concert review: Symphony Silicon Valley
Mar. 18th, 2007 12:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
calimacI was originally scheduled to review last night's concert for SFCV, but a few days ago my editor phoned me up to say that their appetite for reviews had rather outrun the writing and editorial budget, so some items including this one were getting the axe. His mournful tone, and the urgency with which cuts were being imposed, sounded rather as if the site's very existence were at imminent stake, but further inquiry produced calming words on that score.
So I'll just have to tell you about this concert instead. It was SSV all over: glimpses of the potential for greatness, never fulfilled, and an object lesson in the profound differences in types of music.
Ravel's Bolero and Kodaly's Hary Janos Suite are all what might be called theatrical music: both Bolero (originally ballet music famous for its steady rhythm) and the individual movements of Hary Janos (orchestral excerpts from an opera) are built on steady platforms. There's plenty of room for expressing dramatic character and individual personality - which these performances did - but no attempt at large-scale integrated symphonic development. And these were fine performances. Bolero was gifted with some rather, um, individualistic interpretations, but some of these were outstanding; and the orchestra was responsive to conductor Leslie Dunner's dramatic approach to the jerky, irregular movement of Hary Janos.
But a symphony is different. It wasn't that the playing of Copland's Third was actively bad - though it's symptomatic that suddenly there were a lot of flubbed notes that the other works hadn't had, including one wowser in the horn the likes of which I'd never before heard - it's that the piece didn't hang together; it didn't add up. A good symphony is all about organic development, mutation of themes and moods, and the flowing together of sections. This didn't flow, but just changed gears. Nothing seemed to follow organically from what came before; the melodies had no lyric flow; and the climaxes built without any grandeur or majesty. The performance lacked vision, a quality that's hard to point to but easily heard - or not heard.
The net result was the kind of concert that gives rise to the belief that light music is fun but symphonies are boring. They don't have to be, and they aren't always, but this piece could have had a better case made for it.
So I'll just have to tell you about this concert instead. It was SSV all over: glimpses of the potential for greatness, never fulfilled, and an object lesson in the profound differences in types of music.
Ravel's Bolero and Kodaly's Hary Janos Suite are all what might be called theatrical music: both Bolero (originally ballet music famous for its steady rhythm) and the individual movements of Hary Janos (orchestral excerpts from an opera) are built on steady platforms. There's plenty of room for expressing dramatic character and individual personality - which these performances did - but no attempt at large-scale integrated symphonic development. And these were fine performances. Bolero was gifted with some rather, um, individualistic interpretations, but some of these were outstanding; and the orchestra was responsive to conductor Leslie Dunner's dramatic approach to the jerky, irregular movement of Hary Janos.
But a symphony is different. It wasn't that the playing of Copland's Third was actively bad - though it's symptomatic that suddenly there were a lot of flubbed notes that the other works hadn't had, including one wowser in the horn the likes of which I'd never before heard - it's that the piece didn't hang together; it didn't add up. A good symphony is all about organic development, mutation of themes and moods, and the flowing together of sections. This didn't flow, but just changed gears. Nothing seemed to follow organically from what came before; the melodies had no lyric flow; and the climaxes built without any grandeur or majesty. The performance lacked vision, a quality that's hard to point to but easily heard - or not heard.
The net result was the kind of concert that gives rise to the belief that light music is fun but symphonies are boring. They don't have to be, and they aren't always, but this piece could have had a better case made for it.
