Music I'm Listening to: Michael Tilson Thomas conducting Mahler's 5th Symphony

I attended the San Francisco Symphony concert last night (January 26) at Davies Symphony Hall. On the program was a single piece, Mahler's Symphony No. 5. Michael Tilson Thomas conducted. It was played straight through with no intermission. I hadn't known it before, but, according to the program, MTT made his debut with the SF Symphony in 1974, conducting another Mahler symphony – Symphony No. 9. So, MTT has been conducting Mahler in San Francisco for 50 years. 

The concert hall was packed – not an empty seat. I don't think I've ever seen the place completely full like that before. The entire audience rose to give MTT a standing ovation as he walked on stage. The concert ended the same way – with an extended standing ovation for the conductor, who was looking a little frail, but no frailer that when I last saw him, which was during his first performance after recovering from his brain surgery. Before that, the last time I saw him was in March 2018, in a concert that, coincidentally, included the Mahler 5. That was a brilliant performance. 

This performance was almost as good. There was a little highly uncharacteristic wobbling in the brass section in one or two places last night, but, aside from that, the SF Symphony was its usual highly competent self. MTT takes this piece slowly, letting the spaces speak in a way that is highly effective, never rushing. As I've noted before, I've not been especially fond of MTT as a conductor over the years – except when he does Mahler. 

MTT looked deeply touched by the long ovation after the performance, after a few minutes he raised his hands to stop the applause and he addressed the audience. He thanked the orchestra and the audience for the many years and many experiences shared by all of us. He seemed a bit wistful, giving the impression that he knows and has accepted the fact that most of his career and his life are behind him. The entire audience seemed to understand. There was much love in the air.

Music I'm Listening To: Start of the 2019-2020 Season

After the performance, a tired MTT

I attended the September 13 performance of the San Francisco Symphony, my first concert of the 2019-2020 season. MTT conducted Mahler's Symphony No. 6. It was the only piece on the program, played straight through without intermission. It must have been exhausting for the performers.

As I've noted here before, I generally don't care for MTT as a conductor, as, in my experience, he often seems aloof and unengaged in the music. Mahler has been the exception. This is the second time I've heard him conduct a live performance of one of the Mahler Symphonies, having heard him at the helm for Symphony No. 5 in March last year. That was a breathtaking performance.

While I enjoyed this latest concert, it wasn't quite as exciting. Perhaps my expectations were too high. I thought the third movement a little uncertain in places and thought the tempo variations in the second were a bit too exaggerated. That said, the orchestra members played well (as they virtually always do), the first movement seemed perfect and the finale was fun to watch.

I've always wondered how they do the hammer blows toward the end of the piece. A large wooden structure with a small platform on top was built high behind the percussion session for this performance making it accessible from the front row of the balcony seats behind the stage (which were empty, which is unusual). A member of the percussion team appeared for each of the blows above the wooden platform wielding a large wooden sledgehammer. He looked rather menacing and a bit surreal. It must be hard to time the blow, given how heavy the hammer seemed, but he got it right. As in the case of the March performance. The orchestra was seated in the antiphonal arrangement.

The Santa Rosa Symphony season opens tomorrow, October 5. I'll be doing backstage photography for the symphony again this year. Garrick Ohlsson will be playing the Beethoven Piano Concerto No. 4 and Strauss's Also Sprach Zarathustra is also on the program.

Music I'm Listening To: Gil Shaham, Christian Tetzlaff, and Elena Urioste

Gil Shaham after the concert

Three recent concerts, two in San Francisco, one in Santa Rosa. I attended the February 8 performance of the SF Symphony at Davies Symphony Hall. On the program were Steven Mackey's

Portals, Scenes and Celebrations (a Symphony commission and world premiere), Prokofiev's Violin Concerto No. 1, and Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 4. Michael Tilson Thomas conducted. Gil Shaham was soloist in the Prokofiev. This is a belated report. I can't say I remember the first piece at all, which shouldn't really count against it, but, by definition, it wasn't memorable. Shaham was his usual, highly competent self. MTT's rendition of the Tchaikovsky was on the slow side but quite enjoyable. It was particularly fun to see the substantial pizzicato sections live. This is a very familiar piece of music but not one I'd seen in person before.

Christian Tetzlaff takes a bow

On March 15, I was at Davies Symphony Hall again, this time to hear Christian Tetzlaff play Mozart's Violin Concerto No. 3. He played some unfamiliar cadenzas, which added interest. Also on the program were Ravel's Le Tombeau de Couperin and Sibelius's Symphony No. 2. MTT conducted. Although I generally find MTT bland, I must admit he does the very late romantic stuff well. I very much enjoyed his handling of the Sibelius. So, that's twice that I've found him really engaged and putting a distinctive stamp on the music—this and a recent performance of Mahler's Fifth Symphony. 

Violinist Elena Urioste

The following day, it was the Santa Rosa Symphony at the Green Music Center under the baton of Conductor Emeritus Jeffrey Kahane. On the program were Gershwin's An American in Paris in its original version (as Gershwin orchestrated it), Barber's Violin Concerto, and Copland's Symphony No. 3. Elena Urioste was the soloist in the Barber concerto. I was impressed by Urioste's performance and she was very gracious backstage. It was fun to see Kahane again, too. The Gershwin in the original orchestration sounded rather different than the version we're used to, which, according to Kahane, was cleaned up substantially by a Hollywood orchestrator. Gershwin apparently had little experience writing for full orchestra at the time. The Copland is not a favorite. It's rather ponderous, but it's interesting to hear the sections of Fanfare for the Common Man (1942) that were written into the symphony, which followed Fanfare by a year or two.

