Music I'm Listening To: The Santa Rosa Symphony plays the Mozart Requiem

Some (belatedly posted) photos from the SRS Symphony concert December 11. Conductor Francesco Lecce-Chong led the orchestra in Haydn's Symphony No. 39, Records from a Vanishing City, by Jessie Montgomery, and Mozart's Requiem. The maestro conducted from the keyboard, playing a replica of a period-correct pianoforte.

Lecce-Chong chose a more recent version of the Requiem, edited by Robert D. Levin, rather than the familiar one completed shortly after Mozart's death y Süssmeyer. In particular, the replacement of the simple two-chord Amen with a short fugue was interesting.

Music I'm Listening To: Alexander Barantschik with Ton Koopman and the San Francisco Symphony

Conductor Ton Koopman and soloist Alexander Barantschik

Had a fun time recently at Davies Symphony Hall hearing SF Symphony concertmaster Alexander Barantschik play Bach's Violin Concerto No. 1. Also on the program were Chaos, by Jean-Féry Rebel, and Haydn's Symphony No. 100 "The Military". Guest conductor Ton Koopman led the musicians with his usual always-smiling demeanor. 

The Haydn symphony gets its nickname from a trumpet fanfare it includes and from a couple of entries by bass drum, cymbals, and triangle in imitation of Turkish Janissary bands, reflecting an influential fad in Vienna in the 1780s. On both entrances the percussionists marched in from somewhere offstage as if in a military parade, much to the surprise and delight of the audience. After the concert, on the way to an after-concert dinner, I found myself meeting Mr. Koopman himself on a street corner—like me, waiting for the lights to change. I imagine he was walking back to his hotel or a meal of his own. I told him how much I enjoyed the concert and said "Is that the normal way of doing that?" referring to the entry of the percussion section. He said "That's MY way of doing it!" with a big smile. 

Rebel (1666-1747) is a composer I'd never heard of. Chaos was rather interesting and remarkably modern sounding, considering it was written in 1737 or 1738. The piece starts out, quite appropriately, with a chaotic "chord" that the composer describes by saying "I have risked opening with all the notes sounding together, or rather, all the notes in an octave played as a single sound" to quote the quote in the program notes. That's the sort of thing I'd expect a 20th century composer to do....

I enjoyed the Bach violin concerto as well. This was the second time I'd heard Barantschik as a soloist, having heard him play the less-well known of the two Mendelssohn violin concertos a couple of years back at Green Music Center when the SF Symphony was doing concerts here in Sonoma County. All in all, a pleasant diversion.

Music I'm Listening To: San Francisco Symphony led by Thierry Fischer, Soloist Gautier Capuçon

I attended the January 28 evening performance at Davies Symphony Hall. Conductor Thierry Fischer replaced Charles Dutoit on the podium, but the program was otherwise unchanged. He led the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. The concert opened with Debussy's Petite Suite, followed by Haydn's Cello Concerto No. 1 and, after intermission, Stravinsky's Firebird Suite. Gautier Capuçon was soloist in the Haydn concerto.

Technical brilliance is by no means the only measure of a performer or a performance, but Capuçon is one of those who enters the stage with an aura of utter confidence and plays with such surety that, as a listener, you can take in a live performance with no anxiety—knowing that whatever happens on stage will be right. He is entirely persuasive. His performance of the Haydn concerto was taut with energy, passionate and gritty in places, yet lyrical where lyrical was called for.

Maybe it's just me, but when I listen to cello performances, I often find the four strings can have rather obvious differences of tone that don't always mesh well. The high string will be strident relative to the others or the low string too boomy. I thought Capuçon's cello unusually in synch with itself. According to Wikipedia, he mainly plays a 1701 instrument made by Matteo Gofriller, but also has a 1746 instrument by Joseph Contreras (both on loan to him). I don't know which he played on Sunday, but I liked its sound.

The audience was very appreciative. Following an extended standing ovation, Capuçon played El cant dels ocells (Song of the Birds) as an encore, supported by a number of cellos and basses in the orchestra. This Song of the Birds, based on a traditional Catalan song, seems to be a favorite encore among cellists following in the footsteps of Pablo Casals who regularly played it after concerts as a form of protest against the fascist Franco regime of Spain. I've heard  Zuill Bailey play it as encore as well.

