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concert review: Symphony Silicon Valley
Sep. 28th, 2008 10:22 amMaybe somebody's listening to me.
The last time conductor Leslie Dunner was here, his program was all 20th-century, like this one. But while the ballet and other theatrical works on the program went well enough, the big serious symphony was a disaster.
So last night, on his return, he led a concert of - three ballet suites. That's playing to your strengths.
Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet is a work I've heard more than often enough recently. But this performance of ten pieces from the suites won me over. Though not quite technically flawless, SSV brought commitment and life to the music that even the San Francisco Symphony could learn from. The bounce and crispness of the rhythm were excellent, making pieces like the Aubade a particular delight. But what was really outstanding was the sound of the playing: dry and clean, precise and separated, perfect for Prokofiev. All the sections of the orchestra deserve credit, but it was best in the strings, particularly the violas, which I'm beginning to think are SSV's secret weapon. This was the first time the "Romeo at the Grave of Juliet" movement really felt that it belonged in the same work as the Knights' Dance (the outer, heavier parts of "Montagues and Capulets") or "The Death of Tybalt". No drip or soppiness, it had the cold, powerful anguish of one of the great Shostakovich adagios.
Alberto Ginastera's Estancia suite, which opened the program, though lively and colorful and fast-moving enough, somehow seemed to drag, leaden-footed, a bit. Perhaps that was because after you've heard Gustavo Dudamel and his Venezuelan students play this work, nobody else can match it. On the other hand, when SSV repeated the final foot-stomping Malambo as an encore at the end of the concert, it went much better, so maybe they just needed to get warmed up: this was, after all, the first concert of the season.
The remaining work, Duke Ellington's The River, I'd never heard before. It opens with a horn solo: for a moment I thought the first note was a bobble, but after hearing the style of the rest of the solo I'm guessing the composer meant it that way. Though there are a few blatant jazz touches, like the drum kit, for the most part it doesn't sound like jazz at all, and I liked it much better than his annoying Black, Brown and Beige that the orchestra played a couple years ago. Ellington has hit here on a way to sound distinctively American that's quite different from the white American nationalist school of his generation (which had been pretty much abandoned by the time this work was written, 1970, during which serialist-dominated era it must have been a real breath of fresh sound).
The last time conductor Leslie Dunner was here, his program was all 20th-century, like this one. But while the ballet and other theatrical works on the program went well enough, the big serious symphony was a disaster.
So last night, on his return, he led a concert of - three ballet suites. That's playing to your strengths.
Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet is a work I've heard more than often enough recently. But this performance of ten pieces from the suites won me over. Though not quite technically flawless, SSV brought commitment and life to the music that even the San Francisco Symphony could learn from. The bounce and crispness of the rhythm were excellent, making pieces like the Aubade a particular delight. But what was really outstanding was the sound of the playing: dry and clean, precise and separated, perfect for Prokofiev. All the sections of the orchestra deserve credit, but it was best in the strings, particularly the violas, which I'm beginning to think are SSV's secret weapon. This was the first time the "Romeo at the Grave of Juliet" movement really felt that it belonged in the same work as the Knights' Dance (the outer, heavier parts of "Montagues and Capulets") or "The Death of Tybalt". No drip or soppiness, it had the cold, powerful anguish of one of the great Shostakovich adagios.
Alberto Ginastera's Estancia suite, which opened the program, though lively and colorful and fast-moving enough, somehow seemed to drag, leaden-footed, a bit. Perhaps that was because after you've heard Gustavo Dudamel and his Venezuelan students play this work, nobody else can match it. On the other hand, when SSV repeated the final foot-stomping Malambo as an encore at the end of the concert, it went much better, so maybe they just needed to get warmed up: this was, after all, the first concert of the season.
The remaining work, Duke Ellington's The River, I'd never heard before. It opens with a horn solo: for a moment I thought the first note was a bobble, but after hearing the style of the rest of the solo I'm guessing the composer meant it that way. Though there are a few blatant jazz touches, like the drum kit, for the most part it doesn't sound like jazz at all, and I liked it much better than his annoying Black, Brown and Beige that the orchestra played a couple years ago. Ellington has hit here on a way to sound distinctively American that's quite different from the white American nationalist school of his generation (which had been pretty much abandoned by the time this work was written, 1970, during which serialist-dominated era it must have been a real breath of fresh sound).
