Simone Young’s Delightful SFS Debut at Davies

Conductor Simone Young and pianist Louis Lortie (from the SFS event page for the concert)

Last night in Davies Symphony Hall, Australian Simone Young made her debut conducting the San Francisco Symphony (SFS). Her program basically followed the overture-concerto-symphony format; and the concerto soloist was Louis Lortie performing Maurice Ravel’s piano concerto in G major. The preceding “overture” was Ravel’s own orchestration of his “Pavane pour une infante défunte” (pavane for a dead princess); and the “symphony” following the intermission was Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov’s Opus 35 symphonic suite in four movements Scheherazade.

It is appropriate to begin with the concerto, since it allowed one to appreciate Young’s qualities as not only a leader but also the mediator between soloist and ensemble. She had no trouble identifying those passages in which Lortie took the lead and never tried to undermine that position. However, because this is music by Ravel, the composer’s capacity for rich instrumental sonorities was as important as the extensive rhetorical breadth expected from the pianist, just as likely to provide accompaniment as to take the thematic lead.

This is music that pulls one startling rabbit out of a hat after another in both of the outer movements, while the inner Adagio assai amounts to a melancholy waltz that could easily have had an impact on the profoundly introspective jazz piano of Bill Evans. Ravel, of course, was influenced by jazz; and it is important to remember that the G major concerto was composed in 1931, after Ravel was well aware of George Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue” (1924) and the concerto he wrote the following year, called “Concerto in F” with no commitment to either the major or minor mode. Indeed, while Ravel was already well established for his prodigious piano technique, there is a clear sense that his capacity for virtuosity got an adrenaline boost from Gershwin’s wild side.

Lortie was clearly at home with the duties imposed by this concerto. That left Young to concentrate on making sure that the orchestral rhetoric matched both sides of Lortie’s moods, the spirited in the outer movements and the reflective in the central. She made sure that every instrument that contributed to the sonorous textures had its say clearly and definitively, and she had no trouble with allowing the percussionists to exercise the full extent of their playfulness. By now I have lost count of the number of times I have listened to this concerto in Davies (it was the topic of one of my earliest Examiner.com pieces); but last night’s approach is likely to establish a firm place in my long-term memory.

Young’s management of instrumental resources took center stage, so to speak, after the intermission. Taking the “long view” of the history of symphonic music, Rimsky-Korsakov is unlikely ever to be remembered for his capacity of thematic development. However, what he could not achieve through the intricate workings of embellishment or harmonic transformation he could realize through a keen sense of instrumental coloration. If the notes repeat themselves, their sonorities keep changing from one passage to the next.

Young clearly appreciated that the heart of Rimsky-Korsakov’s capacity for rhetoric was to be found in his imaginative approaches to instrumentation. Yes, some of those sonorities could recur just as much as the thematic elements; but when one works on a large canvas, once cannot expect every square inch to have its own unique color. Rimsky-Korsakov had the ability to work with sonority the way that his eighteenth-century predecessors worked with themes; and that included recapitulation, as well as development. Thus, Young could present his Opus 35 as a journey through sonorities covering the full gamut from dazzling to subdued; and the result was a listening experience that held the attention from beginning to end without ever feeling tired or worn out.

The only weak part of the program came with the opening Ravel pavane. Young addressed the audience by considering the music as suitable for reflection following the fire that devastated the Notre-Dame de Paris cathedral. Sadly, there was little sense of orientation in her interpretation of the music. Conducting without a baton, both hands shaped broad arcs that did not always seem to convey a clear sense of an underlying pulse.

It is important to remember that a pavane is a dance form in which a well-defined beat is critical to the musical structure. Ravel knew this; and, even at its richest, his polyphony always knew how to orient the full ensemble around that beat. Sadly, Young’s conducting never successfully conveyed the essence of that pulse; and there was a clear sense that the SFS instrumentalists never found an orientation that would suit the rhetoric of Ravel’s music. Fortunately, the “overture” for the evening was the only weak spot of the entire listening experience for the evening.