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concerts review: San Francisco Symphony
Jul. 1st, 2005 06:45 pmThis year the Symphony's annual special music festival focused on Jewish American music, although that's not exactly the title they used. I skipped the Michael Feinstein song recital (not exactly to my taste) and the semi-staged double-bill of the Gershwins' Of Thee I Sing and its sequel Let 'Em Eat Cake. I've seen Of Thee I Sing once, and once was enough; and Let 'Em Eat Cake lives in deep obscurity which it is said richly to deserve.
But I did get to two other concerts. An evening of works by Copland and Bernstein did not focus on their specifically Jewish works, but nobody said it had to. These are composers who must be played with rhythmic exactitude, something which some orchestras took a while to figure out, but it came naturally here. The striking feature was the sonority. Copland's "Our Town" rang out with a stark richness that made me think of a medieval Entrata, and "Billy the Kid" made a perfect 20-years-earlier precursor to Bernstein's "Symphonic Dances" suite from West Side Story that followed it.
Also on the program, Bernstein's "Arias and Barcarolles," a song cycle that was his last work. The title dates back to some thirty years before: after Bernstein had played "Rhapsody in Blue" at a White House concert, Eisenhower had told him that he liked the music: it was tuneful and enjoyable, "not like them arias and barcarolles." What on earth Eisenhower meant by that, nobody knows, but Bernstein saved the title. Eisenhower would not have liked this: the songs, an assorted bag in topic and style, were more character pieces than lyrical melodies. The singers (soprano and baritone) handled them well.
The festival highlight was the previous evening's tribute to Yiddish theatre. What do I know from Yiddish theatre? Nothing, actually; but I thought I might learn something, so I nabbed a ticket. So did a lot of other people: this one sold out amazingly fast, and the box office started offering tickets to the rehearsal.
The evening took the form of a musical biography of Yiddish theatre stars Boris and Bessie Thomashefsky, hosted by Symphony music director Michael Tilson Thomas, who happens to be their grandson. MTT has never kept a secret of his family history or that he was close to his grandmother as a boy (Boris had already died), so why he hasn't previously exploited this amazing musical connection escapes me. The music is not classical by any definition, but genre boundaries have never otherwise stopped MTT from exploring anything he wants to.
So: an evening's worth of Yiddish songs enthusiastically rendered in the original language (special note to Judy Blazer doing Bessie's parts), framed by translated readings from their writings and memoirs (Bessie's beauty column advising women to wash their necks) and MTT's historical narrations and reminiscences. In 1906 the Thomashefskys scored a big hit with a comedy about a greenhorn called Der griner bokher starring Bessie as the "green boy" of the title. MTT recounted how this was followed by a succession of knockoff sequels - the green maid, the green musician, the green schlemiel, etc etc - while Judy Blazer frantically ran around the stage changing hats to fit each role. Most of the instrumental parts were reconstructions: the sound was early theater pit orchestra (melodies in brass and clarinet, strings for harmony, small-drum kit with cymbal for rhythm). Though hardly klezmer, the melodic lines were recognizably Ashkenazic in style. By far the best songs were from a 1909 show by Arnold Perlmutter and Herman Wohl titled Dos pintele yid. Altogether a most amusing and highly informative evening.
But I did get to two other concerts. An evening of works by Copland and Bernstein did not focus on their specifically Jewish works, but nobody said it had to. These are composers who must be played with rhythmic exactitude, something which some orchestras took a while to figure out, but it came naturally here. The striking feature was the sonority. Copland's "Our Town" rang out with a stark richness that made me think of a medieval Entrata, and "Billy the Kid" made a perfect 20-years-earlier precursor to Bernstein's "Symphonic Dances" suite from West Side Story that followed it.
Also on the program, Bernstein's "Arias and Barcarolles," a song cycle that was his last work. The title dates back to some thirty years before: after Bernstein had played "Rhapsody in Blue" at a White House concert, Eisenhower had told him that he liked the music: it was tuneful and enjoyable, "not like them arias and barcarolles." What on earth Eisenhower meant by that, nobody knows, but Bernstein saved the title. Eisenhower would not have liked this: the songs, an assorted bag in topic and style, were more character pieces than lyrical melodies. The singers (soprano and baritone) handled them well.
The festival highlight was the previous evening's tribute to Yiddish theatre. What do I know from Yiddish theatre? Nothing, actually; but I thought I might learn something, so I nabbed a ticket. So did a lot of other people: this one sold out amazingly fast, and the box office started offering tickets to the rehearsal.
The evening took the form of a musical biography of Yiddish theatre stars Boris and Bessie Thomashefsky, hosted by Symphony music director Michael Tilson Thomas, who happens to be their grandson. MTT has never kept a secret of his family history or that he was close to his grandmother as a boy (Boris had already died), so why he hasn't previously exploited this amazing musical connection escapes me. The music is not classical by any definition, but genre boundaries have never otherwise stopped MTT from exploring anything he wants to.
So: an evening's worth of Yiddish songs enthusiastically rendered in the original language (special note to Judy Blazer doing Bessie's parts), framed by translated readings from their writings and memoirs (Bessie's beauty column advising women to wash their necks) and MTT's historical narrations and reminiscences. In 1906 the Thomashefskys scored a big hit with a comedy about a greenhorn called Der griner bokher starring Bessie as the "green boy" of the title. MTT recounted how this was followed by a succession of knockoff sequels - the green maid, the green musician, the green schlemiel, etc etc - while Judy Blazer frantically ran around the stage changing hats to fit each role. Most of the instrumental parts were reconstructions: the sound was early theater pit orchestra (melodies in brass and clarinet, strings for harmony, small-drum kit with cymbal for rhythm). Though hardly klezmer, the melodic lines were recognizably Ashkenazic in style. By far the best songs were from a 1909 show by Arnold Perlmutter and Herman Wohl titled Dos pintele yid. Altogether a most amusing and highly informative evening.
