Yoshimura Leaps Through Glazunov’s Hoops

The high point of yesterday afternoon’s concert in Davies Symphony Hall by the San Francisco Symphony Youth Orchestra, led by Wattis Foundation Music Director Daniel Stewart, was the concerto selection. Hiro Yoshimura, one of the ensemble’s four Co-Concertmasters, was the soloist in a performance of Alexander Glazunov’s Opus 82 violin concerto in A minor. Those that take their classical music seriously probably know about this concerto. There is no trouble in finding recordings with any number of familiar violinists (most of whom are of Russian descent). Nevertheless, yesterday afternoon was my first opportunity to listen to the music in performance; and it made for quite a spectacle.

There are no end of challenges that the composer imposed on the soloist. However, he is also rather well known for his capacity for lush instrumentation, even when the products of his composition efforts come across more as routine than as stimulating. The breadth of that instrumentation in Opus 82 thus made it an ideal platform for not only the soloist but also all the members of the ensemble. This made it the perfect “friends and family” offering for everyone in the audience rooting for someone on the stage.

In the midst of all that “public appeal,” however, Yoshimura was an impressive, perhaps even outstanding, soloist. He negotiated every difficult passage as easily as if he were falling off a log. At the same time, he knew how to bring just the right level of lyricism to the more expressive passages without making the whole affair sound syrupy. Mind you, regardless of the number of recordings in my collection, this is not music I visit frequently; but Yoshimura’s account of the solo work and Stewart’s balancing of the full ensemble definitely made me sit up and take notice!

The same could be said of the account of Arvo Pärt’s “Fratres,” which followed the intermission (which had been preceded by the concerto). For those unfamiliar with the music, it is based on a sequence of nine chords in three main voices. The composer has prepared so many different instrumentations that the list on the Wikipedia page practically fills my screen. The earliest of those versions, composed in 1977, was scored for a string ensemble with two percussion instruments, claves and bass drum. The initial instrumentation is modest; but, as the theme is repeated, it grows in richness to a peak, after which it recedes back into quietude.

In yesterday’s performance, the level of the dynamics was reflected by the intensity of the lighting. The string ensemble delivered with all the precision that the score demanded. Stewart knew exactly how to keep everything under control to endow the overall “narrative arc” with the expressiveness it merited. (He also had the good grace to acknowledge the minimal, but highly focused, efforts of the two percussionists during the subsequent bows.)

The entire program was framed by two “war horse” offerings. The overture was Felix Mendelssohn’s Opus 26, “The Hebrides,” known more familiarly as “Fingal’s Cave.” (This music used to be familiar to anyone hooked on Warner Bros. cartoons, but that aspect of my past has probably been long forgotten!) This is another composition that highlights a wide breadth of instrumentation, although the resources are far less than those of the Glazunov concerto. Thus, there was much to satisfy “friends and family;” but Stewart’s account was relatively routine.

Léon Bakst’s set design for the first part of Michel Fokine’s “Daphnis et Chloé” ballet, which complements the rhetoric of Ravel’s music (Houghton Library at Harvard University, from Wikimedia Commons, public domain)

The program concluded with the second of two suites that Maurice Ravel extracted from his score for MIchel Fokine’s one-act ballet “Daphnis et Chloé.” That suite is as much of a “war horse” as is the Mendelssohn overture; but, again, it gives everyone in the ensemble something to do. To be fair, they were all playing their hearts out in those wild measures of the coda of the “Danse générale;” and they certainly deserved the ovation they then received. If Stewart did not bring very much to his interpretation of the score, one could still appreciate the many details through which Ravel’s music spoke for itself.