Last night in Davies Symphony Hall the Great Performers Series of the San Francisco Symphony (SFS) turned “inward.” The program presented SFS musicians primarily from the brass section. The ensemble consisted of six horn players, six trumpeters, four trombonists (one doubling on euphonium), and two tubaists. There were also three percussionists and one timpanist, but most of the works on the program involved only the brass instruments. The conductor was Brad Hogarth, who provided brief but informative introductions.
This is one of those situations in which it would be wise to begin at the end. Over the course of these brass concerts that I have attended, I have taken an interest in the compositions by Principal Trombone Timothy Higgins. Therefore, it was no surprise that the program concluded with a work that he finished writing in 2022, given the straightforward title “Concert Music for Brass, Percussion and Timpani.” The work consisted of two movements, the first a tribute to Dale Clevenger, the former Principal Horn of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra (CSO), who had died on January 5, 2022. The second was a tribute to the entire CSO brass section on the occasion of their return to performing after the COVID pandemic. The first movement was particularly poignant, particularly with its wistful nod to “Beim Schlafengehen” from Richard Strauss’ Four Last Songs during the coda.
The high point of the evening came with the performance of Magnus Lindberg’s “Ottoni.” I realized, with a bit of regret, that I had not encountered any of his music since Yuja Wang played his third piano concerto with SFS in October of 2022. Lindberg has appealed to me for quite some time, particularly for his successful efforts to push the pendulum away from minimalism; so I like to call him an “unabashed maximalist.” While listening, I jotted some notes about his textures being thicker than any composer I had encountered since Charles Ives while also exercising the spontaneity of Ives’ turn-on-a-dime rhetoric. “Ottoni” was the wildest ride I had encountered for quite some time, and I loved every minute of it.
The other seriously wild ride on the program came from Roger Harvey’s arrangement of Witold Lutosławski’s “Variations on a Theme by Paganini.” The theme (as many will probably guess), comes from the last of the 24 Caprices that Niccolò Paganini composed for solo violin, which was, itself, a set of variations on a relatively short theme. Among many it is best known for the rhapsody that Sergei Rachmaninoff composed for piano and orchestra. Lutosławski, on the other hand, used Paganini’s own variations as a “blueprint,” to which he added his own twists and turns, scoring the results for two pianos. The result was one of Lutosławski’s most prankish efforts, and the brass arrangement made his wild ride even wilder.
The program also included two composers whose works I had not encountered for quite some time. Gustav Holst was represented by Paul Welcomer’s arrangement of A Moorside Suite, which was originally scored for a full brass band. Welcomer’s introductory remarks about brass band traditions in England were particularly informative, making this offering more than a little sentimental. Alex Bedner, currently a student at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, prepared arrangements of four short pieces by the French organist Maurice Duruflé, which were described as “Motets on Gregorian themes.” Since my knowledge of plainchant is both distant and limited, none of the themes were familiar to me; but the listening experience was still an engaging one.
The weaker selections were the two “urban” offerings. The program opening with music from a suite that Leonard Bernstein compiled from the soundtrack he had composed for On the Waterfront. Between Elia Kazan’s directing and Marlon Brando’s acting, I have to confess that, after seeing this movie several times, I have no recollection of any of the music; and I fear that last night did little to refresh my memory! I was also left cold by Shulamit Ran’s “Chicago Skyline.” Perhaps I have lost my taste for tone poems inspired by urban life!
As might be expected, the audience refused to leave the house without an encore. The encore was the duel scene from the music that Sergei Prokofiev composed for the full-evening ballet Romeo and Juliet. An all-brass account of that scene worked quite successfully, allowing me to re-create the choreography I had seen so many times in my mind.
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