Simone Young Brings Wagner to SFS

Visiting Conductor Simone Young (photograph by Sandra Steh, courtesy of SFS)

Simone Young made her debut on the podium of the San Francisco Symphony (SFS) in Davies Symphony Hall in April of 2019, and her most recent appearance took place in December of 2021. She has been serving as Chief Conductor of the Sydney Symphony since 2022 and conducted complete cycles of Richard Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen at last year’s Bayreuth Festival. This weekend sees her return to Davies, and the second half of her program is devoted to an orchestral account of Ring music.

One of the problems with separating that music from its staging is that the flow of the narrative is often supported through extended repetitions of critical phrases. This is evident as early as the Prelude to Das Rheingold, and the final episode of Des Rheingold, the procession of the Gods entering Valhalla, practically drowns in a repetition whose only difference involves louder and louder dynamics. For those that enjoy operatic performances of the Ring, this is a moment as compelling as it is grand. However, when you take away the dramatic context, all that remains is redundancy.

Mind you, the excerpts from the remaining three operas were better suited to the concert hall. There was, of course, the “Ride of the Valkyries” (how could there not be?); and Young gave it a dynamite account. Equally engaging was her approach to “Siegfried Idyll,” basically a “preview” of thematic material that would show up later in the Siegfried opera of the Ring. Finally, there were excerpts from Götterdämmerung from both early and late in the narrative, beginning with the “Dawn” episode, then following Siegfried on his “Rhine Journey,” and concluding with his death and funeral. Taken as a whole, the second half of the program provided an abbreviated account of the Ring narrative through some of the most compelling excerpts from the cycle.

The program began with the latest debut of a recent composition. “The Space Between Stars” was composed by Ella Macens, who has received commissions from both the Sydney Symphony and the Melbourne Symphony. I must confess that I tend to be skeptical about music that attempts to capture cosmology. Macens definitely knew how to manage a rich palette of sonorities, but the piece as a whole tended to be more static than one would have preferred.

More secure was the account of Camille Saint-Saëns’ first cello concerto, his Opus 33 in A minor. The soloist was Gautier Capuçon, who gave a solid account of the three-movement score. Unfortunately, the composer had a tendency to repeat his themes too many times, and even a cellist as talented as Capuçon could not overcome that repetition with an overall shaping. As usual, however, one could appreciate the polish in his solo passages.

Sadly, that polish did not continue into his encore selection. This was “Towards the Forest” by Bryce Dessner, which came off as music conceived for Earth Day. However, there was too much repetition in the score and too much attention to what can only be called “special effects.” Mother Earth (Gaia) deserved better.