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concert review: San Francisco Symphony
Maybe it was cold, wet, and windy up on stage. Susanna Mälkki wore some kind of an overcoat on the podium, and Horacio Gutiérrez sat down at the keyboard in what looked like a windbreaker. Their rendition of Prokofiev's Third Concerto pleased the audience. Maybe I was just tired, but it seemed to me a fairly nondescript, pedestrian reading of what is admittedly an inherently thrilling work.
Mälkki's Sibelius First came out more appealingly. There were some rough joins and clunkers, but at least she avoided the elephant traps of structure that lurk all over early Sibelius, and the sound colors coming out of the orchestra were consistently vivid and varied, almost as if to support pre-concert lecturer Scott Fogelsong's contention, which he was so proud of coming up with that he giggled all the way through it - what drugs is this guy on? - that the work was written to the model of Tchaikovsky's Fifth. But in fact Sibelius's orchestral palette, subdued and shaded, is quite unlike Tchaikovsky's bright, firmly delineated colors.
Also on the program - more spectralism! This one was Modulations by Gérard Grisey, an early essay in the style from the late 1970s that still half wants to be traditional old-timey post-war modernism. One section in which the soft, high-pitched, overtone-laden chords breathed in and out at a pulse of about two seconds a breath came across, no doubt unintentionally, as the wacky speeded-up Keystone Cops version of Morton Feldman.
More interesting than the concert was getting there. Although the weekend's closure of the eastern approach to the Golden Gate Bridge wasn't scheduled to start for more than a couple hours later, the road that eventually becomes the western approach was already far more clogged than usual as I drove in to town, so I got off it sooner than I usually do and found myself, a little unusually for concert trips, in the Mission District. Finding myself even more unusually in sight of an open parking space, a true rarity in the Mission, I had a quick meal at the nearest hole-in-wall taqueria, Papalote at 24th and Valencia. This is far yuppier than others in the district. The burrito was a bit mellow, if I can put it that way, and heavily packed in a thick flour tortilla. What was unbelievable was the salsa that came with the chips. This was neither liquid nor chunky nor both, the customary range among salsas, but smooth and creamy and resembling a tomato alfredo sauce more than anything else.
Mälkki's Sibelius First came out more appealingly. There were some rough joins and clunkers, but at least she avoided the elephant traps of structure that lurk all over early Sibelius, and the sound colors coming out of the orchestra were consistently vivid and varied, almost as if to support pre-concert lecturer Scott Fogelsong's contention, which he was so proud of coming up with that he giggled all the way through it - what drugs is this guy on? - that the work was written to the model of Tchaikovsky's Fifth. But in fact Sibelius's orchestral palette, subdued and shaded, is quite unlike Tchaikovsky's bright, firmly delineated colors.
Also on the program - more spectralism! This one was Modulations by Gérard Grisey, an early essay in the style from the late 1970s that still half wants to be traditional old-timey post-war modernism. One section in which the soft, high-pitched, overtone-laden chords breathed in and out at a pulse of about two seconds a breath came across, no doubt unintentionally, as the wacky speeded-up Keystone Cops version of Morton Feldman.
More interesting than the concert was getting there. Although the weekend's closure of the eastern approach to the Golden Gate Bridge wasn't scheduled to start for more than a couple hours later, the road that eventually becomes the western approach was already far more clogged than usual as I drove in to town, so I got off it sooner than I usually do and found myself, a little unusually for concert trips, in the Mission District. Finding myself even more unusually in sight of an open parking space, a true rarity in the Mission, I had a quick meal at the nearest hole-in-wall taqueria, Papalote at 24th and Valencia. This is far yuppier than others in the district. The burrito was a bit mellow, if I can put it that way, and heavily packed in a thick flour tortilla. What was unbelievable was the salsa that came with the chips. This was neither liquid nor chunky nor both, the customary range among salsas, but smooth and creamy and resembling a tomato alfredo sauce more than anything else.
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I'm actually going to do a short posting on fashion at SFS this week. Gutierrez's raincoat looked like it needed to be ironed and earlier in the week, Thibaudet's jacket looked oddly patchy and I could not figure out why. And Leor Maltinsky had a gorgeous lavender tie at the Sunday matinee.
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It was a fine concert all through, but the surprise of the evening for me was the end. It was the first time I've heard The Sorcerer's Apprentice at an adult concert. I've known it my whole life, from Fantasia, from a kids' concert before I was 10, from recordings, radio, elevators, hold music, passersby whistling. I don't respect it much. The symphony played it with as much seriousness as possible consistent with nearly every performer grinning like a loon all the way through, and I realized again the thing I must have known before, that it really is a good piece of music that achieves precisely what the composer intended, and anew a thing that should have been obvious before, that most of the symphony musicians have known and loved this piece since they were tiny. They could have played it in their sleep, but instead they played it with full attention and enjoyment.
And this week, we had Gerard Schwarz conducting a some not-bad opera interludes by Daron Aric Hagen, followed by Prokofiev's Piano Concerto No. 3 with Alexander Toradze and Shostakovich's Symphony No. 8. Schwarz spent a lot of his career perfecting the Seattle Symphony's approach to the great 20th century Russian composers, and he hasn't lost his touch in semi-retirement as conductor emeritus. As you say, the Prokofiev is an inherently thrilling work, and I was thrilled. The Shostakovich is an inherently wrenching work, long, often loud, and balanced just at the edge of being emotionally overwrought. It could have used some editing; I blame that on Shostakovich. I wouldn't have wanted to do without any of the very quiet English horn solo or the interplay between the woodwinds.
I envy you the precision of your musical vocabulary, and wish I had better tools for describing what works for me in a concert.
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I do have this theory that the bad reputation of a lot of pops classics like "The Sorcerer's Apprentice" comes from their normally being heard at poorly-rehearsed pops concerts. They're much better when well-played, and just looking at the piece in historical context, it's astonishing how advanced the burgeoning art of depicting specific events in music had become in Dukas' hands. Not long earlier it was not considered practical to depict anything more specific than a mood or a scene in any way that an audience could be trusted to get it. But oceans of later movie and cartoon music would have been impossible without what Dukas, and a few others, did.
I see what you mean about Shostakovich needing editing, and I get that impression often about experimental modern compositions. But I don't have such a feeling about compositions in the traditional vein. Musical vocabulary is so inherently redundant, with repeated phrases and whole sections, that if the music appeals I find that garrulousness is beside the point. If I don't like the music, I'd prefer it end sooner regardless of whether the composer is being redundant or not.
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Dukas was a wonderful composer; it is a crying shame that he was so self-critical that he destroyed a high percentage of what he composed.