Conductor Mark Elder Makes his SFS Debut

Conductor Mark Elder (photograph by Groves Artists, courtesy of SFS)

Mark Elder is no stranger for those that have followed the San Francisco Opera for some time. I first encountered him in the fall of 2015, when he had trouble keeping the brass section under control while conducting Richard Wagner’s score for Die Meistersinger con Nürnberg. My only other experience with his performance was in the spring of 2019, when he was the conductor for the Great Performances at the Met broadcast of Camille Saint-Saëns’ Samson et Dalila. Sadly, this was no more satisfying than his approach to Wagner.

Last night in Davies Symphony Hall, Elder made his debut conducting the San Francisco Symphony (SFS). Having more liberty to prepare a repertoire, he put together a program that was decidedly more engaging than either of his previous operatic encounters. The first half of the program accounted for French music from the two extremes of the nineteenth century. The “central” selection was Claude Debussy’s “Prélude à l’Après-midi d’un faune,” which was composed in 1894. This was flanked on either side by overtures by Hector Berlioz. The program began with his overture to Les Franc-juges, described in the program book notes by James M. Keller as his “first operatic failure.” The first half concluded with “Le roi Lear,” a concert overture inspired by William Shakespeare’s King Lear.

Berlioz was never shy when it came to instrumentation, and Elder displayed a solid command of the scores for both of these overtures. Of particular interest was the interplay across the first and second violin sections. This was enhanced through the conductor’s decision to have the two sections face each other, rather than play side-by-side. This afforded the attentive listener better opportunities to appreciate the many details in how Berlioz managed his orchestral textures.

Those textures were equally significant during the second half of the program, most of which accounted for Richard Strauss’ Opus 30 tone poem “Also sprach Zarathustra.” Strauss was heavily interested in the writings of Friedrich Nietzsche, which he encountered in the early 1890s. Also sprach Zarathustra was conceived by Nietzsche as a four-part treatise; but it unfolds as a prose narrative, whose plot line (such as it is) provided Strauss with a framework for his tone poem. Each of the tone poem’s episodes reflects on a specific segment of Nietzsche’s text. To be fair, I have to confess that, over the course of my several listening experiences, I could easily apprehend the episodic structure without finding much of a relationship to a narrative thread. Nevertheless, Elder’s conducting could not have been clearer in guiding one through those episodes, regardless of any presence or absence of a plot-line.

He then decided that Strauss’ account of heavy philosophy deserved a lighter “punch line.” As a result, last night’s program concluded with one of John Adams’ most engaging compositions, “Short Ride in a Fast Machine.” This quickly blew away any of the “scholarly cobwebs” that may have been induced by Strauss’ musical reflections on Nietzsche! This music was an SFS favorite back when Michael Tilson Thomas was Music Director. Personally, I was glad to encounter it again.