San Francisco Classical Voice

The San Francisco Symphony gave its first performance of Robert Schumann's Violin Concerto on Saturday evening, May 1, under conductor David Zinman at Davies Hall. The fine young German violinist Christian Tetzlaff brought forth the darkness and beauty of the concerto. The work is not a soloist's delight. Schumann basically confines the violinist to the lower regions of the instrument, except for an infrequent foray into the upper positions, as if Schumann were trying to shine light on his personal darkness. It was during this period (in the early 1850s) that he was to become confined to a mental institution.

The first two movements led me to believe that the concerto has been unjustly neglected. It captured my attention thoroughly, due in no small part to the soloist's beautiful feeling for the inner emotion of the music. The final movement, however, made me understand why the concerto has been ignored by practically all violinists to the present day. It is repetitious to the extreme. Despite the skills lavished on it by Tetzlaff, it soon palled because of its length and repetition.

Steven Mackey's composition Eating Greens began the evening. In spite of his copious program notes, in which he states that the subtitles under the lead title are part of the piece and not just descriptions or analyses, I do not want to hear this music a second time. I can say, without fear of contradiction, that a second performance here will be a long time coming.

Mackey knows how to put notes to paper, but the composition is so disorganized, with many so-called ideas, I felt that a good composition teacher -- rather than performances -- is what he needs. Among the quaint ideas that need to be eliminated is an embarrassing solo on a de-tuned violin. The idea of having a Davies Hall staff person deliver a pizza to the solo bassist during the performance was sophomoric in its intent and execution. To complete the fiasco, conductor David Zinman was obliged, at the end of the piece, to give a solo bow to the delivery person. Save me!

After intermission came Dvorak's Fifth Symphony, last performed by the orchestra in 1994. Zinman and the orchestra seemed to be relying on automatic pilot for the performance. The conductor, bent on describing figure eights and other complex non-numeric figures with the baton, appeared more intent on his hand movement than on the movement of the music. Perhaps the Dvorak Fifth is not on a par with the "New World" Symphony, but I believe that much more could have been made of this music than actually happened here. No one, from the top down, seemed to be musically committed. Tempos were sluggish, dance figures did not dance, and melodies did not have breadth. The orchestra played well, but that's all that can be noted positively.

©1999 Stuart Canin, all rights reserved