Mozart from Half a Century Ago at SFS

Last night conductor Xian Zhang returned to Davies Symphony Hall to lead the final “serious” program in the annual Summer with the Symphony series presented by the San Francisco Symphony (SFS). As had been mentioned when this series was announced, next week’s final offering will feature the music of John Williams. Zhang made her SFS debut in February of 2018, conducting the annual Chinese New Year Concert, whose program included Sergei Rachmaninoff's Opus 43 rhapsody based on the theme of the last of the 24 caprices that Niccolò Paganini composed for solo violin.

Both the concerto and symphony portions of last night’s concert were devoted to the music of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Pianist George Li was the soloist in the K. 491 concerto in C minor, which was followed by the K. 543 symphony in E-flat major, the first of the “final three” Mozart symphonies. However, Zhang’s approach to conducting recalled the richly energetic rhetoric and the full-bodied sonorities that one associates with music such as that Rachmaninoff rhapsody. Indeed, the overall performance style seemed to look back half a century, before “historically-informed” had entered the working vocabulary and Herbert von Karajan ruled over Mozart with the philosophy that you can never have too many strings in your ensemble.

If one was willing to accept Zhang’s aesthetic for what it was, then there was nothing to complain about in her conducting style. To be fair, both K. 491 and K. 543 are intensely energetic compositions that can hold up just as well to richly bold sonorities as to “historically-informed transparency;” and a conductor like Karajan could make an excellent case that the bold rhetoric was the better choice. Ironically, where the concerto was concerned, that boldness provided a striking contrast to the sensitive delicacy encountered in many of the piano passages that “react” to the highly assertive ensemble work. Li seemed well aware of that contrast, making his appearances all the more compelling as one sat on the edge of one’s seat to catch every twist and turn in his highly personalized rhetoric. That approach may not have been the style that Mozart had in mind, but it was still an interpretation that rewarded the attentive listener. That approach also prepared the listener for the expressiveness of similarly sharp contrasts in Zhang’s approach to K. 543.

Zhang’s “overture” selection was William Grant Still’s “Mother and Child,” composed for string orchestra. This was an arrangement of the second movement of Still’s three-movement suite for violin and piano, one of the compositions on Randall Goosby’s Roots album, which was discussed on this site a little less than two months ago. Each movement of that suite had its own programmatic title, and Still kept that title for his arrangement. Here, too, Zhang knew how to elicit all the lush qualities of Still’s arrangement, interpreting them with a poignancy that can also be found in the violin suite. She is certainly not shy in presenting listeners with a rich spectrum of emotions, making for a full evening of satisfying listening experiences, even when they were not “historically informed!”