Paponiu Concludes SFS Youth Orchestra Season

Yesterday afternoon in Davies Symphony Hall Wattis Foundation Music Director Radu Paponiu led the final program of the San Francisco Symphony (SFS) Youth Orchestra. This was a bit of a departure from the conventional overture-concerto-symphony program, because there was no concerto, only music for the full ensemble. There was, however, a concluding symphony, which was Hector Berlioz’ Opus 14, given the title “Symphonie fantastique.” The “concerto slot” was taken by the Petite Suite de concert, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s Opus 77. The “overture” was the most recent work on the program, Anna Clyne’s “This Midnight Hour.” The music was inspired by two poets, the latter having been born about a quarter century after the former’s death. The poets were Charles Baudelaire (1821–67) and Juan Ramón Jiménez (1881–1958).

The Berlioz selection was definitely the most familiar offering, and I have to confess that I was delighted that Paponiu included the repeat of the symphony’s lengthy first movement. Given the title “Reveries, Passions,” this is the one movement in which reflection overpowers narrative. (In that context the decision to repeat reinforced those grounds for reflection.) Each of the remaining movements has its own narrative, each unfolding a path of descent, concluding in the depths of the “Dream of a Witches Sabbath,” whose darkness is reinforced with the “Dies irae” (day of wrath) Latin hymn from the thirteenth century Requiem setting. Paponiu knew exactly how to tap into the neurotic intensity of Berlioz’ score without ever letting his ensemble overplay its hand.

Photograph of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor taken around 1905 (photographer unknown but photograph restored by Adam Cuerden, available from the United States Library of Congress's Prints and Photographs division, from Wikipedia)

Coleridge-Taylor’s Opus 77 suite consists of four relatively short movements, each with a subtitle that suggests an underlying narrative. There is no shortage of expressiveness in the composer’s rhetorical approach to each of those movements. Nevertheless, I made a note that Paponiu’s steady hand kept the schmaltz from getting out of order.

Where Clyne is concerned, I have no trouble acknowledging the wealth of education behind her efforts as a composer. Nevertheless, I inevitably come away from listening to one of her pieces thinking that, while she may have had a massive Lego set at her disposal, she had yet to assemble the pieces in an engagingly imaginative way. It almost seems as if her command of music history is so extensive and so solid that she still has yet to forge a path of her own. As a result, while she may have been significantly inspired by such major poets and Baudelaire and Jiménez, she is still fumbling around for inspiration of her own, as she has been doing over the last several decades in which I have listened to her compositions.