Britten War Requiem at SFS

Davies Symphony Hall

Photo by Lisa Hirsch

Here's what I had to say about Philippe Jordan in 2018, when I saw him conduct Tristan und Isolde at the Paris Opera;

Philippe Jordan, who will leave Paris for Vienna in 2020, conducted, and was variable. His pacing of that last scene in Act II was masterly; elsewhere, he could be wayward. Neither of the performances I saw caught musical fire in the way this opera can blaze; the orchestral sound was on the muddy side, though without more experience of the opera house, I can’t determine whether the acoustics of the Opéra Bastille, my seats, or his conducting had the greatest responsibility for this. His pacing was sometimes bizarre: for example, Isolde’s Transfiguration reached its greatest climax far too early, so that the final climax was anticlimactic. 

He was much better in Michel Jarrell's Bérénice:

Philippe Jordan’s meticulous conducting balanced a big orchestra beautifully with the voices and brought out every last fascinating color of the orchestration.

My interview with Brandon Jovanovich and Christian Van Horn makes him sound...fussy:

“Philippe is a real master of the score, in that whatever it says, we’re going to do,” said Van Horn, and Jovanovich agreed. “That’s right. If it says piano, everyone will be singing piano. If it says forte, you’re forte.” Van Horn went on: “If there’s a comma between two words, you’re not going to carry that note over.”

“That’s right. ‘Brandon, you’re singing an eighth note there, but it’s a sixteenth note.’ Every time, he would tell you: a sixteenth note. ‘Brandon, Brandon.’ Every time. That’ll change the outcome a lot.”

And something I've said, but I think never printed here: of the three conductors I've seen lead Les Troyens, it was Jordan who didn't make the work sound like the greatest opera ever composed. His conception was far smaller in scale than those of Donald Runnicles and Andrew Davis.

So I was, you could say, a little concerned about how Britten's gigantic War Requiem would go, particularly since the last SFS performances were with the magnificent Semyon Bychkov. I'm sorry to say that my concerns were not misplaced. Joshua Kosman's review says this:

Some of that eloquence registered strongly in Davies Symphony Hall on Thursday, May 18, when the San Francisco Symphony tackled the piece for the first time in nearly a decade. Some of it, though, struggled to emerge from under the stiff and weighty musical approach of guest conductor Philippe Jordan.

And....yeah. It was stiff, and at the same time felt weirdly as though Jordan's conducting had no spine at all. His conducting lacked forward momentum; it was as if he was focused on rhythm and meter at the bar line level, with no sense of where each movement was headed. Entrances and the beginnings of most movements had no thrust or sense that something important was happening. The overall sensation was curiously inert and shapeless. And the music itself is anything but inert or shapeless. 

The orchestra, choruses, and soloists in the vast work were excellent. Tenor Ian Bostridge's singing is something of an acquired taste, one that I have mostly not acquired; I'd prefer a less wiry and nasal sound in this music. Brian Mulligan brought somber eloquence and beautiful tone to the baritone solos. Jennifer Holloway's big, gleaming soprano worked well in her solos. I admit that I would have liked more consonants from all of them. 

Updated: May 23, 2023, to add the links below.

• Michael Strickland, SF Civic Center. SHADE: "Unfortunately, Swiss conductor Philippe Jordan led most of the big choral sections as if they were Carl Orff's pounding Carmina Burana rather than Britten's brilliant riff on Verdi's Requiem."
• Nicholas Jones, SFCV
• Jeff Dunn, Aisle Seat