Visiting SFS conductor Simone Young (from the event page for this week’s concerts)
Last night Simone Young returned to the podium of Davies Symphony Hall to conduct the San Francisco Symphony (SFS) in a program originally planned by Antonio Pappano, who had to withdraw due to commitments at the Royal Opera House. The second half of that program was devoted entirely to a concert performance of the first act of Richard Wagner’s Die Walküre, the second of the four operas in his epic Der Ring des Nibelungen (the ring of the Nibelung). That single act is an intense drama unto itself, which amounts to an “origins” narrative behind the birth of Siegfried, the hero-figure in the remaining two Ring operas.
Siegfried is the child of the incestuous relationship between Siegmund (tenor Stuart Skelton) and Sieglinde (soprano Emily Magee, making her SFS debut), both the children of Wotan. Both are children of misfortune. Sieglinde has been given in marriage to Hunding (bass Ain Anger), while Siegmund always finds himself on the losing side of any battle he enters. The first act of Walküre thus involves a warped triangle relationship, which will lead to an intense fight between Siegmund and Hunding in the second act, a fight which neither survives, leaving Sieglinde on her own with Siegfried in her womb.
Wagner himself wrote the entire libretto for the four Ring operas. The text for the first act of Walküre is rich in backstory and almost minimal in action. This is because, with the exception of a few critical moments, the libretto focuses on establishing the context for each of these three characters. That context is so meticulously planned out that the attentive listener/viewer encounters every action that transpires as an inevitability. Furthermore, it arises not only through the words of the libretto but also through Wagner’s leitmotiv (guiding motif) technique, which represents every character trait (as well as properties of critical objects) as an easily recognizable musical element.
Last night Davies provided projections of the English translations of the German texts sung by the vocalists. Through those projections the attentive listener could easily grasp the presence and significance of those leitmotivs. Thus, while Wagner tended to be a bit verbose in his texts, the actual flow of the narrative tended to depend more on the music than on the words. Young clearly appreciated this critical role assigned to the music, and she consistently maintained just the right balance among the massive instrumental resources that let the leitmotivs fulfill their respective representational missions. The vocalists, in turn, shaped their phrasing to match perfectly the phrasing of all passages on orchestra side. The result was an edge-of-your-seat encounter in which relatively little action unfolds in a context that almost boils over with its implications and forebodings.
The intermission was preceded by a half hour of more measured quietude. Richard Strauss composed his “Metamorphosen” for 23 solo string parts: ten violins, five violas, five cellos, and three basses. This was one of Strauss’ “twilight” compositions, rich in the interleaving of the solo voices and relatively limited (probably intentionally) in thematic material and rhetorical flourishes. One can almost think back on the autobiographical undercurrents of Strauss’ Opus 35 “Don Quixote” tone poem and the way in which it ends with a whimper, rather than a bang (with apologies to T. S. Eliot). “Metamorphosen” does not quite whimper, but it often comes across as so introspective as to leave one wondering if the composer wanted anyone to pay attention.
Nevertheless, Young did her best to summon attention from the audience. She clearly knew the score well enough to monitor and guide balance among all of those individual voices (which often join together in different sized groups). What may be interesting is that the music never seems to converge on some moment of ultimate satisfaction, that sense of finality that would allow Mephistopheles to claim Faust’s soul. It thus seemed as if Young approached her task as one of managing ambiguities that are never resolved, an interesting take on Strauss’ motives but a perplexing one on audience side.
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