SFS Conductor and Soloist in Top Form at Davies

Violinist James Ehnes (from the SFS event page for this week’s concert)

Last night in Davies Symphony Hall, conductor Marek Janowski returned to lead the San Francisco Symphony (SFS) in the first of this week’s three subscription concerts. The soloist for this program was violinist James Ehnes, also making a return visit and this time performing Max Bruch’s Opus 26 (first) concerto in G minor. The program began with Felix Mendelssohn’s Opus 95, the concert overture he was commissioned to write based on Victor Hugo’s tragic drama Ruy Blas. The second half of the program was devoted entirely to Richard Wagner with orchestral excerpts from two of his operas, Tannhäuser and Tristan und Isolde.

Visits by both Janowski and Ehnes are eagerly anticipated. Both of them have impeccable command of their respective techniques and capacities for expressiveness that frequently sheds new light on even the most familiar compositions. The Bruch concerto is one of those compositions, and it can be demanding in ways that the casual listener might not initially recognize. Following a brief orchestral introduction, presented with just the right hints of suspense through Janowski’s direction, the violin makes its appearance with a single sustained tone. Having listened to some of the best violinists fumble over such apparent simplicity, I focus intensely on how every violinist handles that introduction.

Ehnes introduced himself with just the right blend of clarity and character. After all, the note cannot sustain itself the way the piano can by simply striking the key with the right amount of pressure. Ehnes found just the right combination of dynamic contour and vibrato to establish the suspense that Bruch intended this single note to register.

Having endowed the solo line with a compelling establishment of personality, Ehnes could then move on to introducing and developing his thematic content. Those developments proceeded with impeccable alignment with the orchestral activities coordinated by Janowski. As a result, no matter how many times one might have encountered this concerto in performance or on recording, this was an interpretation that consistently shimmered with attributes of character shared by both soloist and conductor.

The impact of this performance clearly registered with the house. Audience response was such that Ehnes returned to give two encores, each of which disclosed new aspects of his approach to repertoire. He began with a major virtuoso undertaking in its own right, the third (in D minor) of Eugène Ysaÿe’s Opus 27 collection of six sonatas for solo violin. Consisting only of a single movement, this sonata was dedicated by Georges Enescu and given the title “Ballade.” It is structured in two contrasting sections of Lento and Allegro tempos. Once again, Ehnes knew how to endow this challenging technical offering with a perfectly consistent approach to expressiveness.

While Ysaÿe’s sonatas were composed to explore the expanding sources of techniques for virtuoso performers, there is a good chance that he saw the underlying pedagogical value for a new century of both students and teachers. (The sonatas were composed in 1923.) Presumably, pedagogy also motivated the composition of sonatas and partitas for solo violin written by Johann Sebastian Bach almost exactly 200 years earlier in 1720. Ehnes played the Largo movement from BWV 1005, the third, in the key of C major, of the three sonatas. (Ysaÿe’s own project was inspired by a performance of BWV 1001, the sonata in G major, given by Joseph Szigeti.) His graceful approach to the double-stop and triple-stop passages clearly established the priority of his expressive stance over mere technical display.

That balance of the expressive and the technical was just as evident in Janowski’s Wagner offerings. He began with the two major instrumental selections from Tannhäuser, the overture and the Venusberg dance music added for the Paris performance of the opera in 1861, some sixteen years after the initial score was completed. This was followed by the opening Prelude for Tristan und Isolde, after which the set concluded with the instrumental version of the final “Liebestod” scene sung by Isolde.

Janowski clearly knows every detail that Wagner penned into these scores. When Wagner’s polyphony is at its thickest, Janowski consistently sorted out foreground from background in ways in which the full extent of orchestral coloration was never compromised. His approach to tempo consistently found ways to keep the rhetorical flow moving while always allowing just enough time to dwell on the most dramatically critical of the moments. For Wagner lovers this was music that vividly recalled the intensity of what was being enacted on the stage, but this was an interpretation in which the music fared perfectly well on its own in the absence of staging.

The Mendelssohn overture was the earliest work on the program, predating the original version of Tannhäuser by about six years. The contrast between the melodrama of Victor Hugo and the more personal dramatic qualities of Wagner’s libretto are unmistakable. One gets the impression that Mendelssohn wrote this overture to get the audience to sit up and pay attention before the drama got under way. In this case Janowski used the occasion to get our attention revved up for the Bruch concerto, and he succeeded admirably in achieving this goal.