San Francisco Classical Voice

Yet the mere presence of youthful energy is not sufficient to explain the extraordinary visual phenomenon of this orchestra: how they move. For they really move with the music, and they do it together. Whole sections lean into an accented note, together. String players use every bit of the bow in fortissimo, together. This is not the safe "together" of finding the average. Everyone's minimum and maximum of sound and gesture appear to be precisely calibrated, and they use them all.

The sheer expressive range this affords is astonishing, as the two evenings' programs amply demonstrated. Monday evening began with a new work, Aus einem Tagebuch (From a Diary) by the German composer Heiner Goebbels, an intriguing and often extremely hip series of linked vignettes featuring the interaction of the orchestra with recorded sounds (a sort of "diary" of sound-experiences from the composer's life and career), here controlled by a pair of gum-chewing gentlemen at a console in the first tier. Goebbels' background includes work in Art-Rock as well as theater, and his musical language embraces the lick, the riff, the groove, and the sound of the big band. Often the rhythmic inspiration is derived from the looped, prerecorded sound in a way that admits what might seem an alien element very comfortably into the discourse. Though decidedly anti-narrative in form, the twenty-minute-plus work passed quickly and even beguilingly.

Perhaps there was a slight irony in following this work with the abstract formality and carefully contrived proportional relationships of Bartók's Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta. This work is a theorist's favorite, with its almost obsessive mirror-symmetries (even the string orchestra is divided into two), but Rattle and the orchestra delivered a vibrant rendition. The opening pianissimo of the eerie chromatic fugue was astonishing not just for its softness but also for its substance — even the most minute sound had a real core. The vigorous, dance-inspired rhythms of the fast movements were delivered not just with unnerving accuracy but with real panache, and Bartok's every nuance was cherished (never before, for example, have I heard the very end of the work, with its peculiar hold-up and lurch toward the finish, performed so exactly as Bartók instructs, and with such a thrilling result).

Clearly, Rattle had succeeded in making something stylish out of Bartók's very precise instructions; how then would he and the orchestra deal with Classical repertoire? Haydn and Beethoven, after all, did not provide nearly so many timings, so many articulations, so many interpretive directions. Here the results were very interesting and confident, if not always entirely convincing. Beethoven's "Pastoral" Symphony was the second half of Monday's program. The conductorial hand lay somewhat heavily over the details here; from phrase to phrase there was often considerable ebb and flow (in the "Scene by the Brook," rather more ebb, over and over again at one particular turn of phrase, for example). One could hardly complain, however, at being given the occasional extra split-second to take in the lustrous colors of the orchestral scenery: the muted sound of the violins and violas at the opening of the "Brook," for example, or the remarkably bird-like bird sounds of the winds, or the chattering horns in the scherzo, followed by chattering violins playing high up in position to sound like horns. As for the thunder-claps in the Storm, one had to wonder whether Beethoven ever imagined that the rumbling bass-parts could be rendered with such clarity. It was extremely well-behaved thunder. Likewise the symphony's very plush ending chords suggested a view of the country from a well-padded seat.

With these touches of luxury, the occasional whiff of a certain sort of authentic-performance-practice purism seemed especially peculiar. (News flash from the period-instrument-performance world: starting ALL those trills on the upper note is so 70s!) This vaguely dicordant impression was also apparent in the performance of Haydn's utterly charming Symphony No. 88 that opened Tuesday evening's program. Now, Rattle is an experienced hand with Haydn, and he is someone who knows how to have a good time with it. This is not merely a matter of diffidently letting the music tell its joyful story and its sly jokes. It requires knowing how and when to inflect the surface, to give a great script the gift of great timing. And there was great timing in abundance — a beautifully judged Allegro tempo for the first movement, a delightful Minuet and even better trio, and an ebullient Finale (thanks especially for the clipped eighth-note chord — as in the score — before the silent fermata near the end). Yet some of the tell-tale signs of early-music conscience didn't seem to fit here: an opening Adagio tempo that seemed quick even to the orchestra, and which turned out to be exactly the same as the Largo tempo of the (not very) slow movement, for one.

Another particularly vexing conductorial decision concerned the paired-eighth-note upbeats in the last movement. It is a particular sort of textual interpretation — painfully familiar from the early music world — that takes the absence of evidence as evidence of absence: the first time we see these notes, they are marked with dots, so they are short. After that, there are no dots, so we shall play them very, very long! This was one interpretive inflection too many; better that, though, than too few.

After the Haydn, soprano Valdine Anderson (a replacement on the current tour for an indisposed Dawn Upshaw) joined the orchestra for the other commissioned work, Correspondances by Henri Dutilleux. It was interesting to note that both this and the Goebbels work were at pains to avoid suggestions of narrative or dramatic trajectory. Here the main texts are excerpts of letters, one from Solzhenitsyn to Rostropovich, the other from Vincent Van Gogh to his brother Theo. They, and the two short poems that introduce them, are not specifically connected thematically, except perhaps for a shared spiritual inclination; their emotional tone is heartfelt, yet familiar. Dutilleux in his brief accompanying note spoke of seeking texts for lyrical treatment, and the vocal writing here avoids angularity. Indeed at times the voice seems to merge with the shimmering sound of the orchestra (though this may also have been due to occasional infelicities of balance). In one particularly memorable passage, the voice repeats the word "toujours" (always), from the closing salutation of Solzhenitsyn's letter, to the accompaniment of a series of softly shifting harmonies that capture ineffably both a sense of timelessness and tremendous emotion. Dutilleux' harmonic idiom is rich and allusive, yet difficult to pin down; the passion of Anderson's delivery was sometimes difficult to reconcile with the particular affect of the text — at times, one wondered, would a different set of words have made any difference?

To close the second program, Rattle paired two works in a surprisingly effective combination: the yearning and turbulent Seventh Symphony of Sibelius with a particularly full-bodied rendition of Debussy's La Mer. In the Sibelius, the uncanny tonal heft and sustaining power of the orchestra imbued the work's oddly shifting strata with terrific tension, leading to electrifying climaxes. The fleet and gossamer playing of the winds was a special delight, here and in the Debussy. In the first of the three sea-pictures especially, the string timbre sometimes seemed unnecessarily thick when accompanying them, but in the "Jeux des vagues" (Play of the Waves) all was in light, frothy balance once again. The climactic conclusions to the first and third movements were borne aloft by a brass sound of great richness; the very ending was as massive as I have ever heard it, thumped along by the biggest bass-drum mallet I have ever seen.

Any doubts as to whether the orchestra was losing its soft touch owing to fatigue were dispelled by the encore — a special reward, we were told by Rattle, for being such a cough-free audience the night before. The orchestra, Rattle explained, had not brought any encore music with them, but had raided the San Francisco Symphony's library for one of Satie's Gymnopédies, as orchestrated by Debussy. There followed a few minutes of the most ravishing, soft and still playing one could hope to hear. Let us hope we need not wait another 47 years for this orchestra to return.