Where Has Mark Elder Been All Our Lives?

Davies Symphony Hall

Photo by Lisa Hirsch

The literal answer is that Mark Elder spent the last 25 years, from 2000 to 2024, as the music director of the renowned Hallé Orchestra, in Manchester, England, UK. His career in the United States has been sparse, as far as I can tell: he conducted Die Meistersinger at SF Opera in 2015; he led 14 performances between 2004 and 2024 at the Boston Symphony; he didn't conduct the NY Philharmonic at all, and he conducted 79 performances at the Metropolitan Opera between 1988 and 2019.

He made his San Francisco Symphony debut last week in a concert that was absolutely sensational, one of the most exciting of the current season.

On paper, it was a distinctly odd-looking program:

• Berlioz, Overture to Les francs-juges
• Debussy, Prélude à L’Après-midi d’un faune
• Berlioz, Overture to Le Roi Lear
• R. Strauss, Also sprach Zarathustra
• Adams, Short Ride in a Fast Machine

And...it all worked, even that bit where there was a four-minute piece following the evening's biggest work.

I was not real happy when Elder picked up a microphone as soon as he got on the podium; I've seen too many conductors who, well, blathered or just repeated what was in the program. But Elder kept it brief and was dryly humorous. He talked about the really weird items on the program, that is, the two Berlioz overtures. The last time Les francs-juges was heard at Davies was in 1988. The King Lear overture had never been played here before.

It was good to hear them –– they are slightly oddball, because they are Berlioz –– and they both got shapely performances. In between came a truly magnificent performance of the Debussy, which was last played by SFS in 2023 with MTT conducting.

Reader, I'm here to tell you: this was better than MTT's performance of it and right up there with the best Debussy I have heard. That Yubeen Kim, the orchestra's fabulous principal flute, was playing, made a big difference, of course. His gorgeous sound, and his personal and insightful phrasing, went a long way toward making the performance stand out from all others, but there was still more. The performance was scaled so that you felt you were listening to chamber music, and the interplay among the various instruments in the orchestra –– the two harps and the oboe in particular –– rounded out that sensation. The sheer sound of the orchestra was rich and yet transparent, a hard balance to achieve. 

Honestly, I should have known how good this would be from a purely sonic perspective. Elder's Meistersinger was also something special. It was amazingly slow, coming in at 5 hours and 45 minutes, which must be some kind of record. And yet, and yet, it never lost shape or momentum, and the sound? Well, I have never heard the SF Opera Orchestra sound better. As good, yes, but never better.

Now, Also sprach Zarathustra is by no means my favorite Strauss and not my favorite of Strauss's tone poems. But this performance was something special. The last time I heard it at Davies, Esa-Pekka Salonen was conducting, and –– I can only half believe that I'm saying this –– this was better than that performance.

It was coherent, which is tough to do in a work that opens like the sun rising and eventually becomes Viennese frippery, where you're sure you've been dropped into uncredited outtakes from Der Rosenkavalier, which, of course, wouldn't be composed for some years. But the orchestra played like it was the greatest piece of music ever written, and you know, that kind of fervor isn't common and isn't easy to elicit, even from a great group like SFS. Even I was convinced that I was hearing the greatest piece of music ever composed, and I know perfectly well that it is not. 

And it sounded fantastic. Elder didn't overload the hall; even at its loudest, there was no bombast or blaring or bad taste. (I'm imagining certain conductors in Also sprach and....there would have been a lot of bombast and bad taste.) The orchestra was in perfect balance and so beautifully layered. I mean, Strauss gives you the ingredients, right? He was a consummately great orchestrator! But not every conductor can make his music sound this good.

The audience applauded wildly; lots of people got solo bows; Elder left the stage when the applause was still going on. He came back on, picked up the microphone again, and said something like "I've always felt that some works need a bit of a chaser after them. We've just drunk four big steins of German beer, and here is the chaser." He then led a banger of an account of Short Ride, and you know what? He was absolutely right that it was a great end to the evening.

Two final comments: first, it was a bit like the old days, when MTT would pull an orchestral encore out of his hat at the end of an already-satisfying concert. I miss those days, I really do. Second, if I weren't a reasonably responsible adult, I would have bagged the concert I reviewed Saturday night and come back to hear this one a second time.

Elsewhere:

• Rebecca Wishnia, SFCV and SF Chronicle. The review is rather the opposite of mine.
• Stephen Smoliar, The Rehearsal Studio