San Francisco Classical Voice

SYMPHONY REVIEW

Sharing the Wealth

January 20, 2006

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By David Bratman

Friday's Oakland East Bay Symphony program at the Paramount Theatre featured a couple of symphonies that have been traveling around a bit.

This was an interesting week for Oakland to program Brahms' Second Symphony, because the San Francisco Symphony under Michael Tilson Thomas was playing it literally at the same time. I heard both performances, on different evenings. On this occasion, at least, Oakland's assistant conductor Bryan Nies was the more authentic Brahmsian. He led a graceful and deliberately paced rendition of the work with rich, blended string and wind tone. A pizzicato cello passage in the third movement sounded particularly warm and full. This was a performance that calmly searched for the depth of the work, where San Francisco took a shinier, more separated approach and went for the passion. Though Oakland's horns were rather weak and watery, and Nies sometimes over-emphasized Brahms's staccato markings, it was overall a satisfying rendition.

Symphony No. 3 “Vespertine” by Kevin Puts is a product of Magnum Opus, the project of Meet the Composer and venture capitalist Kathryn Gould to commission pleasing, attractive new works and have them played by at least three Bay Area orchestras: Oakland East Bay, the Marin Symphony, and the Santa Rosa Symphony. Puts' work premiered in an earlier form in Marin two years ago and was played in Santa Rosa last season. It's one of several of his works to have been heard at the Cabrillo Festival, and it's been played out of the area as well. This week was Oakland's turn.

Many works have one indispensable factual nugget that turns up whenever they're discussed. Brahms' Second is famous for being dashed off in four months after the composer spent 20 years perfecting his previous symphony. Perhaps it's a sign of changing times that the one indispensable fact about Puts's Third is that it was inspired by the composer's encounter with a TV music video of the Icelandic alternative-rock singer Björk. (What would Brahms have thought?) Puts was taken with Björk's improvisational vocal style and her light and transparent but lush instrumental accompaniment. But unlike Philip Glass in his symphonies inspired by David Bowie/Brian Eno albums, Puts does not quote from his inspiration. Instead he tries to reproduce the quality of the sound that inspired him.

Crystalline overtones

The result is a 15-minute work in three movements, characterized by light, high-pitched scoring. Some louder, heavier moments float in unobtrusively rather than erupting in huge outbursts as, say, Kancheli or Górecki might write. More typical of the work are long, yearning melodies in an upper range, highly chromatic and not immediately memorable, on massed violins or two solo cellos � in both cases entirely unaccompanied. High trumpets and flutes chirp away a few times. Strings swirl restlessly in the second movement. What Puts calls a “music box” of celesta, harp, and xylophones opens the work and reappears on occasion. The light but intense sound is slightly reminiscent of Ravel — somewhat in the style of Daphnis et Chloé, perhaps — interesting to listen to and played with earnest commitment, but not as arresting on first hearing as a Björk album.

Between the symphonies came the concert's nod to this year's Mozart anniversary. Music director Michael Morgan's decision to put one of the great man's works on each program this season gave an opportunity to hear a lesser-known piece performed by a rarely seen soloist. The work was Mozart's only bassoon concerto (in B-flat, K. 191); the soloist was San Francisco Opera's and Ballet's principal bassoonist, Rufus Olivier, out from the pit for a change. Olivier has a light, lyrical, but carrying sound well suited to the legato passages of this highly operatic concerto. He handled the fast coloratura runs with equal ease, taking in stride the sudden jumps from low buzzing notes to high piercing ones. Some equipment at the back of the stage fell over during the first movement, but Olivier, Nies, and the orchestra just ignored the sudden bang.

Morgan came on stage to introduce the program and again, after intermission, to lead a tribute to Pei-Kun Xi, arranger for the Great Wall Youth Orchestra, who died in December, aged 57. The Symphony has often collaborated with the Great Wall group, and today some 40 of its members — playing mostly bowed and plectra Chinese string instruments, with a few winds — crowded onto the stage to join the orchestra for Xi's Tibet Song. Rather than presenting the two ensembles in dialogue, this music skillfully merges the western and Chinese instruments into a unified orchestral work with Chinese flavor. Morgan had been unable to rehearse the two groups together, so the blended result was a tribute to the skills of composer, conductor, and performers alike.