Denk’s Program for Piano and Strings at Davies

Pianist and conductor Jeremy Denk (courtesy of SFS)

Last night marked the first public concert given by the San Francisco Symphony (SFS) in Davies Symphony Hall since the closing of the San Francisco War Memorial & Performing Arts Center on March 7, 2020 to prevent the spread of COVID-19. (On Thursday and Friday of last week, SFS and Music Director Esa-Pekka Salonen presented a free program reserved for Bay Area hospital and medical professionals, as well as representatives from community centers and cultural districts, who have been at the front lines supporting the people of the city in critical ways throughout the pandemic.) Pianist Jeremy Denk conducted from the piano keyboard, presenting a program of four compositions for piano and strings.

The program featured two concertos composed, respectively, by Johann Sebastian Bach (BWV 1052 in D minor) and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (K. 449 in E-flat major). Each concerto was preceded by a shorter composition, both being performed by SFS for the first time. The program began with William Grant Still’s “Out of the Silence;” and the Bach and Mozart concertos were separated by Gerald Finzi’s “Eclogue.” Denk shared leadership of the ensemble with Assistant Concertmaster Wyatt Underhill.

For my own tastes the Mozart selection was probably the most satisfying offering. Most of his piano concertos supplement the virtuoso keyboard work with imaginative sonorous interplay between winds and strings, but the winds are entirely absent in K. 499. As a result, all interplay unfolds only between soloist and ensemble; and the prevailing rhetoric is consistently playful. As usual, the keyboard work was conceived to allow the composer to show off his skills; and Denk consistently rose to the challenges of all of those skills. However, there is just as much playfulness in the ensemble music; and, at the conclusion of the final Allegro ma non troppo movement, Mozart lets everyone go to town with a galloping gigue.

While it was not “Historically Informed” in the strictest sense of that phrase, there was much to enjoy in the Bach offering. String resources were far smaller than those for the Mozart concerto. Indeed, were it not for the social distancing of the performers, they probably all would have fit comfortably in the space of Gottfried Zimmermann’s coffee house in Leipzig with Bach leading from behind his keyboard. It would be fair to say that Denk and his SFS colleagues managed to capture the social spirit of that time while endowing the performance with a decidedly present-day rhetoric matched to the sonorities of a concert grand piano. True, Denk could get a bit enthusiastically heavy-handed with some of the more demanding passages; but, in all probability, Bach had his own ways of “playing the show-off” too.

The Still composition was an instrumentation of music originally written for solo piano. One would probably not guess those origins given the sensuous qualities of the sonorities and the intimate interplay between piano and strings. Denk himself endorsed that sensuality by calling the piece and “opium den” after the performance had concluded.

Finzi’s piece began as the slow movement for a piano concerto. The program note by James M. Keller described it as an “intimate work, reflecting his love of Bachian counterpoint.” I am not sure that I endorse that “Bach connection.” Indeed, I was left wondering just how fine the line is that separates intimacy from schmaltz. Fortunately, neither Denk nor his string section ventured too far across the border of self-indulgence.

Denk wrapped up the evening with an encore, turning to the work of jazz stride pianist Donald Lambert. Lambert had a particular interest in “jazzing up” favorite classical themes. Denk selected his treatment of the “Pilgrim’s Chorus” from Richard Wagner’s opera Tannhäuser. The offering was an utter hoot, given a straight-faced account by Denk that was sure to raise eyebrows across the Davies audience.

That audience provides a link to the one downside of the evening. When this site announced the launch of this two-month SFS concert series, it cited “reduced concert hall capacity” and “assigned seats that maximize physical distancing.” Sadly, this was not the case at Orchestra level. The good news was that everyone was wearing masks. Nevertheless, there seemed to be too many instances of perfect strangers sitting side-by-side, which did not seem consistent with “maximize physical distancing.” Fortunately, those in the side sections had a bit of flexibility to seek out more “distanced” locations; but those in the Center Orchestra section were pretty much stuck where they had been assigned.

Hopefully, this was just one of those inevitable bumps in the road that leads to a new way of doing things; but, from my own vantage point, it was not difficult to hear a lot of grumbling about the seating conditions.