SFS: Elim Chan’s Tchaikovsky Disappoints

1888 photograph of Tchaikovsky, probably taken by Leonard Berlin at the Atelier E. Bieber in Hamburg in 1888 (from Wikimedia Commons, public domain)

Some readers may recall that Elim Chan made her debut as guest conductor of the San Francisco Symphony (SFS) at the very beginning of the second half of its Orchestral Series in January of 2023. She could not have gotten things off to a better start, particularly after the intermission with a performance of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s Opus 17 (second) symphony in C minor that I described as “wildly energetic.”

This week Chan returned to the SFS podium, this time with an all-Tchaikovsky program. Once again, the second half of the program was devoted to a symphony. She again favored the minor key in selecting Tchaikovsky’s Opus 74 (“Pathétique”) symphony in B minor. However, the major mode ruled over the first half of the program, which consisted of selections from the Opus 20 score for the ballet Swan Lake. Both of these selections were conducted without a baton but with a generous amount of body language, which seemed to communicate well with the orchestra.

Sadly, her interpretations of both selections were far more disappointing than anything she had brought to Davies Symphony Hall in 2023. This was most evident in her approach to Opus 74. All four of the movements had to cope with major problems in balance with the strings overpowered by all the other instruments of the orchestra. Thus, while there may have been no shortage of intense expression on the conductor’s part, more often than not, that intensity would overwhelm the thematic material that Tchaikovsky probably would have wanted listeners to hear.

On the other hand, where ballet is concerned, the orchestra pit tends to keep many (most?) of the instrumental outbursts in check. However, with all the instruments on the stage of Davies Symphony Hall, there was so much thundering that one wondered whether this was Chan’s regular approach to the rhetoric behind the plot of “magical thinking” in Swan Lake. The one saving grace was her willingness to let solo voices speak for themselves. This was particularly the case in the interplay between Wyatt Underhill in the concertmaster’s chair and cello Principal Rainer Eudeikis. The “White Swan” pas de deux in the second act reflects the intimacy emerging between Prince Siegfried and the Swan Queen Odette, and Tchaikovsky’s music for that scene for solo violin and cello almost serves as a textbook case for how music can add expressiveness to narrative. Sadly, that expressiveness tended to be overwhelmed by Chan’s preference for “roaring dynamics” during the rest of the program.