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: 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.