January 13, 2006
The San Francisco Symphony concerts of January 12 to January 14 were to have been led by the young Finnish conductor Mikko Franck. He took ill, and was replaced on short notice by Leonard Slatkin. These circumstances could have made for an exceptionally exciting occasion, but the concert heard on January 13, 2006, was, alas, almost entirely devoid of excitement.
The very last significant transition on the program exemplified the problems elsewhere. The great showpiece Pictures at an Exhibition, composed for piano by Modest Mussorgsky and orchestrated by Maurice Ravel, concludes with the jagged, scary “Hut on Fowls’ Legs” and majestic “Great Gate of Kiev.” The orchestral uprush connecting the two had little tension or sense of expectancy. The first chords of “Great Gate,” which ought to have been grand, were stodgy. Instead of an arrival, we got a let-down.
It’s hard to say why exactly this happened, but the whole concert had similar problems. The trumpet solo in the opening “Promenade” movement of Pictures could have been more crisply articulated; still, the brass produced a great wall of sound in its closing chords. “Ballet of Chicks in Their Shells” clucked and charmed, but neither “The Marketplace at Limoge” nor “Tuileries” had sufficient sense of scurrying movement.
The slow movements fared better, particularly “Il vecchio castello” (“The Old Castle”), with its langorous saxophone solo, and “Catacombae,” where the “Promenade” theme makes a cameo appearance in triple meter and the minor mode.
Still, the piece never quite took off. There were intermittent balance problems from my seat in the First Tier; for example, when the snare drum and typmpani in “Bydlo” rendered the strings nearly inaudible. Pictures ought be exciting and fun and romantic, yet Slatkin’s tempos were moderate, his conducting too self-effacing. I wish he’d set out to make more of a splash.
It’s possible that he allowed the comparatively understated character of the music in the first half of the concert to set the tone for the second. The program opened with Ravel’s ballet score Mother Goose, a half-hour of gossamer textures and swirls of transparent and masterfully orchestrated tone. One beautifully balanced chord succeeds another, but without much rhythmic variety or backbone, even when the composer called most to mind by the sonorities is Wagner. The orchestra played every note with poise, elegance, and grace; still, I can’t help but think that the work belongs in its rightful place accompanying a ballet. To my ear, it doesn’t have sufficient variety or interest for the concert hall, and especially a hall the size of Davies.
The concert also presented a rare opportunity to hear Bartók’s Violin Concerto No. 1, with debuting soloist Lisa Batiashvili. Bartók composed the concerto in 1907, but it was unknown until well after his death, even though he incorporated the first movement into his Opus 5, Two Portraits. It’s an early work, written before Bartók’s style was fully formed, and lacks the percussive drive, colorful orchestration, and spiky dissonance most closely associated with his music. Much of the concerto sounds like a stylistic ancestor of the contemplative “night music” movements of his mature work; heard in tandem with the Ravel, the phrase “Magyar Impressionism” occurred to me more than once, because the concerto could almost be French.
The opening of the first movement (Andante sostensuto) is especially striking: the soloist leads off with long, unaccompanied melody, and the orchestral violins, and then the winds, join by pairs. While the second movement (Allegro giocoso) starts off jauntily enough, it doesn’t maintain that mood, returning fairly quickly to a more contemplative tone.
Batiashvili, a fine musician, played well throughout, with an especially lovely tone and seamless legato. She phrases in the grand manner, in long, long lines, and that suited the concerto well. I would have preferred to hear her in a more gratifying and perhaps extraverted work – for example, Bartók’s Second Violin Concerto.
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