Last night Michael Tilson Thomas (MTT) returned to the podium of the San Francisco Symphony (SFS) to present an American debut sandwiched between two major Russian composers. The debut was the United States premiere of a cello concerto composed by Danny Elfman on a commission which SFS shared with the Konzerthaus in Vienna, the Vienna Symphony, and the Orchestre philharmonique de Radio France. The concerto was composed specifically for Gautier Capuçon, who gave the world premiere performance in Vienna this past March.
The entire program followed the overture-concerto-symphony organization. The program began with Igor Stravinsky’s “Symphonies of Wind Instruments,” a single movement of about ten minutes in duration, which served as the overture. The second half of the program was devoted entirely to Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s Opus 48 four-movement serenade for strings in C major. As a result, the overall plan involved only one performance of SFS in its entirety.
As a result, one came away with the impression that MTT had returned to Davies with a sense of intimacy, particularly where the Stravinsky selection was concerned. The music was dedicated to the memory of Claude Debussy, who died in 1918; and it was first performed by Serge Koussevitzky in London on June 10, 1921. Stravinsky revised the score in 1947, and that was the version that MTT conducted.
The revised ensemble consists of three flutes, two oboes, one cor anglais, three clarinets, three bassoons (the third doubling on contrabassoon), four horns, three trumpets, three trombones, and tuba. The title reflects the original connotation of the word “symphony,” derived from the Greek word for “sounding together.” Stravinsky composed the music as a series of relatively short phrases, but each phrase involves its own uniquely distinctive combination of instruments. Thus, the plural of the title refers not only to the collection of instruments but also to the collection of the individual phrases. The result amounts to a journey through a diversity of sonorities, and MTT could not have done a better job in clarifying the uniqueness of each sonority.
In many respects the Tchaikovsky serenade complemented Stravinsky’s “symphonies.” The serenade can be approach as being “about” the sonorities of a very large string section. Those sonorities can be (and are) highly diverse; and Tchaikovsky deploys them in the service of four distinctive movement structures. As one is drawn into listening to this music, one begins to appreciate how each movement has its own sense of “personality.” Indeed, that personal quality may have been what inspired George Balanchine to create a ballet for this music (which turned out to be the first work he choreographed in the United States). MTT, on the other hand, knew how to elicit those many shades of personality without the assistance of a ballet company!
Elfman is, of course, known for film scores too numerous to mention, not to mention the weekly shot of the theme music for The Simpsons. He clearly understands the craft of instrumentation, always homing in on just the right sonorities to suit the dispositions of the narrative reinforced by his music. On the other hand there was no narrative to structure his cello concerto. As a result, those of my generation may have thought that Elfman had been inspired by the P. D. Q. Bach album Music for an Awful Lot of Winds and Percussion, to which he then added a full string section to fill out the mix.
To his credit, Capuçon clearly went to great lengths to bring expressiveness to his solo part. More often than not, however, he would find himself overwhelmed by Elfman’s supporting instrumentation. The result was one of spectacle, which could, indeed, dazzle the attentive listener beyond all expectations. However, one came away feeling that Elfman never really “got” the concept of a concerto as an exchange between a soloist and an ensemble.
Capuçon has been a frequent visitor to Davies, and I have done my best to show up for every appearance. His repertoire has been impressively diverse over the course of those visits. Elfman’s concerto certainly added to that diversity, but I doubt that it will remain in memory very long.
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