Last night in Davies Symphony Hall, the young American conductor Francesco Lecce-Chong made his debut conducting the San Francisco Symphony. His program was one of contrasts, which allowed the attentive listener to establish some sense of the scope of his talents. The first half of the program was devoted entirely to Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, featuring French pianist David Fray as soloist in a performance of the K. 491 concerto in C minor. This was preceded by the K. 367 ballet music composed for the K. 366 opera Idomeneo. The second half of the program leapt boldly ahead by about a century with its own overture, the one that Giuseppe Verdi composed for I vespri siciliani (the Sicilian vespers), followed by Edward Elgar’s Opus 50 concert overture “In the South,” completed in 1904.
This last selection was definitely the high point of the evening. This is a highly assertive large-ensemble composition with generous percussion to match. Bold strokes dominate over the subtle ones, and there are a generous supply of nods to both Richard Wagner and Richard Strauss that Elgar barely tries to conceal. Nevertheless, Elgar’s own characteristic rhetoric prevails throughout this overture, barreling ahead with all the enthusiastic energy of George Robertson Sinclair’s bulldog Dan.
Statue of the bulldog Dan marking the spot where he fell into the River Wye (photograph by David Stowell, from Wikimedia Commons, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license)
Those who know their Elgar know that Sinclair was assigned one of the “Enigma” variations in the Opus 36. However, the variation says more about Dan than about Sinclair. It follows Dan as he falls into the River Wye, paddles around, and eventually clambers out, adding a joyous bark as an exclamation point. Elgar annotated the opening theme of Opus 50 with the text “Dan Triumphant (after a fight).”
Triumph prevailed in the rhetorical stance that Lecce-Chong took in presenting Opus 50. Conducting without a score, he displayed a keen sense of just how much action was emerging from how many different corners of the orchestra. Over the course of the overture’s twenty minutes, he never let his energy flag. There was no shortage of enthusiasm, but there was also a clear sense that Lecce-Chong understood the overall rhetorical landscape and knew how to bring out the climaxes that matter the most with just the right impact and contrast.
To some extent the Verdi overture served as an overture to Elgar’s overture. The music allowed the ensemble to “warm up” in preparation for the more extended fireworks that would follow. This time Lecce-Chong used a score; and, if that score was a bit heavy on some of Verdi’s clichés, Lecce-Chong still knew how to rise above the trivial in his presentation.
His Mozart performances were both led without a baton, leading entirely through the expressiveness of his two hands in the context of whole-body gestures. However, his energy did not consistently yield compelling presentations. Where the concerto was concerned, his primary handicap was Fray, who was too heavy-handed in his finger-work and relied on the damper pedal too often. All of those factors obscured the elegant features that permeated not only Mozart’s melodic lines but also the clockwork embellishments that were supposed to highlight the performer’s virtuosity. Working with a reduced string section, Lecce-Chong gamely tried to raise the spirits through the ensemble work; but K. 491 is a piano concerto that is made or broken by the soloist. This was a case in which a capable conductor deserved a more capable pianist.
The opening K. 367 does not get very much attention. As is the case with Elgar’s Opus 50, the music is highly spirited; and Lecce-Chong’s rhetoric clearly honored those spirits. Nevertheless, there is not as much substance behind those spirits as one encounters in other results of Mozart’s mature efforts. Given the overall scope of last night’s program, one might conjecture that Lecce-Chong chose music from K. 367 to “warm up” the audience, providing a “first taste” of his stylistic preferences. In that respect it was a performance that promised good things to follow, and there is no doubt that the best of them were delivered after the intermission.
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