Dynamically Constrained

By Michelle Dulak Thomson

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An entire program’s worth of Haydn is not something the San Francisco Symphony is apt to serve up every year, so thanks are due up front to guest conductor Bernard Labadie for Friday night’s generous helping. The program, which also featured the Symphony Chorus and an excellent quartet of vocal soloists, had a martial theme, bringing together the Missa in tempore belli (Mass in time of war) of 1796 and the “Military” Symphony (No. 100) of 1794, with Haydn’s second, late setting of the Te Deum as opener.

The symphony’s nickname, of course, comes from the noisy percussion arsenal Haydn unleashes in the slow movement and later in the finale. But the Mass’s Latin title is Haydn’s own — the piece was written during the turmoil of the Napoleonic wars — and the drums, cymbals, and trumpets that sound comic to us in the symphony had more ominous connotations for his audience than they do for us.

Bernard Labadie

Labadie, whose program bio calls him “a specialist in Baroque and Classical music,” has conducted the S.F. Symphony a few times before since his 2005 debut with the orchestra. Some listeners might know him better as the director of Les Violins du Roy, the (modern-instrument) Québeçois chamber orchestra with which he has kept up a busy recording schedule for the Dorian label.

In common with a handful of other conductors bearing “early music” bonafides of one kind or another, Labadie has established a career as a niche guest conductor, leading (predominantly) 18th-century programs with orchestras whose seasons are, by and large, centered on later music. (He fills the same role in the 2008-2009 S.F. Symphony season, conducting music of Handel, Haydn, and Mozart.)

From the recordings I’ve heard of Les Violons du Roy, I had formed an impression of Labadie as a conductor efficient at mimicking the surface crispness and cleanliness of turn-of-the-21st-century Baroque style, minus the unruliness, ugliness, and general unpredictability that tends to come along with it where good period-instrument players are concerned.

Since that is a rough description of what a depressing number of people take to be the essence of “good,” stylish modern-instrument performance of 18th-century music, it was no great surprise to find Labadie making a success of supplying it. Accordingly, I went to Friday’s concert with some misgivings, though prepared to be pleasantly surprised.

No such luck. Not that there was nothing to like, naturally. Setting aside for the moment the music itself — I’ll put up with a great deal from a conductor just for programming a whole concert’s worth of Haydn — orchestra and chorus alike were vigorous, alert, and splendidly sonorous at their best.

Soloists to the Fore

There was fine solo playing from the woodwinds and others (principal cellist Michael Grebanier played the difficult solo in the Mass’s “Qui tollis” lovingly). There was, when called for, zip and dash and even the occasional smile. (The looks exchanged among the percussionists when timpanist Jack Van Geem let loose suddenly with the hard sticks in the symphony’s finale were priceless.)

Given so much that was good, it’s difficult to pinpoint what made the evening as a whole nonetheless vaguely dispiriting. Partly it was the sheer good manners of everything. Labadie as conductor favors big, sweeping motions, but they seldom survived translation into actual music-making.

The dynamic range was artificially small, with a lid clamped down on the forte playing almost throughout, and a piano floor a good deal higher than it might have been. The dynamic at any given moment was defensible, but in the aggregate the moderation hobbled the music, especially in the symphony. You felt the lack retrospectively when at last the lid came off — as it did, magnificently, at “passus et sepultus est” in the Mass’s Credo.

Then, too, the music’s gestures only seldom emerged with the character and point that they might have borne. Things that a more instinctively Haydnish conductor would have seized on and brought out tended to pass unremarked. Haydn’s material is often simple, but rich in gestural possibilities; in the hands of a sufficiently mischievous conductor and orchestra, for example, the dance of the trivial upward and downward scales in the symphony’s Menuet is a marvel. Under Labadie it was sturdy and matter-of-fact, no more. (The movement’s trio suffered, by contrast, from gestural overkill, beginning with a well-intentioned but painfully artificial rubato from which it never recovered.)

Tempos were sensible, on the whole. The finale of the symphony was a bit of a scramble, opening at a very fast tempo indeed, possibly because Labadie insisted on taking it in one beat to the bar. Some of the slow tempos in the Mass were on the broad side of normal, but Labadie sustained them well. His habit of ending every section with an all-purpose, halfhearted ritardando, though, had become seriously annoying by the end of the evening.

