Music I'm Listening To: Hilary Hahn with Osmo Vänskä Conducting the San Francisco Symphony (May 25, 2012)

Last night Hilary Hahn joined guest conductor Osmo Vänskä and the San Francisco Symphony for what turned out to be a rather exhilarating evening of music. The concert opened with modern Finnish composer Kalevi Aho's one-movement Minea, a piece composed in 2008 on commission from the Minnesota Orchestra. Hahn was then soloist in Prokofieff's Violin Concerto No. 1. After intermission, the Symphony played the Shostakovich Symphony No. 6.

Minea, debuted by the Minnesota Orchestra in November 2009,  has not yet been released as a commercial recording. I heard it last night for the first time. The opening was memorable--a sustained tone held by many of the instruments on stage seemed to float over odd sounds produced on the brass instruments that suggested waves beating against a beach. The woodwinds were very much present, especially the flutes and bassoons, fluttering in long scale-like passages using many half steps evocative of Arabic or Arab-influenced Spanish music--something oriental anyway. Minea kept building through the addition of more instruments and a faster tempo. Eventually, the very large percussion section seemed to take the lead. By the time the piece was coming to a climax it had something of the relentless forward motion of Ravel's Boléro. Every section of the orchestra seemed to get a turn, which reminded me of Bartok's Concerto for Orchestra. Difficult to describe, but a lot of fun.

Hahn was wonderful in the Prokofieff. Although she seemed to lose her concentration momentarily near the beginning of the second movement, it was a brief lapse (if it wasn't my imagination), and the rest of the performance was fairly riveting. I especially enjoyed the way she very clearly articulated the raspy, chopped notes that punctuate the concerto and the wonderful metallic quality she gave to the sections played close to the bridge. Just watching her rather fierce concentration was mesmerizing. It helped to be in seat C106, virtually right in front of her, and no more than about three yards away. The whole orchestra sounded rather good from that position--with an unusual clarity for Davies Symphony Hall. Some of the members of the orchestra seemed as entranced as the audience. Hahn, meanwhile, while tightly focused, found time to look over her shoulder from time to time to take in the view of the orchestra, clearly enjoying herself--which seems to be her habit. I noticed her doing the same thing last time I heard her play live, when she performed the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto in San Francisco, with James Gaffigan conducting, in November 2008. Last night Hahn wore a beautiful tapered black silk taffeta gown with starkly contrasting splashes of flowers and leaves in gold embroidery and appliqué. The performance was very warmly received.

Hahn delighted the audience by playing two encores, one modern, one not. She first played The Blue Curve of the Earth, which she herself commissioned from composer Tina Davidson--a scintillating piece of restrained energy with much use of pizzicato playing that I rather enjoyed. Hahn seemed almost apologetic when she took up her violin a second time, eliciting a laugh, this time to play a portion of the Bach A minor Sonata No. 2 for solo violin. "They gave me permission to play another one," she announced, and she played it very sweetly indeed. Hahn signed autographs after the performance. I asked her to date mine. She said matter-of-factly, "You'll have to tell me what the date is," no doubt a symptom of much travel.

I don't think I've heard a better reading of the Shostakovich. The ensemble was focused and tight. Vänskä elicited a memorable performance. All in all, perhaps the best concert this season--although I'd be hard-pressed to choose between this one and the December 8, 2011 performance with guest conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen and soloist Leila Josefowicz. Happily, there's no need to choose.

Photo of Hilary Hahn by Peter Miller. Photo of Osmo Vänskä by Ann Marsden. Both photos courtesy of the San Francisco Symphony web site. 

Music I'm Listening To: San Francisco Symphony (April 9, 2011)

I attended a very enjoyable concert by the San Francisco Symphony on Friday night (April 9). Osmo Vänskä, Music Director of the Minnesota Orchestra, conducted. San Francisco Symphony concertmaster Alexander Barantschik was the featured soloist, playing the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto in E Minor. The program opened with a new composition by Austrian composer Thomas Larcher entitled Red and Green. The second half of the program, after intermission, was taken up by a performance of Ralph Vaughn Williams' London Symphony.

Some people hate it, but I have a taste for modern music, and I particularly enjoy explorations of rhythm, texture, and timbre--including those that use unconventional instruments, non-instruments made into instruments, and extended techniques on traditional instruments. It's the sound of the music that fascinates me. Is that nonsensical? A better way to put it might be to say, it's the quality of the sound that I enjoy. Larcher's Red and Green was right up my alley. As the program notes point out, Larcher has more or less abandoned melody and harmony in this piece. Red and Green is concerned with rhythm, texture, and timbre--the quality of sound. The program notes obligingly list all the unusual "instruments" in the ensemble. I won't repeat it here, but it includes things like tin foil. The six-man percussion team (not including a couple more performers manipulating a piano and playing a celesta) was kept very busy. In the one place that a semblance of a melody did emerge, it had the feeling of something external--a snippet of some other composition fleetingly recalled. Trying to describe music like this--or any music, really--in words is a hopeless task (that's what we have music for). Suffice it to say that it was consistently interesting and I very much look forward to the release of a recording that includes Red and Green.

The piece was completed only in November of last year, as a commission for the San Francisco Symphony. The Thursday, Friday, and Saturday concerts this past weekend premiered the piece. Composer Larcher--a strikingly tall, awkward-looking man--appeared on stage after the performance and seemed very pleased--as he should have been. The orchestra was extraordinarily focused and responsive to Vänskä, who conducted without a baton, using his entire body to communicate--bending low with a cramped hand at his chest asking for more, or making broad gestures with his arms, or pointing energetically in anticipation of an entry. The San Francisco Symphony seemed in top form. Mr. Larcher may have been awkward on stage, and his comments about the music in the program notes didn't quite make sense, but who needs words when you can create music like this? Larcher is a composer I will be looking out for in the future.

The Mendelssohn Violin Concerto got off to a very rocky start, I thought. Was it just me? For the first few bars, Barantschik sounded out of synch with the orchestra. It was a short while before soloist and orchestra seemed to be conscious of each other's presence. I got the impression that conductor Vänskä started before Mr. Barantschik was quite ready. The playing overall was rather too deliberate for my taste. Competent, surely, but somehow lacking in fire. I thought the early cadenza and the slow middle movement the most effective parts of the performance. The orchestra didn't have the concentration so evident in the opening piece. Do performers go on auto-pilot when they play something as familiar as this concerto? Still, it was fun to learn that Mr. Barantschik played the violin on which the Mendelssohn concerto is believed to have been premiered by Ferdinand David, in March 1845, a 1742 Guarnerius del Gesu on loan exclusively to Mr. Barantschik from the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco and that Jascha Heifetz had owned the violin from 1922 until his death, when he bequeathed it to the Fine Arts Museums. I probably own Heifetz recordings of this instrument.

I thought Vänskä led the symphony in a generally good reading of the London Symphony by Vaughn Williams, another very familiar composition, but one I'd never heard live before. By the end of this very long piece, however, the audience was getting restless. Still, all in all a very enjoyable evening.

(Photo of conductor Osmo Vänskä by Ann Marsden, photo of Alexander Barantschik uncredited. Both photos courtesy of the San Francisco Symphony)