A Head-Scratcher

The last time that I attended a program conducted by Christian Thielemann was the 2015 Bayreuth Tristan und Isolde. It was transcendentally beautiful, so stunning that I came out of Act II raving about how gorgeous it had been. I believe I used the phrase "HOLY MOTHER OF GOD" to describe it.

So when Cal Performances announced a three-day series with Thielemann and the Vienna Philharmonic, I looked over the programs and decided to come to tonight's Mendelssohn and Brahms concert. And hoo boy, it was the worst money I have ever spent. 

The first half of the program was the Hebrides Overture and "Scottish" Symphony. Let me sum this up briefly: Mendelssohn with no charm is no good.

The second half of the program was Brahms's Symphony No. 2, and....it was just bad, fussy and overly controlled, with little sense of the big picture in any of the movements. (That was true of the Mendelssohn as well.) This is the most genial and sunny of the Brahms symphonies, and those qualities were also lacking. Thielemann's conducting was that of a blunt instrument, with little delicacy or grace or subtlety. 

I wonder whether I would have responded to that Tristan as I did if I had been able to see Thielemann, who was, of course, conducting from the mystic abyss, the invisible Bayreuth orchestra pit. I try not to be too influenced by what I am seeing, but Thielemann was really unpleasant to watch, in part because he looked sour and unhappy the entire time, and partly because of his particular vocabulary of movements. As I said to a friend afterward, we've had decades of visual goodness with SFS's music directors, from Blomstedt's attentive courtliness to MTT's energetic precision to Salonen's sheer grace. 

As for the VPO, let me say first that I am wary of getting too specific about the sound of any orchestra playing in Zellerbach. It's a concrete nightmare made half-decent by a Meyer Constellation system, but there's almost always something a little artificial about the sound there. The orchestra sounded...pretty good, but I would not have guessed them to be a legendarily great orchestra. The principal horn played a couple of solos very beautifully and I'd love hear more of him. The flutists were playing regular silver flutes, not the wooden instruments that you can see in some photos of the orchestra. 

The timpanist was oddly retiring or the placement of the timpani made him difficult to hear, or something. I own that I have gotten very used to the playing of SFS's principal timpanist, Edward Stephan, who is assertive and a great presence; it's possible that ten years ago I wouldn't even have noticed that the VPO timpanist wasn't very noticeable.

Thielemann and the VPO elsewhere:

• Zachary Woolfe, NY Times. Loved the Strauss and is a bit circumspect about the other works.
• Joshua Kosman, SF Chronicle. Loved the Strauss, thought the Schoenberg awful. "Yet there wasn’t much to savor [in the Schoenberg], as Thielemann drove the orchestra’s string players into a bare-knuckled series of confrontations. Melodies burst across the stage like missile blasts; it was as if any infusion of tenderness or lyricism would be taken as a sign of weakness." That last phrase predicted what last night was like.
• David Bratman, SFCV. This is very even-handed and the concert didn't deserve even-handed treatment. When you're allegedly one of the greatest orchestras in the world, you should be held to the highest possible standards. See the above: I would have been a lot meaner if I'd been reviewing this program, obviously. I eventually concluded that Thielemann conducted as though he hated the music, the orchestra, the audience, and maybe himself.