Enough Blame to Go Around

Esa-Pekka Salonen

Photo: (c) Minna Hatinen, courtesy of San Francisco Symphony

San Francisco Symphony's program last week, led by music director Esa-Pekka Salonen, was this:

• Beethoven, Symphony No. 6, "Pastoral"
• Salonen, Cello Concerto, Rainer Eudeikis, cello
• Debussy, La Mer

First, I blame Arturo Toscanini, for ruining Beethoven's 6th for me. His recording with the NBC Symphony is way, WAY too driven for the most genial of Beethoven's symphonies. I remember being absolutely shocked when I heard another conductor leading it. Toscanini, right about so much, was completely wrong about this.

Salonen's Beethoven has been first class, and I was hoping for revelations in this one, but alas, no, it was good, not great, and I even dozed off at one point. Okay, it was a longish week, during which I wrote two articles, and that was my fault, but still. Good, not great.

Second, I blame the terrible acoustics of Zellerbach Hall for the fact that the first time I heard Salonen's Cello Concerto, back sometime before the pandemic, I found it puzzling. I listened to it last week (there is a terrific recording of it by Salonen and the LA Phil, with soloist Yo-Yo Ma, for whom it was written) and could not understand why I had been puzzled.

Well, maybe I can, a little? The careful miking of the recording makes it easier to hear everything going on in the concerto, and there is a lot. It is a really beautiful and interesting piece, and it didn't sound as good in Davies as on the recording. STILL. It was beautifully played by SFS principal cellist Rainer Eudeikis, in his first solo outing with the orchestra, and you bet I'm glad that he was given this rather than, say, a Haydn concerto or the Dvořák. 

Something went very slightly wrong, and maybe half- or two-thirds of the way through, he broke a string. And someone promptly stepped forward with the right string, and he changed it right then and there. "I'm to blame for this," he said, to much laughter, and then he and Salonen picked right up where they'd left off. It was a great performance.

Lastly, I blame Salonen for not giving a solo bow to principal English horn Russ de Luna for his beautiful playing in La Mer. He had principal flute Yubeen Kim and principal oboe Eugene Izotov take solo bows -- which they deserved! They played beautifully! And so did de Luna, during a week when it's a great time to be an English horn player around Grove and Van Ness. (If you know, you know.)

Elsewhere:

• Rebecca Wishnia, SFCV and SF Chronicle. Unlike me, she talks specifics about the cello concerto! By "high clarinet" she means the E-flat clarinet, played by associate principal Matthew Griffith and by "low flute" she means the alto flute, played by a guest flutist who was in 2nd flute position.
• Joshua Kosman, On a Pacific Aisle. "You know who else loved it? The audience that packed Davies on Friday night to celebrate Salonen and his nonpareil artistry as both a conductor and a composer. I don’t want to start penning weekly rants about Salonen’s departure, or the short-sightedness that has led to that incomprehensible institutional failure. But there was no way to witness the excitement of this event — the outpouring of love directed from the hall to the stage, the ovation that brought Salonen and Eudeikis back for curtain call after curtain call, the enthusiasm with which this superb but not especially accessible work was received — and not wonder about the choices and priorities that have brought the organization to its current impasse."
• Thomas May interviews Rainer Eudeikis about the cello concerto in The Strad.
• Russ de Luna in Aukland, as long as we're talking about great English horn playing.