concert review: San Francisco Symphony
Oct. 8th, 2009 09:57 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
calimacYesterday's concert included satisfying performances of two works deserving of their status as established masterpieces: Haydn's "Surprise" Symphony, led briskly by David Robertson with a combination of courtliness and vehemence; and a more leisurely ramble through Brahms's Second Piano Concerto, played with gratifying lightness and grace by the Ursa Major of pianists, Yefim Bronfman, with luminous accompaniment from the orchestra.
Also on the program, however, was Carlo by Brett Dean, a "young" (said the pre-concert lecturer: he's 48 this month) Australian composer, for small string orchestra and recorded voices on tape. It begins with the tape singing a Renaissance madrigal by Don Carlo Gesualdo; gradually the strings take over, in a manner as if your car radio were slowly losing Gesualdo's signal and picking up a station playing Ligeti. As the Gesualdo finally disappears, the strings extend its harmonic line for a bit, mixed with their Ligetian keening in a manner akin to Luciano Berio rubbing his grubby hands all over Schubert. Then the tape comes back, the voices loudly amplified but whispering, like something out of George Crumb. Then the strings give out low agonized rumblings from Penderecki, then drones from Giacinto Scelsi. And it goes on like that for twenty minutes, reminding me by turns of all the late 20th-century composers I least want to be reminded of. Later on the voices howl like dispirited dogs.
By any standards I can comprehend by which the Haydn and Brahms are "great music," this piece was "worthless crap." So what was it doing there? If Robertson has standards by which he considers Dean's work worth putting on this concert, it suggests that he values Haydn and Brahms too not for their beauty or majesty or depth or subtlety, but by standards I cannot comprehend, rather like the people who seem to think the value of The Lord of the Rings lies in its ability to inspire dull, overlong war-fantasy-adventure movies.
Also on the program, however, was Carlo by Brett Dean, a "young" (said the pre-concert lecturer: he's 48 this month) Australian composer, for small string orchestra and recorded voices on tape. It begins with the tape singing a Renaissance madrigal by Don Carlo Gesualdo; gradually the strings take over, in a manner as if your car radio were slowly losing Gesualdo's signal and picking up a station playing Ligeti. As the Gesualdo finally disappears, the strings extend its harmonic line for a bit, mixed with their Ligetian keening in a manner akin to Luciano Berio rubbing his grubby hands all over Schubert. Then the tape comes back, the voices loudly amplified but whispering, like something out of George Crumb. Then the strings give out low agonized rumblings from Penderecki, then drones from Giacinto Scelsi. And it goes on like that for twenty minutes, reminding me by turns of all the late 20th-century composers I least want to be reminded of. Later on the voices howl like dispirited dogs.
By any standards I can comprehend by which the Haydn and Brahms are "great music," this piece was "worthless crap." So what was it doing there? If Robertson has standards by which he considers Dean's work worth putting on this concert, it suggests that he values Haydn and Brahms too not for their beauty or majesty or depth or subtlety, but by standards I cannot comprehend, rather like the people who seem to think the value of The Lord of the Rings lies in its ability to inspire dull, overlong war-fantasy-adventure movies.