Debussy's Petite Suite is always pleasant and it was fun to hear The Firebird Suite live. It's one of those pieces that offers a lot to look at on stage. I thought the performance of the latter a bit lacking in coherence here and there, but good overall. The audience was again very appreciative, offering another long standing ovation that resulted in another encore, the orchestra doing a lively run through something from one of Bizet's L'arlisienne suites. I noticed the Royal Philharmonic seats its musicians a bit idiosyncratically. Often European ensembles put the cellos stage right (while we usually put them stage left). In this case, the cellos were stage right but on the inside with the violas on the outside, closest to the audience. I noticed also that the Royal Philharmonic brought its own music stands.*

[*Correction: It appears that the San Francisco Symphony has acquired new music stands. They were still present at the next concert I attended. They're attractive.]

Photo of Thierry Fischer by Marco Borggrove. Photo of Gautier Capuçon by Gregory Batardon. Photos courtesy of the San Francisco Symphony.
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Music I'm listening to: Two San Francisco Symphony Concerts

I recently attended two excellent San Francisco Symphony concerts. The Symphony performed with Pablo Heras-Casado conducting and Igor Levit at the piano on Thursday, April 17 at The Green Music Center and I heard the April 24 concert at Davies Symphony Hall in San Francisco, with guest conductor Vasily Petrenko on the podium. The soloist was Sa Chen, who performed Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 2. It's always best to write about concerts when the memories are fresh. Work and other obligations have caused me to delay in this case, but a few thoughts follow.

The Green Music Center concert was remarkable mostly for its overall clarity--everything where it should have been from start to finish. Heras-Casado conducted Haydn's Symphony No. 44, followed by the Mozart Piano Concerto No. 9 (with Levit at the piano) and, after intermission, Prelude to The Afternoon of a Faun (Debussy) and Stravinsky's Symphony in Three Movements. Levit isn't a showy performer, but he handled the Mozart deftly.

The hall, sadly, was only about two-thirds full, which is a shame. I really don't understand why Sonoma County classical music enthusiasts haven't supported the SFS concerts at the Green Music Center with more attendance. This is one of the finest ensembles in the world. It's so much easier to see them here in Sonoma County than to drive into the city, and the ticket prices have been very reasonable. As a result of the poor turnout, the Symphony will not continue the Green Music Center series next season--again, a shame.

I sat in one of the balcony seats over the performers at the Green Music Center, where the sound suffers a little but you get a good view of the conductor and you can watch the music move through the different sections of the orchestra. The program provided a lesson in the development of orchestral ensembles. The Haydn piece, written in 1771, was scored mostly for strings with the exception of two oboes and two natural horns. Natural horns have no valves and are limited to a single key, if my understanding is correct, but the key can be altered by adding extensions of curved tubing to the existing tubing. It was fun to watch the changes from above. The Mozart, written only six years later, was scored for a nearly identical ensemble. The Debussy, written more than a century later (1894) adds three flutes, English horn, two clarinets, two bassoons, two harps, and antique cymbals. There are four horns instead of two, and these are now modern, valved horns. With the Stravinsky, the ensemble swelled further.

The April 24 concert in the city was memorable mostly for Sa Chen's playing. I had never heard Sa Chen play or even heard of her. There are so many young Chinese piano wizards these days, it's hard to keep track sometimes. I don't really like Rachmaninoff's piano concertos--much too much bombast for my taste, but I know they're admired by many and they're known for being technically challenging. They require speed, precision, and power. Sa Chen, although she is a small woman, has all three of these qualities in spades.

