concert review: Symphony Silicon Valley chamber music

[calimac]

So if the San Francisco Symphony can draw on its members to put together concerts of unusually-scored chamber music, why not Symphony Silicon Valley? Certainly the size of the California Theatre shouldn't stop them: it's much smaller and brighter than SFSO's Davies, and the acoustics were fine. It's not as small or warm as le petit Trianon a few blocks away, but SSV CEO Andrew Bales, introducing the concert, hardly needed to apologize for the place as he almost did.

Of course SSV isn't a top-rank ensemble, and the chamber music exposed, more than orchestral music does, that not all the performers are exactly the world's hottest in terms of intonation or tone color, but the evening was enjoyable enough and there was a certain amount of rising to the occasion.

I already knew that concertmistress Robin Mayforth and principal clarinet Michael Corner were good from their previous solo work - Corner is the orchestra's real treasure - and to them I can add principal oboe Pamela Hakl, who maintained a strong and elegant tone throughout Arnold Bax's Oboe Quintet where her four string colleagues were, shall we say, struggling a little.

Three of the same string players plus Mayforth joined pianist Stephen Prutsman for Dvorak's Piano Quintet. Prutsman, who's in town to perform Mozart's K.482 with the orchestra this weekend, plays in a powerful Glenn Gould low-slung way, with much dynamic and rhythmic subtlety. After a few problems getting up to gear, the other players seemed driven to heights of achievement by Prutsman's example. It was a terrifically enjoyable performance of one of the great works of its kind.

The other two pieces were even more wind-oriented than the Bax. Stravinsky's Octet (4 winds, 4 brass) is one of his choppy, staccato neo-classical pieces. Lastly we had an arrangement for variegated quintet of Richard Strauss's Till Eulenspiegel. The program notes didn't say who made the arrangement, and it isn't listed in the Strauss catalog I have here, so I dunno whose idea this was. But it was very, very peculiar. A little thought about the solo passages in the original shows there's three instruments you can't do without - violin, clarinet, and horn - and to these were added double bass and bassoon to fill out the bottom of the texture. The solo passages went fine, but when three or four of the instruments were substituting for Strauss's lush orchestration it often sounded more like the Dolmetsch Ensemble playing Tchaikovsky at a Hoffnung concert than a serious composer would like.

I'd consider the evening a success, and hope SSV will do it again. Considering how desperate they were to fill seats - they were being offered to season subscribers for $12 in a last-minute fire sale - I hope the result seemed worth their trouble.

Comments

[rwl.livejournal.com]

You know, I think I'd much rather go to a concert performance by a good mid-level orchestra than pay the premium price to see a world class orchestra. My "Lynch's Law" rule of thumb is: "The more renown the orchestra, the more likely it is to include something on the program that will leave you cold." A mid-level orchestra, on the other hand, usually fills its programs with major works by famous composers. I'd much rather hear that than an atonal but highly technical work by a 20th century composer that shows off the skill of the musicians, but is a challenge to sit through.

[(Anonymous)]

I was told that Strauss wrote the arrangement of Till, under a pseudonym I can't recall at the moment. (something like "rabbit ears" in German, I think).

-patty