SFSYO Concludes with Two Iconic Offerings

Radu Paponiu conducting the SFSYO (from the Web page for last night’s performance)

Last night Davies Symphony Hall saw the performance of the final concert prepared for this season’s San Francisco Symphony Youth Orchestra (SFSYO) program, led by Wattis Foundation Music Director, Radu Paponiu. Departing from the conventional overture-concerto-symphony structure, the program was structured around two significant symphonic achievements from two successive centuries. The very beginning of the nineteenth century saw Ludwig van Beethoven’s first symphony, his Opus 21 in C major. The second half of the program was devoted to one of the more iconic compositions of the twentieth century, Dmitri Shostakovich’s Opus 47, his fifth symphony in the key of D minor. The “overture” for the program was composed by the SFSYO keyboardist, Dylan Hall, who composed “Scherzo for Orchestra” in 2024.

The program notes by Alicia Mastromonaco make it a point to view Beethoven’s Opus 21 in the context of the “legacy” (my word, not hers) of the symphonies composed by Joseph Haydn and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. For the most part, Beethoven followed “the rules of the game” in working on his first symphony. Nevertheless, I think it would be fair to say that, while he identified the third movement as “Menuetto,” most listeners would agree that the music itself was a scherzo “in spirit;” and, in his later symphonies, Beethoven would mine that genre particularly inventively. Indeed, spirits are high throughout the entire symphony; and, under the leadership of Wattis Foundation Music Director Radu Paponiu, the SFSYO ensemble soared through those spirits.

In the second half of the program, the spirits were much darker in the movement’s of the Shostakovich symphony. In his earlier years, Shostakovich was also a high-spirited composer with an abundance of wit. Unfortunately, Joseph Stalin put an end to all of that, viewing it as an offense to the Soviet spirit. One may say that, in composing his Opus 47, Shostakovich went to great lengths to honor that spirit. Even the slightest attempt to stray from that path could lead to serious (if not fatal) consequences. Thus, what comes across as high spirits in the final movement is shadowed by the need to glorify Stalin’s influence on the performing arts.

That shadow has now passed, but we do not have to look very far to see the ways in which the relationship between musical inventiveness and governmental perspectives can still be a tenuous one.