concert review: San Francisco Symphony
Feb. 11th, 2010 06:31 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
calimacModern British music tends to be seen as not traveling well to cultures without a British background, so to have two such pieces conducted by Charles Dutoit, a Swiss-French most famous for his long stint in Montreal, mocks the stereotype. In fact, this was one of those exquisite evenings that I take the trouble of going to the SFS for.
On previous visits, Dutoit has struck me as concerned with tone color to the exclusion of other musical qualities, but not this time. Holst's Planets proceeded with an intensity and flow that mocked my initial reaction, on seeing this program, of "oh no, not again." (Didn't he write anything else? If some orchestra around here will play Beni Mora or the Somerset Rhapsody, I will so be there.) Dutoit eschewed a propensity for inappropriately flexible tempos and kept Mars rolling at pace, stopping only to drag out one particularly blaring chord. Venus was wonderfully shaped (there's a line to take out of context), with even a sense of tension, instead of being given as a featureless break between livelier movements. Dutoit even kept enough control for the tricky ending of Neptune (where the orchestra stops playing entirely and the the offstage chorus just keeps singing the same two-note bar over and over, slowly fading away) under complete control.
And the quality of the orchestral sound was great, too. Heavy accents in Mars; the flute chorus at the opening of Saturn; tinkly harps in Neptune; and above all the moment when Uranus the Magician suddenly disappears in a sudden rising organ run, leaving only a hushed stillness, for once got all the power it deserved.
Also on the program, less overplayed, William Walton's Violin Concerto. If you can't hear this work from the original violinist, as Jascha Heifetz is long gone, how about from the original violin, as SFS concertmaster Alexander Barantschik as soloist was playing Heifetz's favorite Guarneri? Fine Heifetzian sound, especially for the double-stopped theme in parallel sixths in the second movement.
This concerto is late enough Walton that it sounds rather like Vaughan Williams, ironic considering that Walton had begun his career two decades earlier as the anti-VW. Even its spiky sections sound jaunty. In Dutoit's hands it was VW towards the French end, with influence from Delius (that most Frenchified of English composers) and Debussy. Again, well shaped, and captivating all the way through.
On previous visits, Dutoit has struck me as concerned with tone color to the exclusion of other musical qualities, but not this time. Holst's Planets proceeded with an intensity and flow that mocked my initial reaction, on seeing this program, of "oh no, not again." (Didn't he write anything else? If some orchestra around here will play Beni Mora or the Somerset Rhapsody, I will so be there.) Dutoit eschewed a propensity for inappropriately flexible tempos and kept Mars rolling at pace, stopping only to drag out one particularly blaring chord. Venus was wonderfully shaped (there's a line to take out of context), with even a sense of tension, instead of being given as a featureless break between livelier movements. Dutoit even kept enough control for the tricky ending of Neptune (where the orchestra stops playing entirely and the the offstage chorus just keeps singing the same two-note bar over and over, slowly fading away) under complete control.
And the quality of the orchestral sound was great, too. Heavy accents in Mars; the flute chorus at the opening of Saturn; tinkly harps in Neptune; and above all the moment when Uranus the Magician suddenly disappears in a sudden rising organ run, leaving only a hushed stillness, for once got all the power it deserved.
Also on the program, less overplayed, William Walton's Violin Concerto. If you can't hear this work from the original violinist, as Jascha Heifetz is long gone, how about from the original violin, as SFS concertmaster Alexander Barantschik as soloist was playing Heifetz's favorite Guarneri? Fine Heifetzian sound, especially for the double-stopped theme in parallel sixths in the second movement.
This concerto is late enough Walton that it sounds rather like Vaughan Williams, ironic considering that Walton had begun his career two decades earlier as the anti-VW. Even its spiky sections sound jaunty. In Dutoit's hands it was VW towards the French end, with influence from Delius (that most Frenchified of English composers) and Debussy. Again, well shaped, and captivating all the way through.