SR Symphony Conductor Emeritus Jeffrey Kahane

Music I'm Listening to: The San Francisco Symphony with Leonidas Kavakos

I attended the September 28 performance of the San Francisco Symphony, at Davies Symphony Hall, part of an ongoing Stravinsky Festival. MTT conducted Petruschka, The Rite of Spring, and the Violin Concerto. Leonidas Kavakos was the soloist in the concerto.

It was fun to hear Petruschka live for the first time, but I was more  interested in the rest of the program as this was my second time hearing the San Francisco Symphony doing each of the other two pieces. Back in 2013, I heard Leila Josefowicz play the Stravinsky concerto (my comments on that concert here) and heard The Rite of Spring just last summer, with Susanna Mälkki conducting (comments here). I was curious to hear these two pieces again and with MTT conducting.

I don't know what it is about MTT. I know he's popular. He's won multiple Grammy Awards. I just don't get the way he conducts. I thought The Rite of Spring oddly static in the first half. It's a piece that should be marching forward, relentlessly, and he managed to make it seem like it was standing still at times. I always feel a disconnect between him and the orchestra (with one notable exception, his brilliant reading of the Mahler Fifth Symphony I heard back in March this year). In the second half of The Rite of Spring, things finally seemed to be in gear and the audience was very appreciative, but this performance, while enjoyable, didn't leave me with anything of the excitement I felt hearing virtually the same musicians under Mälkki's baton back in June of 2017.

I felt kind of the same way about the concerto. The opening chord—the chord that opens each of the concerto's movements—seemed weak. It should come as a shock. I had never heard Kavakos play before or even heard his name, so I went into the concert with an open mind. After the initial chord, I was prepared to be disappointed, but, it got better. Again it took some time for the players and the conductor to convincingly join forces, or so it seemed to me. In the end, I liked Kavakos. That said, this performance didn't have the fire of the 2013 performance I attended with Josefowicz on the violin. 

Music I'm Listening To: Gil Shaham with the San Francisco Symphony

I attended the March 23 performance of the San Francisco Symphony at Davies Symphony Hall. MTT conducted. Gil Shaham performed Berg's Violin Concerto before intermission. Mahler's Symphony No. 5 followed the intermission. Although I have two recordings of the Berg concerto, a recent one by Gil Shaham (1930s Violin Concertos Volume 1, Canary Classics CC12), the other from 1984 (the first CD I ever bought) by Kyung-wha Chung, (London 411 804-2), I don't know the piece well enough to have a strong opinion about the interpretation, but I enjoyed watching the performers, particularly as the session was recorded for the purpose of a release on CD. The soloist was flanked by a pair of microphones and there were several in positions not usually present, although all San Francisco Symphony performances are recorded for the archives, I believe.

It was particularly interesting to watch Shaham with concertmaster Barantschik and associate concertmaster Nadya Tichman in some of the more lyrical passages where the two lead violins seem to double the soloist. I noticed also that the antiphonal seating arrangement was used for this concert, presumably because that's what Mahler would have imagined. In this arrangement, the first violins are where we are used to seeing them in the US but the second violins are on the other side of the conductor, where we normally would expect to see the cello section, with the violas toward the middle but closer to stage left (audience right), the cellos toward the middle but closer to stage right (audience left), and the basses more or less behind the first violins. Doing a little research, the familiar arrangement with the first and second violins stage right, the violas in the middle, the cello section stage left, and with the basses behind the cello section was apparently thought up by Leopold Stokowski and the change is referred to as "the Stokowski shift." Watching a live performance always highlights the sort of thing you might not notice listening to a recording.

I'm generally not a fan of MTT. In fact, when buying subscription seats, we usually go out of our way to avoid him, choosing the guest conductors instead. I suppose mine is a minority opinion, but when I've seen him conduct, he often seems aloof—bored even, simply going through the motions. I've never really been impressed. Watching him conduct the Mahler 5th was different. He seemed quite the opposite—intensely engaged throughout the performance, keeping the orchestra with him the entire way.

And a long way it is. The performance lasted 82 minutes. While that included longer breaks between movements than would be typical in a recording, I'd say it was just under 80 minutes of actual playing. I went back through my various recordings of this piece. The shortest of them is 62 minutes, a 1975 recording on LP from Maurice Abravanel and the Utah Symphony (Vanguard Everyman SRV 321/2), the longest 74 minutes, a 1969 recording by Barbirolli and the New Philharmonia Orchestra re-released on CD in the early 1990s (EMI Classics CDM 7 64749 2). Coincidentally, the three others I have are all 69 minutes--Rattle and the Berlin Philharmonic recorded live in 2002 (EMI Classics 5 57385 2), another live recording, this time with Solti and the Chicago Symphony (Decca 433 329-2), and a recording by Sinopoli and the Philharmonia Orchestra (Deutsche Gramophon 415 476-2). All of which is to say that MTT's reading was a very slow one, yet it felt perfect. In fact, much of its strength seemed to come from his willingness to resist the temptation to rush in places where the temptation must be great. This was the first time I'd heard MTT doing Mahler (for which, he is known, of course). It was a very persuasive performance indeed. The performers were superb throughout. In places the clarity and precision of the playing was breathtaking. Perhaps MTT is just lackluster when he's bored?

Photo of Gil Shaham by Luke Ratray. Photo of MTT conducting by Kristen Loken. Photos courtesy of the San Francisco Symphony