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calimacIt isn't often that I attend two performances of the same concert. But circumstances presented me with a chance to hear this week's San Francisco Symphony program twice, and I decided to take it. A hefty offering: Copland's Appalachian Spring (prefaced with Fanfare for the Common Man), Prokofiev's Violin Concerto No. 1 (with solo violinist Midori - not Midori Snyder or anything like that, just Midori), and Dvorak's Eighth Symphony. Appalachian Spring, which comes in full-length and suite versions and can be played by full orchestra or chamber ensemble, was performed in a medium-length cross version by the chamber orchestration. The Prokofiev, a work he wrote in the productive year of 1917 when you'd have thought his mind would be distracted by a revolution or two, is light and fleeting. The Dvorak is a big muscular symphony and the composer's ultimate statement of Czech nationalism in style, conducted (by MTT) and performed in a blaze of glory, special honors to the principal flutist who got quite a workout.
The second concert ironed out a few rough spots in performance that I'd heard in the first, but the interpretations and style were remarkably consistent. I think the fact that I felt less involved on the second occasion was not to do with my having just heard it, nor to do with the performance or the fact that it was the Thursday blue-rinse matinee, but was the result of sitting at the top of the upper balcony. This is supposed to be a premium spot, but it sure distances you from the music. Midori's violin almost disappeared from audibility. I preferred my usual seat low down on the side that I had on Wednesday, from which everything is more vivid.
The advantage of attending the Thursday concert is that I was already planning to go to the city that evening for a performance of The Overcoat. This play is an updated adaptation of Gogol's story of the same title, about a man who blames his lousy life on his ratty old overcoat, and who finds his circumstances altering when he orders a snazzy new one (which looked, in this production, more like a dressing gown). I'd been intrigued because the ads said the play had music by Shostakovich. I didn't realize how consequential this would be.
For the play, it turns out, is performed entirely without words. Physical movement and action convey the whole story, closely matched to a large selection of pre-recorded orchestral pieces - mostly lively and tuneful - by Shostakovich. (The works included most of the movements from his Ballet Suites, his Jazz Suites (what 1930s Soviets considered to be jazz, which is not very jazzy by anyone else's standards), and both of his piano concertos, plus an orchestration of one movement from the Tenth Quartet and the scherzo from the Tenth Symphony.) It was a little bit like modern avant-garde theatre, a little bit like mime, a little bit like a silent film by Charlie Chaplin or Buster Keaton, a little bit like ballet. What it did not remind me of at all, although the premise is exactly the same - stories told through silent movement to music - is Fantasia. The difference in style came forcefully to mind when one scene - when the man arrives at his office in the new overcoat - was set to the same movement of Shostakovich's Second Piano Concerto that is used in Fantasia 2000 for "The Steadfast Tin Soldier."
I hadn't been to this before, or anything like it. But I was reminded of an earlier occasion when I'd heard great wads of Shostakovich used to back a drama: a few years ago when the SFS performed an accompaniment to Eisenstein's Potemkin that a couple of Soviet musicologists had fashioned out of the greater part of 3 or 4 Shostakovich symphonies.
The second concert ironed out a few rough spots in performance that I'd heard in the first, but the interpretations and style were remarkably consistent. I think the fact that I felt less involved on the second occasion was not to do with my having just heard it, nor to do with the performance or the fact that it was the Thursday blue-rinse matinee, but was the result of sitting at the top of the upper balcony. This is supposed to be a premium spot, but it sure distances you from the music. Midori's violin almost disappeared from audibility. I preferred my usual seat low down on the side that I had on Wednesday, from which everything is more vivid.
The advantage of attending the Thursday concert is that I was already planning to go to the city that evening for a performance of The Overcoat. This play is an updated adaptation of Gogol's story of the same title, about a man who blames his lousy life on his ratty old overcoat, and who finds his circumstances altering when he orders a snazzy new one (which looked, in this production, more like a dressing gown). I'd been intrigued because the ads said the play had music by Shostakovich. I didn't realize how consequential this would be.
For the play, it turns out, is performed entirely without words. Physical movement and action convey the whole story, closely matched to a large selection of pre-recorded orchestral pieces - mostly lively and tuneful - by Shostakovich. (The works included most of the movements from his Ballet Suites, his Jazz Suites (what 1930s Soviets considered to be jazz, which is not very jazzy by anyone else's standards), and both of his piano concertos, plus an orchestration of one movement from the Tenth Quartet and the scherzo from the Tenth Symphony.) It was a little bit like modern avant-garde theatre, a little bit like mime, a little bit like a silent film by Charlie Chaplin or Buster Keaton, a little bit like ballet. What it did not remind me of at all, although the premise is exactly the same - stories told through silent movement to music - is Fantasia. The difference in style came forcefully to mind when one scene - when the man arrives at his office in the new overcoat - was set to the same movement of Shostakovich's Second Piano Concerto that is used in Fantasia 2000 for "The Steadfast Tin Soldier."
I hadn't been to this before, or anything like it. But I was reminded of an earlier occasion when I'd heard great wads of Shostakovich used to back a drama: a few years ago when the SFS performed an accompaniment to Eisenstein's Potemkin that a couple of Soviet musicologists had fashioned out of the greater part of 3 or 4 Shostakovich symphonies.
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Date: 2005-09-17 09:09 pm (UTC)As for Copland's Appalachian Spring, I've seen the original score for it, with Copland's scribbled annotations. It's on display at the Library of Congress, in the area just outside the very small concert hall in the Library where the ballet was debuted. When I worked down in D.C., every so often the U.S. Marine Chamber Orchestra would give a free performance in there, and it's a nice place for classical music.