SFS: Music from the First Two Quarters of 20C

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)

Yesterday afternoon, the German conductor Jun Märkl made his debut leading the San Francisco Symphony (SFS). He was born in February of 1959 the son of a Japanese pianist mother and a German violinist father. He was a pupil of Sergiu Celibidache and also studied under Leonard Bernstein and Seiji Ozawa.

He prepared a program with music from the first two quarters of the twentieth century. He began with Béla Bartók’s second violin concerto, composed in 1938. The soloist for this performance was violinist Leonidas Kavakos. The second half slipped back about a quarter of a century for music Maurice Ravel provided for the ballet choreographed by Michel Fokine, “Daphnis et Chloé.” The rhetorical contrast of these two selections was significant; but, with the intervention of an intermission, one could easily appreciate (if not enjoy) the more-than-evident distances.

The latter composition tends to be better known for the two orchestral suites that Ravel extracted (particularly the second). However, between the notes in the program book and the titles for the episodes in each of the three score Parts, one could enjoy the spirit of the narrative, if not the “flesh” of how the ballet was performed. It would be fair to say that much of Ravel’s expressiveness had its roots in his keen sense of instrumentation. As a result, it may be possible that observing how the music unfolds could be just as interesting as the story that Fokine’s choreography conveyed.

Thus, while the performance of the ballet filled about one hour, that duration was just as well spent watching how Märkl elicited every rhetorical significance from all of the SFS musicians. Those acts of signification were just as evident in the abstractions of Bartók’s concerto. Those familiar with the composer would probably enjoy how his musicological studies of Hungarian folk music provided what might be called a “rhetorical context.” One might say that the spirit was lurking in the background, but the flesh had its own approaches to expressiveness!

Kavakos was clearly in his element in presenting that expressiveness to his audience. Mind you, Bartók’s approaches to instrumentation were as inventive as Ravel’s. As a result, the orchestral passages in the concerto basically provided the soloist with a rhetorical setting. Kavakos could then explore the dispositions of that setting, while, at the same time, negotiating more than a few technically tricky passages for good measure!

Both of these selections were probably familiar to those that have been attending SFS performances for some time. Mind you, my wife and I have been making regular visits to Davies Symphony Hall ever since we moved from Singapore back to the United States in 1995. By the time we had arrived, we had already committed ourselves to ticket for both SFS and San Francisco Opera. I suppose one of the things that makes such commitment rewarding is the opportunity to experience how a given piece of music can be interpreted in a variety of different ways.

Märkl took on two different rhetorical settings and knew exactly how to elicit convincing interpretations, and that approach to conducting is what makes for a satisfying listening experience.