A Disappointing Encounter with SFSYO

This afternoon was my first post-pandemic encounter with the San Francisco Symphony Youth Orchestra (SFSYO), which began its first three-concert season in Davies Symphony Hall this past November. Daniel Stewart began his tenure as Wattis Foundation Music Director in October of 2019, meaning that this is his first complete season of three concerts. The first half of the program was devoted to two relatively short (roughly ten minutes) compositions by two composers with roots in the Bay Area. In “order of appearance” these were Gabriella Smith and Mason Bates. The intermission was followed by the full instrumental resources (along with off-stage female chorus) required for the performance of Gustav Holst’s suite The Planets.

Both of the “local” compositions came across as overstaying their welcome after about five minutes. Smith’s “Tumblebird Contrails” was a reflection on the diverse environments that the composer encountered while backpacking in Point Reyes. The attentive listener could either follow those environments by reading Smith’s program note or just let his/her/their imagination run its course through past personal experiences. Either way, it was not difficult to appreciate Smith’s ability to turn those environmental impressions into instrumental themes and textures, but she exhausted her vocabulary and her capacity for elaboration roughly halfway through the duration of the score. That said, Stewart’s management of the SFSYO resources definitely facilitated the listening experience until that experience had run its course.

Mason Bates added his own electronica performance to the orchestral resources interpreting his “Mothership” score. Sadly, here, too, the overall execution left the impression that there was little to say and even less to be added by Bates’ contribution to the performance. The music was composed in 2011, during the time when Bates served as Mead Composer-in-Residence for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra between 2010 and 2015. Personally, I found myself more drawn to “Alternative Energy,” also composed during that residency in 2011, possibly because the score was based on a more substantial underlying narrative.

The Planets is, of course, one of the best compositions to show off the rich diversity of a large orchestral ensemble. Holst had a particularly keen ear for “special effects.” Sadly, he was not as skilled in laying down a narrative foundation for the seven character studies, each of which associates one of the Ancient Roman gods with one of the planets. The durational scale of both the individual movements and the overall suite is far more demanding than either of the selections by Smith and Bates; but much of Holst’s capacity for duration derives from repetition, frequently where “again” simply means “but louder this time.”

There are, of course, conductors that have found ways to establish a narrative framework that maintains listener attention from beginning to end. Unfortunately, Stewart is not one of them. While the SFSYO musicians clearly followed his direction and the dispositions based in the score, the overall experience was far from satisfying, even during the mystical lure of the off-stage female voices in the final movement.

The final concert will take place at the end of this coming May. The major work, which will fill the second half of the program, will be Johannes Brahms’ Opus 73 (second) symphony in D major. Hopefully, Stewart will fare better in delivering an expressive account of this symphony.