concert review: San Francisco Symphony
Apr. 10th, 2014 04:42 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
calimacWizardly friends accomplished the drive to the City - which takes an hour even when it's not a battle against commute traffic and the start of a Giants night game - followed by a full dinner in a restaurant, and to the concert hall in time for the show, in 2 hours 20 minutes, and all I had to do was wrestle with the rear seatbelt. That's impressive. (Also impressive was that I was well enough to go after having been gruesomely ill the previous two days.)
Some wizardry up on stage too. This was week two of the annual Blomstedt fortnight. Garrick Ohlsson played Mozart's "Elvira Madigan" concerto* with a gentle hand and some quaint touches, including an unusually slow approach to the opening cadenza in the finale.
Best thing about it, though, was the blending of the sound, especially the balancing between strings and winds. This aspect outdid last week's Schubert, which I thought a little raw.
Then, Bruckner's Fourth, a monumental work of epic scale which, when Blomstedt's hands are being capable, as they were tonight, is utterly grand and commanding. It even got better as it went along. The opening, I thought, lacked a little expansiveness for Bruckner, but by the time we got to the grand brass chorale in the retransition, my favorite moment in all Bruckner, the interpretation had reached a state of terminal majesty.
There just had to be a court jester, though. This is a symphony that lives on its horn solos, and I knew we were in for trouble when the first horn bobbled the very first note of the opening theme. And it went on like that for an hour: bobbled and blatted opening notes, smeared entrances, and on. When they weren't doing that, the horns sounded fine, so it wasn't quite a reversion to the coarse sound of Ozawa days, but it was a disfiguring blemish. The only explanation I can think of is that Nicole Cash, the section's best player, was off this evening.
*And, as last week, I must take issue with the increasingly egregious program notes of James M. Keller. For a guy who objects to that nickname, he sure takes a lot of space reviewing the eponymous movie. But, really, there's nothing wrong with an anachronistic nickname. Generally-accepted nicknames help casual listeners identify works, and there has never been a stricture in music against nicknames unauthorized by the composer, or else we'd have to stop referring to the Moonlight Sonata or the Unfinished Symphony.
Some wizardry up on stage too. This was week two of the annual Blomstedt fortnight. Garrick Ohlsson played Mozart's "Elvira Madigan" concerto* with a gentle hand and some quaint touches, including an unusually slow approach to the opening cadenza in the finale.
Best thing about it, though, was the blending of the sound, especially the balancing between strings and winds. This aspect outdid last week's Schubert, which I thought a little raw.
Then, Bruckner's Fourth, a monumental work of epic scale which, when Blomstedt's hands are being capable, as they were tonight, is utterly grand and commanding. It even got better as it went along. The opening, I thought, lacked a little expansiveness for Bruckner, but by the time we got to the grand brass chorale in the retransition, my favorite moment in all Bruckner, the interpretation had reached a state of terminal majesty.
There just had to be a court jester, though. This is a symphony that lives on its horn solos, and I knew we were in for trouble when the first horn bobbled the very first note of the opening theme. And it went on like that for an hour: bobbled and blatted opening notes, smeared entrances, and on. When they weren't doing that, the horns sounded fine, so it wasn't quite a reversion to the coarse sound of Ozawa days, but it was a disfiguring blemish. The only explanation I can think of is that Nicole Cash, the section's best player, was off this evening.
*And, as last week, I must take issue with the increasingly egregious program notes of James M. Keller. For a guy who objects to that nickname, he sure takes a lot of space reviewing the eponymous movie. But, really, there's nothing wrong with an anachronistic nickname. Generally-accepted nicknames help casual listeners identify works, and there has never been a stricture in music against nicknames unauthorized by the composer, or else we'd have to stop referring to the Moonlight Sonata or the Unfinished Symphony.
