Last night in Davies Symphony Hall, Music Director Esa-Pekka Salonen led the San Francisco Symphony (SFS) in the first multiple-performance concert of the 2022–23 season. The program was devoted almost entirely to Gustav Mahler’s second symphony in C minor, familiarly known as the “Resurrection Symphony.” Long-time subscribers know that, when Michael Tilson Thomas (MTT) was the SFS Music Director, Mahler’s music received a more-than-generous share of attention; and the Mahler second was an excellent opportunity to present the breadth of performance rhetoric not only from SFS but also from the SFS Chorus and two visiting vocal soloists.
Last night Salonen picked up the torch that had meant so much to MTT and offered the Davies audience its first taste of his approach to the Mahler canon. Salonen could not have been more attentive to the many details in Mahler’s score; and, when the full ensemble was roaring out the most intense passages, he knew how to enhance coherence through meticulous attention to blending that diversity of sonorities. Given the almost unwieldy nature of the score itself, Salonen seems to have internalized all the details to make sure that every significant gesture was given its due.
The overall architecture involves two extended-duration movements at the beginning and conclusion with three much shorter movements sandwiched between them. The last of those three introduces a mezzo solo, sung last night my Michelle DeYoung. In the final movement she was joined by soprano Golda Schultz and the full forces of the the SFS Chorus directed by Jenny Wong. It is also important to note that Mahler himself took the first movement to be treated as a composition unto itself. He explicitly specified that a pause of at least five minutes separate the first and second movements. During that “break,” Salonen descended from the podium to take a seat alongside the SFS musicians.
What mattered most was that, even with that extended pause, Salonen’s approaches to phrasing and tempo immersed the attentive listener in the symphony’s ongoing flow. Mahler could be more than generous in repeating his thematic material, and this was particularly evident in the architecture of that final movement. However, that was the only movement in which all the vocal resources were added; and they would appear only after almost all of the thematic material had been developed by the instrumental ensemble. As a result, even those familiar with this symphony probably found themselves sitting on the edges of their respective seats wondering just how Salonen’s direction would lead from each episode to its successor.
Overall, the experience could not have been more satisfying, leading at least this writer to wonder where Salonen would venture next in presenting Mahler’s compositions. If there was any shortcoming, it was the failure to acknowledge the organist contributing to the final measures of the symphony. This was probably the same unacknowledged organist that had contributed last week to Richard Strauss’s Opus 30 tone poem “Also sprach Zarathustra,”
Composer Trevor Weston (photograph by Ayano Hisa, courtesy of SFS)
Somewhat unexpectedly, the symphony was preceded by an “overture” of sorts. This was the world premiere of “Push,” a four-movement suite composed by Trevor Weston on the commission provided by the Emerging Black Composers Project. Composers are often better at making music than at talking about it, but Weston provided a terse and informative account of what the audience was about to experience.
He also provided remarks for the program book, which explained some of his inspirational resources. These included the second movement serving as a memorial for Michael Morgan, who had initiated the Emerging Black Composers Project. Those remarks also observed that the third movement, entitled “City Quiet,” was an homage to Aaron Copland’s “Quiet City.” Both outer movements, on the other hand, were engagingly raucous, clearly reveling in the use of the full SFS resources. Weston’s notes for the first movement made a passing reference to John Coltrane. However, Weston was born in 1967, which was the year in which Coltrane died, leading me to wonder how much (if at all) he had been influenced by Coltrane’s recordings.
Most important, however, was the overall upbeat rhetoric of Weston’s suite, leaving me to hope that my first encounter with this new composition will not be my last.
No comments:
Post a Comment