SFS: A Satisfying Opening Night at Davies

Pianist Hélène Grimaud (photograph by Mat Hennek, courtesy of the San Francisco Symphony)

Following up on the All San Francisco Concert late last week, the San Francisco Symphony (SFS) subscription season got under way last night in Davies Symphony Hall. James Gaffigan led a program that presented compositions by George Gershwin on either side of the intermission. The first half of the evening concluded with that composer’s three-movement “Concerto in F,” written in 1925 the year after his best-known “Rhapsody in Blue.” The intermission was followed by the other familiar Gershwin composition, “An American in Paris,” composed in 1928. The Gershwin selections were followed by Duke Ellington’s extended jazz composition “Harlem.” He wrote this for his own band, but Luther Henderson subsequently orchestrated a full symphonic version. The evening began with the newest work on the program, “The Block,” composed by Carlos Simon in 2018. The piano soloist for “Concerto in F” was Hélène Grimaud, who departed from the overall jazzy repertoire with an encore performance of the second (in the key of B-flat minor) of the three intermezzi published by Johannes Brahms as his Opus 117.

The season could not have gotten off to a better start. Gaffigan’s command was consistently attentive, suggesting that he had connected himself to every single member of the ensemble. The concerto was last performed in Davies in February of 2023 with Edward Outwater conducting piano soloist Conrad Tao. Unfortunately, I missed that particular event (which was also the case with the first SFS performance of the concerto, in January of 1937, before I was born, with Pierre Monteux conducting Gershwin at the keyboard). According to my records, Grimaud’s last visit was a little less than a year ago, when she played Maurice Ravel’s G major piano concerto; and I rather enjoyed the way in which her approach to Gershwin almost seemed to hint at the Gershwin-Ravel friendship.

Gaffigan was also clearly right at home on Gershwin’s “turf.” The pairing of the concerto with “An American in Paris” almost suggested another reflection on the Gershwin-Ravel connection. If Gershwin is known for bringing the jazz age to the concert hall, towards the end of his life, Ellington began to explore for “symphonic” approaches to the jazz that he had been creating for many decades. This led to the creation of several works which, for all intents and purposes, can be given the academic classification of “suite.” Unless I am mistaken, “Harlem” is the only one of them to have been subsequently arranged for a symphony orchestra, with the arrangement provided by Luther Henderson. There is a spirit of fun in this music, which coupled nicely with the high spirits of “An American in Paris;” but “Harlem” tried to do too much with its resources to match Gershwin’s diverse command of technique.

Simon shared an SFS program with Gershwin back in the summer of 2021 when Edwin Outwater conducted a Fourth of July Program at the Stern Grove Festival. Those of us on this side of the continent are probably best informed about Harlem through the telecast of Godfather of Harlem. Narratives of that region of Manhattan tend to have very sharp edges; but Simon’s on that setting seems to have veered away from those sharp edges, thus blunting the contextual rhetoric, so to speak. However, if Simon’s rhetoric did not get the juices flowing at last night’s performance, Gaffigan’s approach to Gershwin had no trouble making up for lost time!