My seat is in the fourth row, slightly to the left of center (from the audience's perspective). That puts me right across from the soloist, giving me an excellent view of a pianist's hands when the soloist is a pianist. Sa Chen wore a gold lamé gown off the right shoulder, allowing a view of her entire arm on the side closer to me. Her skin is pale and the spotlights from overhead made her arm look like it was carved from ivory-colored marble--although marble that was clearly alive. I was put in mind of the Pygmalion story. Watching the muscles move in her well developed forearms and her sometimes difficult-to-follow fingers was fascinating. Her hands are not especially big. It's remarkable that she achieves what she does. Her playing has the same compact, muscular power that you sense just looking at her. I was more impressed with her playing than I was prepared to be. She got an immediate standing ovation at the end of the piece and the applause lasted long enough to bring her out for an encore--a Rachmaninoff prelude, which was disappointing, as I had had enough of Rachmaninoff. I had hoped she would choose something more lyrical. I'm very curious now to hear what she sounds like playing other styles. Does she excel only at the biggest late romantic works? What does she sound like playing Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Debussy?

The second half of the program was taken up by Shostakovich's Symphony No. 12. Shostakovich is one of my favorite composers, but not because of the symphonies. I mostly enjoy him for his piano works, the string quartets, and the many quirky little pieces he wrote. Symphony No. 12, written in 1961, is subtitled "The Year of 1917." It's dedicated to the memory of Lenin. It paints a picture of the events of 1917 in four movements headed "Revolutionary Petrograd," "Razliv," "Aurora," and "The Dawn of Humanity," but the headings might as well have been "Loud," "A Little Less Loud," "Louder," and then "Very Loud and Drawn Out." The ending of the fourth movement--the end of the symphony--seems to go on forever. It's rather too triumphal for my sensibilities, or perhaps Petrenko failed to give it enough nuance to keep it interesting. The piece was interesting to hear, nevertheless, and despite the above remark, I'm confident Petrenko's reading was a good one. Petrenko was a pleasure to watch. He is tall and thin with somewhat spiky hair--and very Russian-looking. His gestures are big, but not overdone. His hands are immensely expressive. I got the feeling that there was a very strong connection between him and the orchestra--which is not always the case. I enjoyed the concert even if the music on offer wasn't of the sort I normally listen to.

All photos courtesy of the San Francisco Symphony website. Photo of Pablo Heras-Casado by Harald Hoffmann for Deutsche Grammophon. Photo of Sa Chen by Hong Wei. 

Music I'm Listening to: Ton Koopman, Mark Inouye with the San Francisco Symphony

I always wonder how orchestra performers feel when they sit through an encore by a soloist. Impossible to generalize, of course. I imagine some genuinely enjoy listening from the best seats in the house, but I always suspect some may be a little jealous, that some may be in a hurry to get home and hope the encore doesn't go on too long. And usually encores don't. Is two to three minutes normal perhaps? Following his performance of the Hayden Trumpet Concerto last Friday (March 20), a prolonged standing ovation prompted an encore from Mark Inouye, principal trumpet of the San Francsico Symphony. Instead of taking center stage, however, he walked to far stage left and stood beside principal bass Scott Pingel. With a nod of the head from Inouye, Pingel began a jazz riff that morphed into a seven or eight minute-long improvisation by the two based on "Corcovado" (the 1960 bossa nova tune by Antônio Carlos Jobim, known also as "Quiet Nights of Quiet Stars"). Inouye is clearly a gifted jazz trumpeter. It was an extraordinary performance. The concert was worth the price of admission just for this unusual bit of stretching out. As I say, I always wonder what the other performers are thinking during encores, but the expressions on the faces of the symphony members suggested they truly enjoyed this extended bit of fun. The audience loved it, too. Afterward, I asked Pingel about the encore from the edge of the stage. He laughed and said they had planned to do something but hadn't thought too much about what. Pingel said that Inouye had told him to do something based on "Corcovado" and that he (Inouye) would just jump in--and so he did.

Before the Haydn concerto, guest conductor Ton Koopman--an incurably jolly-looking elf of a man (although he looks rather serious in the photo here)--led the symphony in the first suite of music from Handel's Water Music, which involves quite a work out for the French horns. After intermission, Koopman gave us a tight, precise, but expressive reading of Haydn's Sypmhony No. 98. Listening to this music from 1792, I was struck in places by how modern it sounds--a feeling I've had listening to Haydn before. There were passages that seemed to point directly to Beethoven and to Brahms. All in all, an excellent night of music.

Photos of Mark Inouye and Ton Koopman courtesy of the San Francisco Symphony.