Last night in Davies Symphony Hall, the second of the two programs that Music Director Esa-Pekka Salonen prepared for the Summer Season of the San Francisco Symphony (SFS) reflected the same structure as the first. Once again the concerto portion of the overture-concerto-symphony structure featured an SFS Principal as the soloist, this time Principal Trumpet Mark Inouye. According to my records, this was my second encounter with him performing Joseph Haydn’s Hoboken VIIe/1 trumpet concerto in E-flat major, the first having been in March of 2015, when SFS was led by visiting conductor Ton Koopman.
The opening measures of Haydn’s trumpet concerto (Urtext Edition by Eulenburg, from IMSLP, public domain)
As was the case last week, I was aware of the instrumental resources deployed by the accompanying ensemble. They included two additional trumpets, whose contributions were minimal. On the other hand the first two members of the wind section to make an appearance are a pair of horns (in the first measure), later to be joined by pairs of flutes, oboes, and bassoons, along with a pair of timpani. This made for a more dazzling palette of sonorities when compared with last week’s performance of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s K. 622 clarinet concerto in A major. Also worth noting is that, like last week’s soloist, Principal Clarinet Cary Bell, Inouye performed his own cadenza work with more than a few hints of in-the-moment spontaneity.
This week’s symphony was Felix Mendelssohn’s Opus 90 (fourth) in A major, usually known as the “Italian.” The references to traditional Italian sources are not hard to miss, and the last of the four movements is labeled as a saltarello. Mendelssohn was clearly enthusiastic about his Italian inspirations, and the first and last movement positively bubble over with that enthusiasm. Salonen was not shy in giving free rein to all that ebullience; and the breakneck pace of the saltarello made for one of the wilder rides through the domain of full-orchestra instrumentation. Nevertheless, there was never any doubt that both conductor and ensemble had everything under control, making for a far more than satisfying account of familiar repertoire.
The program began with Anna Clyne’s “Within Her Arms,” composed in 2009 in response to her mother’s death. The performance was preceded by a recording of Clyne introducing the work. Her delivery seems to have been spontaneous, given to more than a little rambling and not as informative as the printed text on the program sheet.
The music itself was composed for a reduced string ensemble with each member playing from his/her own individual part. An innovative approach to glissando made for a rather unique rhetoric of memorialization, decidedly innovative and frequently spooky. In addition, the one-to-a-part rhetoric endowed the performance with spatial qualities that a rarely encountered in larger ensembles. Clyne clearly had an acute sense of both sonorous and physical detail in creating this score, with the sort of dialectic of shifting moods that one often encounters in thoughts about death. Her skills at composition clearly outshine her efforts at public speaking.
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