concert review: San Francisco Symphony
Feb. 27th, 2026 04:32 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
calimacThe problem with Mozart's Requiem is that he didn't live to finish it (ironically, since it's a requiem), and the substitute composers drafted in to complete the commission were not, frankly, very good. As a result a complete performance trails off awkwardly in the last few movements.
Various ideas have been tried to rescue the work from this problem. Today we had Manfred Honeck, music director from Pittsburgh, in to conduct his version. His plan is simply to cut out the parts Mozart had nothing to do with, and beef up the work by inserting other material. Sticking Ave Verum Corpus, a brief motet Mozart had written not much earlier, at the end was the conventional part of the plan; I've heard that done before, and it's a fine motet, so that works well. Also stuck in here, mostly as prelude but some as interludes, were other appropriate Mozart pieces, a movement from a Vespers and the Masonic Funeral Music, some Gregorian chants sung offstage by an almost inaudible male chorus, and some spoken readings, including the bit from Revelations about the Dies Irae, instantly followed by the music plunging into that movement of the Requiem.
The intent was to frame the work as a memorial for Mozart himself (highlighted by one of the readings being his letter to his dying father on the consolations of death), which was abruptly turned into a memorial for Joshua Robison, former SFS music director Michael Tilson Thomas's husband, who died last week. What it meant musically is that this was a very heavy, almost dragging, performance especially of the slow portions. I didn't find it very compelling artistically. That's a pity, because the performers (at least the ones onstage) were excellent, notably the Symphony Chorus which was as strong and rich as it's always been since Jenny Wong took over direction, and the soloists who don't get a lot, but of the four of them, all vivid with fine voices, the great Sasha Cooke stood out most.
Also on the program (the rebuilt Requiem took about an hour), works by Mozart's fellow Vienna classicists: Haydn's lively and quirky Symphony No. 93, and Beethoven's imposing Coriolan Overture, both more effectively put across than the main event.
Various ideas have been tried to rescue the work from this problem. Today we had Manfred Honeck, music director from Pittsburgh, in to conduct his version. His plan is simply to cut out the parts Mozart had nothing to do with, and beef up the work by inserting other material. Sticking Ave Verum Corpus, a brief motet Mozart had written not much earlier, at the end was the conventional part of the plan; I've heard that done before, and it's a fine motet, so that works well. Also stuck in here, mostly as prelude but some as interludes, were other appropriate Mozart pieces, a movement from a Vespers and the Masonic Funeral Music, some Gregorian chants sung offstage by an almost inaudible male chorus, and some spoken readings, including the bit from Revelations about the Dies Irae, instantly followed by the music plunging into that movement of the Requiem.
The intent was to frame the work as a memorial for Mozart himself (highlighted by one of the readings being his letter to his dying father on the consolations of death), which was abruptly turned into a memorial for Joshua Robison, former SFS music director Michael Tilson Thomas's husband, who died last week. What it meant musically is that this was a very heavy, almost dragging, performance especially of the slow portions. I didn't find it very compelling artistically. That's a pity, because the performers (at least the ones onstage) were excellent, notably the Symphony Chorus which was as strong and rich as it's always been since Jenny Wong took over direction, and the soloists who don't get a lot, but of the four of them, all vivid with fine voices, the great Sasha Cooke stood out most.
Also on the program (the rebuilt Requiem took about an hour), works by Mozart's fellow Vienna classicists: Haydn's lively and quirky Symphony No. 93, and Beethoven's imposing Coriolan Overture, both more effectively put across than the main event.
