Another SoundBox with Disappointing Video

This morning the San Francisco Symphony launched the final video-streamed SoundBox before the beginning of the 2021–22 Season. Once again, the program title consisted of a single word, Delirium. The curator was pianist Jeremy Denk, whose introductory remarks suggested that the program would consist of musical reflections on illness. The program was divided into three parts, entitled “The Mind,” “The Heart,” and “The Soul;” but it was very unclear just how these titles related to much (most?) of the music that was performed.

Most disconcerting was that one of the selections that was specifically composed as a reflection on a serious illness was never acknowledged as such. Violinist Leor Maltinski, violist Katie Kadarauch, and cellist David Goldblatt performed the opening Part of Arnold Schoenberg’s Opus 45 string quartet. Schoenberg had suffered a violent heart attack on August 2, 1946; and, were it not for injecting a stimulus directly to the heart, he probably would not have survived. Less than three weeks after his recovery, he began work on Opus 45 as his own reflective documentation of the experience. If ever there were music that reflected explicitly on “The Heart,” this would be it; but in Denk’s overall organization, the performance took place, instead, in the final part of the overall program.

Nevertheless, there was much to appreciate in Denk’s performances and his engagement with others when he was not playing solo. Most interesting was his accompaniment of tenor Nicholas Phan singing Orfeo’s lament over the death of Euridice, “Tu se’ morta” (Are you dead?) from the second act of Claudio Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo opera. Denk played the bass line on a single-keyboard organ with his right hand while filling out the continuo on harpsichord with his left:

courtesy of the San Francisco Symphony

The good news is that the musical performances were consistently satisfying over the course of the hour’s duration of the video. Indeed, listening to the performance of Schoenberg’s Opus 45 made me wish I could listen to those musicians given an account of the entire trio. However, the underlying concept of SoundBox involves what one sees in conjunction with the listening experience. Sadly, the video direction for Delirium was again by Clyde Scott. Readers may recall that, in discussing his direction of Nico Muhly’s SoundBox program, the article about that program, Focus, concluded that Scott’s efforts had undermined the listening experience. This time around the distractions came from the large portion of projections that were irrelevant and/or confusing and camera angles that almost never presented the musicians in ways that would guide the listening.

Video can be an informative medium when conceived in conjunction with an understanding of the music. Scott did not seem to understand either the music or the overall theme of Denk’s Delirium programming. Attentive listeners (and, for that matter, attentive performers) need to be shown more respect.