concert review: Symphony Silicon Valley
Mar. 29th, 2009 12:24 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
calimacNow my editors are soliciting not just reviews, but previews.
It makes sense. Books and (post the invention of the VCR) movies don't go away; stage shows often stick around for at least a while; but classical music concerts are usually only given three times on successive or near-successive days if more than once at all, so add in publication time and attendee-planning time and the review is often of little help to anyone who might be inspired by the review to go hear it.
SFCV has long run upcoming-concert greatest-hits paragraphs; now we're doing full-length previews. Like this one from me.
I'm still working out how best to write a preview. I'm treating it as a kind of core dump of the thoughts about the works and performers that I have in mind as I go in to a concert. I want to avoid writing merely a puff piece about the performers, or (a greater tendency for me) program notes about the music.
So now the preview's over; how was the concert?
SSV can be an inconsistent orchestra. Sometimes I've written that something looks a promising concert, but then it falls flat. This one didn't. This time the orchestra measured up to the best that the big city to the north can offer. Even the weak sections were strong.
The bigger pieces got all the attention, but for me the real revelation was Berlioz' Roman Carnival Overture. I'd written that it "needs a firm hand from the conductor if it’s not to wander around aimlessly. George Cleve is more than capable of providing that firm hand" - and he did. I have never heard this piece sound more coherent, more concise and logically successive.
I didn't quite get Cleve's structural approach to Dvorak's Symphony from the New World, though. There were some odd tempo juxtapositions. However. With just a couple small exceptions (at one point the brass drowned out the strings when they shouldn't; maybe 12 first violins aren't enough after all?), the orchestral sound and balance was splendid. The French horns were exquisite. Not to forget the English horn. The famous "Goin' Home" theme in the slow movement didn't pile on the poignancy in this interpretation.* The sound was broad and fat, a perfect illustration of why the composer wrote it for the English horn and not the oboe. It was an approach well suited for blending: the brief passage where the clarinet joins in was a lovely melding of sound altogether typical of this performance.
Then there was the Brahms Violin Concerto. The question was, would Ju-Young Baek, who simply burned her way through the Sibelius Concerto on a previous visit, do the same here? Not quite in the same way, it turned out: Cleve's approach as conductor was more reflective than Paul Polivnick's had been with the Sibelius. Baek's performance here was outstandingly expressive. When growling was appropriate, particularly in the tough, dramatic approach to the first movement, she growled - and then switched instantly to sweetness, like a great actor in command of a complex role. The slow movement had a high lightness without any of the strain she applied topically to some of the knottier passages where it belonged. And the finale melted away at the very end, much like many passages in the Dvorak. I haven't heard so fine a performance of this concerto, oh, since Isaac Stern died.
*At the very end of the movement, the strings play the melody with pauses in it. This usually comes across as if they're weeping, so strongly that for a moment they can't go on. Not this time. It was more like a proto-Cagean experiment at putting random rests in the score.
It makes sense. Books and (post the invention of the VCR) movies don't go away; stage shows often stick around for at least a while; but classical music concerts are usually only given three times on successive or near-successive days if more than once at all, so add in publication time and attendee-planning time and the review is often of little help to anyone who might be inspired by the review to go hear it.
SFCV has long run upcoming-concert greatest-hits paragraphs; now we're doing full-length previews. Like this one from me.
I'm still working out how best to write a preview. I'm treating it as a kind of core dump of the thoughts about the works and performers that I have in mind as I go in to a concert. I want to avoid writing merely a puff piece about the performers, or (a greater tendency for me) program notes about the music.
So now the preview's over; how was the concert?
SSV can be an inconsistent orchestra. Sometimes I've written that something looks a promising concert, but then it falls flat. This one didn't. This time the orchestra measured up to the best that the big city to the north can offer. Even the weak sections were strong.
The bigger pieces got all the attention, but for me the real revelation was Berlioz' Roman Carnival Overture. I'd written that it "needs a firm hand from the conductor if it’s not to wander around aimlessly. George Cleve is more than capable of providing that firm hand" - and he did. I have never heard this piece sound more coherent, more concise and logically successive.
I didn't quite get Cleve's structural approach to Dvorak's Symphony from the New World, though. There were some odd tempo juxtapositions. However. With just a couple small exceptions (at one point the brass drowned out the strings when they shouldn't; maybe 12 first violins aren't enough after all?), the orchestral sound and balance was splendid. The French horns were exquisite. Not to forget the English horn. The famous "Goin' Home" theme in the slow movement didn't pile on the poignancy in this interpretation.* The sound was broad and fat, a perfect illustration of why the composer wrote it for the English horn and not the oboe. It was an approach well suited for blending: the brief passage where the clarinet joins in was a lovely melding of sound altogether typical of this performance.
Then there was the Brahms Violin Concerto. The question was, would Ju-Young Baek, who simply burned her way through the Sibelius Concerto on a previous visit, do the same here? Not quite in the same way, it turned out: Cleve's approach as conductor was more reflective than Paul Polivnick's had been with the Sibelius. Baek's performance here was outstandingly expressive. When growling was appropriate, particularly in the tough, dramatic approach to the first movement, she growled - and then switched instantly to sweetness, like a great actor in command of a complex role. The slow movement had a high lightness without any of the strain she applied topically to some of the knottier passages where it belonged. And the finale melted away at the very end, much like many passages in the Dvorak. I haven't heard so fine a performance of this concerto, oh, since Isaac Stern died.
*At the very end of the movement, the strings play the melody with pauses in it. This usually comes across as if they're weeping, so strongly that for a moment they can't go on. Not this time. It was more like a proto-Cagean experiment at putting random rests in the score.
