Heard an interesting SF Symphony concert this evening. Charles Dutoit conducted. The program was Debussy's
Prelude to The Afternoon of a Faun, Stravinsky's
Symphony in C, and Rimsky-Korsakov's
Scheherezade.
On the downside, the audience was very noisy. Why on earth people can't unwrap cough drops before the music starts, I do not know. Is being courteous to the musicians and other listeners really such a difficult concept? Do concerts attract people prone to coughing fits? I don't think I've ever felt the need to cough during a concert, ever. Also, Davies Symphony Hall has parquet flooring under the seats, not carpet. Every foot that moves, every object dropped is audible. Who thought that was a good design concept, I wonder? And why not add carpet now to remedy it? Acoustics perhaps? I don't know. Finally, I thought the first two pieces indifferently played.
Now for the upside: The Scheherezade was a gem.
When I first began going to concerts of my own volition, I listened to rock music. The gap between the recorded versions I was used to and live performances was a big one that took some getting used to. In popular music more than classical music, the original recording is the iconic version. I wanted to hear what was on the record, not a new interpretation, even if it was a live interpretation by the original artist. Even in the world of classical music, where it's normal to hear various interpretations of the same repertoire, nearly perfect performances by the world's greatest artists (of today and generations past) are so readily available as recordings that it's just as easy to go into a live classical concert with unrealistic expectations of perfection.
When my interest shifted away from popular music and toward classical music (around 1979) I began to attend classical concerts. Perhaps predictably, I had unrealistic expectations. With time, however, I came to accept the fact that even the most famous of performers have good nights and bad. An exceptional performance is just that: exceptional. It is something to be grateful for when it happens, not something to assume will happen in advance. Tonight's Scheherezade was special, one to tuck away among the other memorable performances I've been privileged to enjoy over the years.
Although I am a collector by nature--art, stamps, plants, rugs, books, insulators, paperweights, recordings, wine--and I enjoy making lists, which is another kind of collecting, I have never assembled a list of all the concerts I've attended, but there have been many. The gems, however, have been comparatively few. I can call them up in an instant. The first is easy. Itzhak Perlman, Columbus, Ohio, 1983 or 1984, Mershon Auditorium on the Ohio State University campus. I paid $8 for the ticket--cheap even then. I don't remember the program. What I do remember is one part of it--and that is the point; one piece he played was perfect, making the whole concert worthwhile; no need for perfection in everything (which is not to say the rest was flawed). He played one of the Bach unaccompanied partitas (or one of the unaccompanied sonatas) so perfectly that it still sends shivers down my spine to think about it.
Scientists who study complex systems speak of "emergent properties." (Don't worry, I'll get back to music in a second.) Emergent properties are independent second-order properties that result from the operation of simple, first-order principles. I'm sure a specialist could explain it better than I, but the best example I remember from my reading is flocking behavior. A flock of birds, or a school of fish, for that matter, seems an independent entity--alive, almost sentient. Yet, the behavior of a flock of birds is actually an emergent property of myriad individual decisions by the birds that are part of it. No bird intends to create or contribute to the motion of the flock. Two simple rules cause the flock to behave as it does. Each bird need only: 1) try to stay as close as possible to the center of gravity of the group, while 2) trying to maintain a fixed minimum distance from its nearest neighbor. That, it appears, is sufficient to create flocking (or schooling) phenomena.
Back to music--specifically, Bach. The birds in this case are the notes as Bach wrote them. When played the way Itzhak Perlman played them that evening, there were "ghost melodies." I don't know how else to describe what I heard. There were lines of melody hanging in the air above him that were an emergent property of the playing of the underlying notes. It was as if a second violinist was on stage. It was eerie and wonderful--and memorable. I believe this to have been a real phenomenon, related to interactions of overtones. Whatever was happening, I will never forget the concert.
Having recently read Walter Piston's Orchestration, perhaps it was inevitable that I went into last night's concert more than usually eager to watch precisely how the music was constructed--to watch it move from section to section, to watch the way the sounds are interwoven. I suspect that Scheherezade was a piece particularly well-suited to my frame of mind.
It's been a long time since I've heard Scheherezade, and I had never heard it live before. I had forgotten the hauntingly beautiful solos for violin. I had forgotten the many other solos in the piece. One is handed to the principal cello, one to the first clarinet, one to the first bassoon, and there are others. This last--the bassoon solo--is especially beautiful and it was played last night with striking aplomb. I might go so far as to say those few seconds of the performance were worth the entire price of admission.
The piece is orchestrated with remarkably clarity. The performance struck me as precise, allowing the clarity to show, but it was warm, and that seems appropriate to the music. I was pleased to see that I was not alone in thinking the bassoonist did especially well. After the piece had finished, when the conductor was acknowledging the various soloists, the bassoonist was rewarded with the biggest surge of applause. All in all, a beautiful performance.
Other musical gems, each with its own little story, would include hearing pianists like Radu Lupu, Melvin Tan, and Imogen Cunningham doing Schubert in recital; hearing Elly Ameling sing Brahms lieder; hearing cellists like Yo Yo Ma, David Geringas, and Mstislav Rostropovich in recital--Rostropovich with more energy than most men half his age; hearing a performance of Beethoven's Romance No. 2 in Tokyo with Kyung-wha Chung as the soloist--a relaxed encore that was better than anything in the main program; hearing Kyung-wha Chung doing Prokofiev sonatas in recital; hearing the Tokyo String Quartet doing one of the late Beethoven Quartets; hearing Alicia de Larrocha in recital in Milan. To this list I now add hearing Charles Dutoit conduct the SF Symphony in Rimsky-Korsakov's Scheherezade.
What a fool I am ever to want more than I already have. And yet I do.
Photo of Charles Dutoit used with permission, courtesy of the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra.
I just finished The Year of Living Biblically: One Man's Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible (Simon & Schuster Paperbacks, 2007), by A. J. Jacobs. As the title suggests, the book is a chronicle of the author's attempt to spend a year following the numerous recommendations, strictures, and commands of the bible literally (focusing on the Old Testament in the first part of his biblical year, the New Testament later in the year). He makes a point of ignoring convenience, vowing to obey all of the rules, not just the easy ones or the ones that seem sensible--not killing, for example.
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