Pianist Daniil Trifonov (from the Web page for this week’s San Francisco Symphony concert)
Yesterday afternoon in Davies Symphony Hall, the San Francisco Symphony (SFS) presented the first of the four concerts in this week’s subscription offering. Music Director Michael Tilson Thomas (MTT) conducted; and the soloist was Daniil Trifonov performing Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Opus 40 (fourth) piano concerto in G minor. This was Rachmaninoff’s last concerto composition, initially completed in 1926 but drawing upon material from 1911, then going through a series of revisions culminating in the 1941 version, which is what is most frequently performed.
That modifier “most frequently” is a bit of a stretch. Those with even passing familiarity of this concerto are more likely to know it from a recording (possibly the one Rachmaninoff himself made with Eugene Ormandy conducting the Philadelphia Orchestra) than from a concert experience. (Full disclaimer: I have the Rachmaninoff-Ormandy recording; and yesterday was my first encounter with a concert performance.)
There are those inclined to write off this concerto as problematic as an excuse for ignoring it. I would prefer to call it adventurous in unexpected ways. While a key is explicitly associated with the concerto, the opening measures suggest that one has been dropped in the middle of an elaborate harmonic progression; and listeners with a strong sense of tradition may argue that the theme takes forever to find a perfect cadence.
I prefer to think that Rachmaninoff deliberately chose to exploit the potential of ambiguous progressions. Bearing in mind when he worked on the initial version, one can assume with at least a bit of confidence that he was aware of Arnold Schoenberg’s interests in ambiguity by choosing to eliminate the need for a tonal center. Rachmaninoff chose not to reject that center, preferring, instead, to chart calculated distances from it and elaborate paths to arrive at it. Thus, the concerto gets off to a challenging start; but the attentive listener willing to accept it on its own terms, can “stay the course” of its journey through three movements, taking no little satisfaction in the high spirits that conclude the final movement.
Yesterday’s performance could not have been better for such attentive listeners. This was definitely music that was about the relationship between piano and ensemble, and Trifonov always knew where to situate himself along the foreground-background continuum. That knowledge was clearly derived from his relationship with MTT, who had to concern himself with foreground-background relationships among the different sections of the orchestra. As a result, those willing to accept the concerto on its own terms found yesterday’s performance to be a richly rewarding experience, perhaps even more rewarding than a first-rate account of one of Rachmaninoff’s more familiar works for piano and orchestra.
As most of the audience expected, Trifonov returned to play a brief encore. He chose a composer that Rachmaninoff used to favor in the recital programs he would prepare, Alexander Scriabin. Trifonov played the third (in the key of F-sharp major) of the eight études of Scriabin’s Opus 42 collection, completed in 1903. This piece is dominated by sinuous chromatic passages that, in their own way, defy the listener from associating the overall structure with a tonal center. While Rachmaninoff’s pleasure in playing Scriabin’s music never really rubbed off on his own compositional efforts, the ambiguities of this étude recalled those associated with the opening passage of the program’s concerto selection.
The “overture” that preceded this concerto was the world premiere performance of the latest work that John Adams composed for SFS, written on a joint commission with Carnegie Hall. The title of the piece, “I Still Dance,” was a phrase Adams picked up in conversation with MTT’s husband Joshua Robison. Adams himself calls the piece a celebration of “continued youthful vitality;” and there was certainly no shortage of hyper-charged energy in the music, which only lasted about eight minutes.
Much of that energy derived from some of the richest instrumentation I have encountered in an Adams composition, particularly in the wide diversity of percussion instruments. I was also amused to see Scott Pingel leave the Principal chair of the Bass section to take up the electric bass instead. Apparently this was a nod to his past experience in rock bands before joining a symphony orchestra.
Sadly, the rich extent of that diversity never really registered on the listening side of the performance. The eye could take in no end of activity, but often the ear struggled to pick up on what the eye had detected. When compared with the crystalline transparency of other high-energy Adams compositions, such as “Short Ride in a Fast Machine” or “Grand Pianola Music,” “I Still Dance” was more than a little disappointing.
The second half of the program was devoted entirely to Robert Schumann’s Opus 97 (“Rhenish”) symphony in E-flat major. Anyone who has seen the extent of the churning energy behind the flow of the Rhine River will quickly identify with the vigorous flow of phrases in this symphony’s opening movement, and MTT was definitely there to dish out the full extent of that vigor. Personally, I have always been more interested in how this music contains two “passing phrases” that quickly flow out of sight (and hearing) along the currents of the Rhine. Both of them return to open to other symphonies. One of them is Schumann’s own Opus 120 (fourth) symphony in D minor, a particularly ambitious experiment in unified structure. The other was picked up by Johannes Brahms for the opening of his Opus 90 (third) symphony in F major, composed a little less than a quarter century after Schumann’s Opus 97.
While MTT’s account of Schumann got off to an energetic start, the rhetoric was beginning to flag even before the first movement had concluded. The overall execution felt as if the conductor was trying to make every gesture a swooping one. That began to feel like a bit much in the Scherzo movement (which is not a scherzo in any sense other than its three beats to the measure); and the evocation of the Cologne Cathedral in the Feierlich (fourth) movement was more ponderous than grand. By the time the concluding Lebhaft movement (the same tempo marking as the opening) advanced, one could be forgiven for allowing fatigue to displace interest.
Nevertheless, if the overall experience of this week’s program was a mixed one, the introduction to the seldom-performed Rachmaninoff concerto made this concert an affair to remember.
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