Last night Esa-Pekka Salonen returned to Davies Symphony Hall in his capacity as Music Director of the San Francisco Symphony to present his next series of programs. His program may have struck many as an unlikely pairing of composers that, given a time machine, would not have had much, if anything, to do with each other. The first half of the program presented the complete score that Igor Stravinsky composed for the ballet “Pulcinella.” The intermission was then followed by Johannes Brahms’ Opus 77 violin concerto in D major.
“Pulcinella” was the first score that Stravinsky composed for Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes following his “Russian trilogy” of “The Firebird,” “Petrushka,” and “The Rite of Spring.” In 1919 Diaghilev recruited choreographer Léonide Massine to create a ballet based on the stock characters of Neapolitan commedia dell'arte and suggested to Stravinsky that he arrange compositions that were, at the time, attributed to Giovanni Battista Pergolesi. Stravinsky, of course, could not leave well enough alone and basically overhauled the source material, particularly with outrageous approaches to instrumentation that were even more farcical than commedia tradition. Since some of the sources were songs, he added soprano, tenor, and bass vocalists to his instrumentation.
Having never seen Massine’s choreography, I have no idea how farcical it was; but farce was definitely the order of the day in the music Stravinsky provided. This was most evident in just about every intrusion by the trombonist, but there are no end of loopy eccentricities in the combinations of instruments. These included interplay between a string quartet with added bass and the ripieno string section along with a plethora of imaginative passages for the winds.
Last night the concertino strings were violinists Alexander Barantschik and Dan Carlson, Yun Jie Liu on viola, cellist Rainer Eudeikis, and Scott Pingel on bass. The vocalists were mezzo Sasha Cooke, tenor Nicholas Phan, and bass-baritone Luca Pisaroni. Given that Salonen had recorded the full score with the London Sinfonietta for an album still available from Sony, he was consistently on top of every gesture and nuance. The result last night was exhilarating from start to finish, making it hard for me to contain my delight with the entire experience.
Violinist Julia Fischer (©Uwe Arens, courtesy of the San Francisco Symphony)
Just as stimulating was the return of violinist Julia Fischer as soloist for the Brahms concerto. I have never been disappointed by her performances, and she shaped every phrase in each of the three movements with a series of expressive stamps that made certain that this was not same-old-same-old Brahms. Her chemistry with Salonen could not have been better, however unlikely the pairing of the program had been. Audience reception made it clear that I was far from the only one to appreciate her return.
Taken as a whole, last night was a generous share of thoroughly engaging music. Nevertheless, it was clear that the audience would not let Fischer leave without an encore. She opted for the seventeenth of the 24 Caprices for solo violin by Niccolò Paganini. This is the one best known for its rapid-fire runs in the outer sections and the killer octaves in the middle. Fischer glided through the entire caprice without ever breaking a sweat, leaving the stage to allow a very satisfied audience to wend their ways home.
No comments:
Post a Comment