Concert review: San Francisco Symphony

Charles Dutoit, formerly of the Montreal Symphony, came to visit. He's a conductor I've rarely had a chance to hear, and never live before. Not surprisingly, his style is very French. This worked fine on that exquisite little gem, Ravel's Ma Mere l'Oye, but sounded a bit unusual in Schumann's Piano Concerto. Notes dropped like pearls from the fingers of pianist Louis Lortie (substituting for Martha Argerich, out with bronchitis, and who wants a coughing pianist?), but they were French pearls. Except for some sudden movement during the climaxes, it was quiet, contemplative, even meandering. If Chopin had written Schumann's Piano Concerto, this is what it would have sounded like. A very fine performance, but a bit out of the ordinary.

Would Dutoit attempt the same style on Prokofiev's Sixth Symphony? This is a tough and gnarly work, the most forbidding of Prokofiev's Soviet period, a favorite of mine and a hidden gem of the modernist repertoire. No, Dutoit did not try to play it as if it were by Messiaen, though he could have. Still, I felt as if the glories of this performance were more moment-by-moment than in the overall structure, which dragged at times. And would Dutoit actually impose a ritard in the middle of a march? He would.

So I wasn't overwhelmed by the conception of this interpretation, but the performance was something else. The orchestra was exquisite and unearthly, just as tough and gnarly as Prokofiev wanted. Those thumps and growls emitting in perfect synchrony from the piano, timpani, trombones and tuba were terrific. (Now I've made you never want to hear this work, right? Hey, it's still late Prokofiev: both exciting and beautiful as well as tough.)

Ran into spikeiowa and Tom in the hall: I've seen them there before.