concert review: San Francisco Symphony

[calimac]

You've heard Carmina Burana before - if you're me, you've heard it many times - but you haven't heard it like this. There have been performances more colorful or more full of character, but none with such sizzling rhythmic vitality. And rhythm is what this post-Stravinskian work is all about. Carlos Kalmar of the Oregon Symphony conducted, and he really put the crisp punch in. Truly stunning. He also gave every passage that was tutti and forte at about twice the speed of those that were not.

That was the good part. Haydn's Symphony No. 97 was dull, and one of those Schnittke pieces where he chops up bits of Mozart on a cutting board and runs them through a blender was pointless.

ETA: So Thursday noon my editor phones and asks if I can cover one of the later performances. "I heard that last night," I say, and agree to at least try writing a review out of it. Turns out I did have my reviewing ears on, because with some cannibalization from this post and comments, plus h/t to DGK for the observation on MTT, and a side swipe at Joshua Kosman of the Chronicle, who hated the performance for reasons of his own, it came out here.

Comments

[irontongue.livejournal.com]

I'm not a fan of Carmina, which is one of the few pieces I've performed that I wound up disliking. One reason is that I was very familiar with Les Noces, and the Carmina performance I was in used two pianos - the Stony Brook choruses didn't have the money to hire an orchestra. I'll just say that in the two-piano version, it's very, very clear just how much of an influence Les Noces was on Carmina, to the point where I would call it Stravinskian rather than post-Stravinskian.

[(Anonymous)]

First, I like Carmina Burana a lot.

Second, "rhythm is what this post-Stravinskian work is all about," agreed; but isn't the proper interrelationship of tempos (and correct tempos in general) an important part of rhythm? (Stravinsky certainly thought so.)

I bear a permanent psychic scar from hearing Michael Tilson-Thomas' popular 1974 recording on Columbia, where in "Fortune plango vulnera" (the second number) he treats the three sections of the number as three separate tempos, each much faster than the previous. Looking at the score, the second section is marked "a2" (meaning cut the beat in half, yes? not move faster? not change tempo?); the third section in fact is marked "piu mosso" (faster), but there is again no change of tempo indicated. In Rafael Frubeck de Burgos' performance on EMI, the pulse stays the same throughout, only the decreasing note values giving the illusion of acceleration, which (to me) gives the number its rhythmical meaning.

From your description, "every passage that was tutti and forte [was] at about twice the speed of those that were not," this recent performance was in the Tilson-Thomas tradition, and I would have hated it.

Don Keller

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

The rhythmic changes may have been eccentric, but the individual rhythms were as crisp, clear, and punchy as could be desired. Inter-related but separable considerations. It was odd; what it wasn't was flaccid.

[irontongue.livejournal.com]

I was fascinated that you and Joshua had such different reactions, which half made me wish I'd been at the performance, since I've disagreed violently with both of you on various occasions.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

Sometimes I understand reviewing judgments that differ from my own. This one I didn't. I was incredulous. My comments imply my best guess at an answer: reading between his lines, it seems he despises Carmina Burana so intensely that he only tolerates it for the tunes, and his antipathy runs to the point where he can't tell a firm from a soggy performance of it if it beats him over the head, which this one did.

Well, I have my own problems. About MTT's famous performance of Mahler's Second, the one with Lorraine Hunt Lieberson, I wrote, "It was an extraordinary performance, but eventually the sheer badness of the music inevitably won out. By the end my exasperation at the work had built to a pitch Mahler's musical climaxes couldn't outdo."

[irontongue.livejournal.com]

Horse races and all. I bow out of reviewing music I just can't stand when it's the headliner on a program. I had to listen to Rapsodie Espagnol recently - shudder. Carmina is on that list. Makes sense to send someone more sympathetic to the piece than I am.

Thing about Kosman, he usually does not hide it when he just can't stand a piece; see his comments any time he has to review Saint-Saens, for example. He should subcontract those reviews to ME, of course, since I love S-S, perhaps even more than he merits.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

He didn't entirely hide his dislike, he just brushed it under some shrubbery: "This isn't the occasion to rehash the pros and cons of Carmina Burana" - oh, yes it is - "a piece about which the fans and I have long since agreed to disagree." Then he goes on to talk about the catchy tunes, and since this wasn't a tune-oriented performance I conclude from that that this is the only aspect he can tolerate, and explains his fantastic view of the performance's tautness, if he doesn't respond to the pacing either taut or loose.