San Francisco Classical Voice

The Berkeley Symphony returned to Zellerbach Hall on Wednesday with two works by local hero John Adams and the premiere of a work commissioned by the Symphony from the young French composer Jean-Pascal Beintus. The themes of the evening, which was sort of a celebration of the Berkeley spirit, ranged from ancient Greece to modern greed.

Kent Nagano, a canny programmer, can appeal to popular taste without making his audience feel they are being patronized. But in fact, this seemed like a pops concert, Berkeley style. After last month's West Coast premiere of Elliott Carter's new opera, What Next?, which surely shows the Berkeley spirit at its most intrepid, for this program he turned to much more tepid fare.

The Beintus work, entitled Berkeley Images, is a 17-minute meditation on seven lovely photographs (on display in the lobby) by Magaretta Mitchell, of tunic-draped Duncanesque dancers. Although taken in town at the Temple of Wings, they show as much about Berkeley as New York City's Cloisters do about the Bronx.

Berkeley has been called the Athens of the West, but you would never know it by listening to Beintus' music. This lovely piece shows he knows how to draw gorgeous sounds from the string sections (he plays bass in Nagano's Lyon Opera orchestra) and how to turn a phrase almost as telling as his compatriot Ravel, whom he cites as an influence. But he could not possibly suggest anything of the "free speech" Berkeley spirit that resides much more in the "flawed words and stubborn sounds" exemplified by many a composer who has lived and worked here, from, say, Roger Sessions to the present.

And why did Nagano feel the need to play two major works by John Adams? Coming on the heels of his premiere of El Niño across the bay, this was at least one too many for me. I was glad to hear Gnarly Buttons, a worthy addition to the clarinet concerto literature and very well played by clarinetist Michael Wright. Although the first movement reminded me of Stravinsky's Symphony in three movements, Adams does have a convincing way of transforming his influences. In the last movement he provided some music that was all his own, a song of tenderness and heartbreak that, after its final phrase, left me feeling oddly and unexpectedly affected.

The second half began with Joaquin Rodrigo's Concierto de Aranjuez, a work no doubt familiar to many in the audience from Miles Davis' best-selling 1960s album Sketches of Spain. Guitarist Manuel Barrueco delivered a convincing, intimate, and nuanced performance, despite the amplification necessary to be heard over the orchestra in the large hall.

Finally it was time to revisit John Adams' El Dorado, one of his most popular scores. More than once I felt transported to Nibelheim with its obsessive pounding rhythms. And at the close of the first movement, "A Dream of Gold," there was even a quote from Mime's anvil music.

During one of the breaks, Nagano contributed off-the-cuff remarks about surfing slang (on which he is a self-proclaimed expert) and the futility of greed — which, as a world-class conductor who remains faithful to our hometown orchestra after 22 years, he clearly believes. Nagano has probably the most secure following here that any conductor could have anywhere. So please, maestro, use your clout and your gifts on behalf of our local composers who really do need you.

(Jerry Kuderna is a pianist who teaches at Diablo Valley College and is a host (with Sarah Cahill) of the Berkeley TV program, Stop, Look, and Listen.)

©2001 Jerry Kuderna, all rights reserved