Melody Wilson Dazzles in Morgan Memorial

Conductors Earl Lee, Daniel Bartholomew-Poser, and Akiko Fujimoto (courtesy of SFS)

Last night in Davies Symphony Hall the San Francisco Symphony (SFS) presented the first of three concerts serving as a memorial for the late Oakland Symphony Music Director Michael Morgan. When SFS first planned its season programs, Morgan had been scheduled to conduct this week and had already prepared the program he wished to present. Sadly, he died at the age of 63 this past August 20. However, in the spirit of Morgan’s passionate advocacy for conductors just beginning their careers, SFS decided that the program he had conceived would still be performed, presented by three such conductors all making debut performances.

The most interesting segment of the program was led by Daniel Bartholomew-Poser, currently SFS Resident Conductor of Engagement and Education. He was joined by mezzo Melody Wilson in a “set” that began with Johannes Brahms’ Opus 53 “Alto Rhapsody,” a setting for contralto, male chorus, and orchestra of verses from Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's poem “Harzreise im Winter” (winter journey in the Harz mountains). The men of the SFS Chorus, directed by Anthony Trecek-King for this performance, joined Wilson and the orchestra.

The excerpted text consisted of only three verses, which dwell on the earth’s progression from winter into spring. Brahms’ established an almost magical “rhetoric of chill” for the first two of those verses, both of which focused on Wilson’s solo work. Spring then emerges with a modal shift from minor to major and the subtly hushed chord progressions of the male chorus. The partnership of Wilson with Bartholomew-Poser could not have been better; and the use of surtitles meant that the attentive listener could devote full attention to the performers on the stage, rather than burying his/her/their head in the program book.

The set then concluded with arrangements by Jack Perla of three traditional hymn tunes, all of which were receiving their first SFS performances. Once again, Wilson was joined by the Chorus men, taking advantage of many examples of Perla’s gift for imaginative polyphony. This made for a stimulating contrast to the more homophonic progressions encountered in Brahms’ writing. The first of the three selections, “My Soul’s Been Anchored in the Lord.” was particularly significant, since Marian Anderson sang it on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial after the Daughters of the American Revolution refused to allow her to sing in Constitution Hall for no reason other than her being Black.

The major work on the first half of the program involved another leading Black woman in music history, the composer Florence Price. Those who listened to bass-baritone Dashon Burton at last Saturday’s Uncovered concert with the Catalyst Quartet may recall that he also sang “My Soul’s Been Anchored in the Lord.” Both he and Anderson sang an arrangement for voice and piano prepared by Price. More recently, however, Price has been drawing the attention of conductors; and last night Akiko Fujimoto took charge of leading Price’s third symphony in C minor.

This was the first time SFS performed this symphony. (Unless I am mistaken, my own “first contact” with Price took place in March of 2019 when the Bay Area Rainbow Symphony performed her first symphony in E minor.) As I have come to know these symphonies, I have appreciated a “two worlds” context for Price’s music. Her “European” side has a solid command of both structure and rhetoric in symphonic forms; and I suspect that she paid particular attention to the symphonies of Antonín Dvořák. Nevertheless, she also injects references to her own personal experiences. In the symphonies this can be seen in the substitution of a jazzy Juba for a more traditional Scherzo movement. Similarly, the Andante ma non troppo (second) movement of the third symphony weaves “Sweet Little Jesus Boy” into her thematic fabric. Fujimoto provided an attentive account of this score, allowing both of these contrasting influences to have their fair say in the overall rhetoric.

The entire program was framed by two “tone poem” selections conducted by Earl Lee. The program began with the first SFS performance of Carlos Simon’s “Amen!” Simon grew up in the unabashed Black Pentecostal services held at his church. “Amen!” captures the spirit of those services with few (if any) thematic citations. However, that unabashed spirit is present from the get-go when the entire trombone section rises in a “choral” passage to make sure that everyone in the audience “gets the spirit.” That passage, however, is the first of many through which the listener encounters the full breadth of Simon’s reflections on what it really means to “get the spirit.” This would have made a great finale, but it served just as well to grab audience attention at the very beginning of the program.

The finale itself was of a much older vintage, César Franck’s tone poem “Le Chasseur maudit” (the cursed huntsman), composed in 1882. The protagonist of the narrative is a dissolute nobleman who preferred hunting in the woods to sitting in church on the Sabbath. In true Gothic form, the Sabbath is when all the demons are lurking in the woods. The huntsman is easy prey for them, and Franck’s unabashed rhetoric depicts the huntsman’s fate with full orchestral resources.

The program that Morgan had prepared was thus one of sharp contrasts and abundant opportunities for reflection, and the three conductors that replaced him each brought their own techniques to all attentive listeners to relish those opportunities.