Hit-or-Miss in Some Aspects

For a Classical specialist, Labadie was rather hit-or-miss on the performance-practice side of things. The most noticeable difference from standard practice was his insistence on short grace notes in the themes of the first and second movements of the symphony, which to me sounded contrived (and unnecessary: I’ve never heard this from a “period” orchestra in this work).

But the second violins were in their usual place next to the firsts, instead of antiphonally placed as they would be in a “period” band. (Was this to aid the chorus where the seconds double the altos? They didn’t sound as though they needed the help.) And apart from that one explosion in the symphony’s finale, it looked to me as though Van Geem at the timpani stuck to the soft sticks.

The choral items fared better than the symphony, to my mind. There was the same puzzling dynamic constraint, but hearing the Symphony violins dance intricately along through Haydn’s forthright choral writing was a recurrent treat. The Symphony Chorus, for its part, made a fine, confident sound, but was a bit casual with its enunciation. The Latin words of the Mass are familiar enough, but in the Te Deum I found myself wishing I hadn’t shut my program book before the piece started.

The soloists were well-matched and excellent individually, though soprano Christine Brandes in the Kyrie’s elaborate solo had a curious tight quality to her tone production that I don’t think I’ve heard from her before. The standout was mezzo Kelley O’Connor, deep and luminous of timbre in this, her Symphony debut. Nathan Berg was the sonorous bass, while John Tessier brought a clear, ringing tenor to his smallish part.

Michelle Dulak Thomson is a violinist and violist who has written about music for Strings, Stagebill, Early Music America, and The New York Times.

Comments

Until last week, the San Francisco Symphony Chorus in its 36 years had never been known to sing a less than good and professional performance. Suddenly, the evident consequence of its being taken over by a new director, Ragnar Bohlin, the experience, the tradition, the carefully learned habits of these 132 dedicated choristers went out the window. Haydn’s Te Deum was unintelligible. Hardly a word of this infrequently encountered text came across last Wednesday in Davies Symphony Hall. Not to me who knows the work from having conducted it, and not to a distinguished colleague also in the audience who has conducted it several times. It was as if Bohlin had had them singing on the vowels only — a training technique aimed at bringing focus to tone production and melllifluous line — and barely got them singing whole words again.

The cost of the soft and mushy consonants was not only the lost comprehension by the audience but clear rhythmic articulation, consonants being to singers what tonguing is to wind players, bowing to the strings. Most important, the Chorus in putting little energy into the whole words wound up not conveying meaning. This inexpressiveness was very apparent in the performance of Haydn’s Mass in Time of Waras well. Indeed the dynamic markings were observed but that’s only the shell, the detail emphasis crucial to the projection of Haydn’s very particular interpretation of the mass simply did not happen. And of course, almost every member of this Chorus knows the Latin mass text by heart and would instantly perceive the specific nuances in Haydn’s setting.

Bohlin holds the principal responsibility of course for what might be summed up as terrible diction, but it was also shared by the evening’s guest conductor Bernard Labadie. Had Labadie been listening to the chorus at all, had he had in mind and wanted a convicted and convincing performance, all he had to do was to tell the Chorus at the first rehearsal to sharpen its diction and articulation and focus on word meaning and it would have reverted to its training of the past 23 years by Bohlin’s predecessor and that would have been that.

Posted by Robert Commanday on April 29, 2008 at 4:53 pm
I hate when they screw up Haydn. You’d think his music wouldn’t be that tricky to do fabulously, but for some reason it is, at least for a modern large-symphony orchestra.

And the fact that Mr. Commanday has a hate-on for the new choral director, Mr. Bohlin, is sort of fascinating. I don’t think I’ve ever read him in such a virulent vein.

Posted by sfmike on April 30, 2008 at 11:17 pm
For myself, I prefer the finer intonation, finessed phrasing, and overall improved musicality of the chorus under Mr. Bohlin. It is a different sound than Mr. George’s with a different emphasis. Text is important but so is the musical line.

I say, Mr. Commanday, give the chorus another season under Mr. Bohlin’s direction. Your protests may not be due to the direction but the adjustments of the chorus to adapt from 30 years under one director.

Posted by Sirona Branson on April 30, 2008 at 11:39 pm