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concert review: San Francisco Symphony
Nov. 16th, 2006 12:28 pmI attended a World Premiere last night. Piano Concerto No. 2, "Atlantic Crossing," by Kevin Volans. Unlike the last major SFS premiere I attended (Michael Torke's Brick Symphony), I did not find this very enlightening.
Volans is a white South African best known for his semi-minimalist semi-African-folk piece White Man Sleeps recorded by the Kronos Quartet. But by the time that CD came out, Volans, who'd moved to Ireland, had gotten tired of being identified as an African roots composer and tried to change his style. This concerto is, he says, his tribute to the big fat late Romantic piano concertos of yore. And it was certainly reminiscent of a Rachmaninoff concerto - or more accurately a bad performance of a Rachmaninoff concerto - in one way, which is that no matter how much soloist Marc-André Hamelin tried to storm up and down the keyboard, I couldn't hear anything he played. Paradoxical as it may sound, this concerto was so noisy that I couldn't hear anything that anybody else played either. (You've heard of the bar that's so crowded that nobody goes there any more?) The strings screeched mechanically, the winds and brass did something or other, and the orchestration was a complete mess. All that stood out were the two sets of bass timpani, which emitted what sounded far more like the irregular rhythms of African drums than I'd expect from a composer who claims he no longer wants to sound African. At times the music did sound minimalist, though it appears that all that Volans has picked up from minimalism is that it has a lot of repetition in it, which is rather like a fantasy writer who's observed that LOTR has a lot of battles in it.
Volans, a rather nebbishy-looking fellow, made his curtain call wearing a remarkably hideous red velvet jacket. I guess a man with that taste in clothes could write this kind of music.
Why MTT chose to surround the concerto with not one but two hunks of pure Russian is anybody's guess. Mily Balakirev was, more than anyone else (even Glinka), the inventor of the classic Russian Romantic sound, with the colorful orchestration and the broad hollow tuttis, and his short piece In Russia was of his first essays in that style. After intermission came Shostakovich's Fifth Symphony. The first movement began as restrained and sedately as possible; MTT was husbanding up energy to burst forth at the climax of the movement. But having the climax jump out like that, instead of growing organically, made it sound disconnected and rather whiny, as if Mahler had written it. But it was certainly powerful. At one point MTT seemed to be pounding the lectern (where the score sits) with his fist, in time with the timpani beats. I've never seen a conductor do something like that before.
The scherzo was light and coy instead of vehement - again, more like Mahler than like Shostakovich; the third movement, normally the heart of the symphony, came out as a pale reflection of the first. And the finale tended to the slow and stately (though I've heard it much slower). Whether that was Mahlerian or not I don't know, as I've rarely gotten that far in a Mahler symphony.
Volans is a white South African best known for his semi-minimalist semi-African-folk piece White Man Sleeps recorded by the Kronos Quartet. But by the time that CD came out, Volans, who'd moved to Ireland, had gotten tired of being identified as an African roots composer and tried to change his style. This concerto is, he says, his tribute to the big fat late Romantic piano concertos of yore. And it was certainly reminiscent of a Rachmaninoff concerto - or more accurately a bad performance of a Rachmaninoff concerto - in one way, which is that no matter how much soloist Marc-André Hamelin tried to storm up and down the keyboard, I couldn't hear anything he played. Paradoxical as it may sound, this concerto was so noisy that I couldn't hear anything that anybody else played either. (You've heard of the bar that's so crowded that nobody goes there any more?) The strings screeched mechanically, the winds and brass did something or other, and the orchestration was a complete mess. All that stood out were the two sets of bass timpani, which emitted what sounded far more like the irregular rhythms of African drums than I'd expect from a composer who claims he no longer wants to sound African. At times the music did sound minimalist, though it appears that all that Volans has picked up from minimalism is that it has a lot of repetition in it, which is rather like a fantasy writer who's observed that LOTR has a lot of battles in it.
Volans, a rather nebbishy-looking fellow, made his curtain call wearing a remarkably hideous red velvet jacket. I guess a man with that taste in clothes could write this kind of music.
Why MTT chose to surround the concerto with not one but two hunks of pure Russian is anybody's guess. Mily Balakirev was, more than anyone else (even Glinka), the inventor of the classic Russian Romantic sound, with the colorful orchestration and the broad hollow tuttis, and his short piece In Russia was of his first essays in that style. After intermission came Shostakovich's Fifth Symphony. The first movement began as restrained and sedately as possible; MTT was husbanding up energy to burst forth at the climax of the movement. But having the climax jump out like that, instead of growing organically, made it sound disconnected and rather whiny, as if Mahler had written it. But it was certainly powerful. At one point MTT seemed to be pounding the lectern (where the score sits) with his fist, in time with the timpani beats. I've never seen a conductor do something like that before.
The scherzo was light and coy instead of vehement - again, more like Mahler than like Shostakovich; the third movement, normally the heart of the symphony, came out as a pale reflection of the first. And the finale tended to the slow and stately (though I've heard it much slower). Whether that was Mahlerian or not I don't know, as I've rarely gotten that far in a Mahler symphony.
