equaled his magical finesse in the beguiling middle movement Andantino. Two dazzling encores, immediately smashing the evening’s Valentine motif with the first, Gershwin’s “Fascinating Rhythm,” ensured that the devotion of her Charlotte fanbase would endure.