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concert review: San Francisco Symphony
Jan. 5th, 2006 08:40 amGuest conductor was a Brit named Mark Wigglesworth (with a surname like that, he's not likely to be anything else) who's been here before.
He first gave us "The Flight of Icarus", a composition by his compatriot John Pickard. Pickard (not to be confused with Picker) writes in the international style shared by most composers I've heard who are now middle-aged (he's 42, though he wrote this piece at 27): bright and brittle, full of percussion tattoos and canonic brass passages that sound like flubs (but with this orchestra undoubtably aren't), with nearly inaudible churning strings underneath; heavy punctuation but no obvious rhythm; all written in a semi-quasi-tonal idiom. Notable, but not very interesting.
Followed by two mid-period Viennese classics, which made me wonder as I often do: at what point between 1795 and 1990 was a law passed requiring classical music to no longer be beautiful?
Beethoven's First Piano Concerto was the first classical concerto I ever heard, long ago, and it's still a favorite. The remarkable young Chinese pianist Lang Lang played very percussively but with a light touch, paying special attention to being audible during tutti passages. That the orchestra was small helped, but his tone is very carrying. As an encore, he gave us a transcription of a Chinese song about moonlight on the water, and yes it did sound a little, but only a little, like the opening of the Moonlight Sonata.
After intermission, Haydn's Symphony No. 99, one of the half-dozen from his second trip to London. Played with speed and vigor, as if it were from the Sturm und Drang. Wigglesworth concentrated on blending together the sections within the movements, but he came to a complete stop at the false ending in the finale, fooling half the audience into thinking the piece was over.
The guy sitting next to me - young, Hispanic, not your stereotypical concert-goer - tapped his seat all during the Haydn. I guess he was enjoying it.
He first gave us "The Flight of Icarus", a composition by his compatriot John Pickard. Pickard (not to be confused with Picker) writes in the international style shared by most composers I've heard who are now middle-aged (he's 42, though he wrote this piece at 27): bright and brittle, full of percussion tattoos and canonic brass passages that sound like flubs (but with this orchestra undoubtably aren't), with nearly inaudible churning strings underneath; heavy punctuation but no obvious rhythm; all written in a semi-quasi-tonal idiom. Notable, but not very interesting.
Followed by two mid-period Viennese classics, which made me wonder as I often do: at what point between 1795 and 1990 was a law passed requiring classical music to no longer be beautiful?
Beethoven's First Piano Concerto was the first classical concerto I ever heard, long ago, and it's still a favorite. The remarkable young Chinese pianist Lang Lang played very percussively but with a light touch, paying special attention to being audible during tutti passages. That the orchestra was small helped, but his tone is very carrying. As an encore, he gave us a transcription of a Chinese song about moonlight on the water, and yes it did sound a little, but only a little, like the opening of the Moonlight Sonata.
After intermission, Haydn's Symphony No. 99, one of the half-dozen from his second trip to London. Played with speed and vigor, as if it were from the Sturm und Drang. Wigglesworth concentrated on blending together the sections within the movements, but he came to a complete stop at the false ending in the finale, fooling half the audience into thinking the piece was over.
The guy sitting next to me - young, Hispanic, not your stereotypical concert-goer - tapped his seat all during the Haydn. I guess he was enjoying it.
