San Francisco Classical Voice

For the 2000-2001 season of the San Jose Symphony, one of the four Familiar Classics programs and three of the 12 Signature Series concerts are devoted entirely to music of Russian composers. Further, four of the 12 Signature Series soloists are Russian artists.

Don't misunderstand me. I like Russian music. My family came from Russia, and the Russian orchestral repertory was fed to me like mother's milk. So I had no problems with it until the balance of the repertory offered to this area's music lovers became lopsided, as has been the case for several seasons past.

Except for the program commemorating the Copland centennial, devoted entirely to this great American icon (though not conducted by music director Grin), there is not a single American composition on any of the other 11 Signature Series concerts, the main subscription. The Classical period is represented by one program devoted entirely to Mozart and one last-minute substitution of Mozart's K. 467 as a replacement for a Schumann concerto.

One program is entirely devoted to French music, one work by Bartók, one by Stravinsky are to be heard, and one brief piece an Asian composer was performed, but not a single composition by English, Scandinavian, Spanish, Italian, or South American composers. (Stravinsky is also Russian, of course, but "The Rite of Spring" has no national allegiance and is not considered as a Russian composition for purposes of this analysis.)

As for the predominance of Russian soloists, the problem is not that the Russian instrumentalists don't play well. They do. The Russian music-education system provides outstanding training for the gifted student. But that's true for both talented American students and the American music-education system, too, and San Jose audiences are not hearing enough of those on the Signature Series. On last weekend's performances (which I heard on Saturday), Yugoslavian pianist Aleksander Serdar's disappointing delivery of Mozart's K. 467 concerto would have been improved on by any number of artist's located right in this area.

An entire season of featuring gifted American soloists – goodness knows we have enough of them - would not be inappropriate. Instead we are going to be subjected to Sergei Nakariakov playing a Mendelssohn violin concerto on the trumpet. It does not matter if this is the famous E minor concerto or the much less well known and early D minor concerto. I'm sure he will play either magnificently, dazzling us with his skill. But what useful musical purpose is served by the performance of any violin concerto on a trumpet?

Furthermore, it seems disrespectful to music because the intent of such performances is to cause the music to serve the performer rather than the other way round. It is an amusing, pops-concert frivolity, not the centerpiece of a performance of serious classical music played by what used to be but no longer is, a first-class orchestra

If the audiences of the San Jose Symphony's Signature Series are sympathetic to the current selection of programs and soloists, why are the houses 44% empty? A facility built to hold 2600 attendees currently has an average of 1460 people per performance. On occasion, the house may be papered, this being a euphemism to describe the dispensing of free tickets to avoid the appearance of public disinterest. And the recommended solution to this situation has been the construction of a new, smaller auditorium. This appears to be a counterproductive strategy.

Something is very wrong with the programming being offered the South Bay by its resident orchestra. The blame must rest at the feet of music director Grin. He schedules music that he knows best, though it often is not well performed. As a consequence, the season's repertory is unbalanced.

The South Bay seems to have an affinity for German romantic symphonic repertory, as does much of America. But, in the current San Jose Symphony season, that constitutes only five works: Brahms First Symphony, Liszt's "Faust Symphony," Schumann's Fourth, Beethoven's Third, Mahler's Third, and Wagner's Wesendonck-Lieder. That's not bad, but this most popular fare is overwhelmed by three programs entirely devoted to large-scale symphonic works of Russian music on the main series, and a fourth such program on the Familiar Classics series. And last weekend's performance of the Liszt, both as a composition, with all its repetitiveness and bombast, and its performance, was hardly a strong representative example of the romantic period.

Furthermore, in this year, the San Jose Symphony ignores an event that many other musical organizations in the world are celebrating, the commemoration of the 250th anniversary of the death of Johann Sebastian Bach. So we in the South Bay do not hear our resident orchestra commemorate the death of the greatest polyphonist who ever lived.

In terms of broad scale, varied, eclectic repertory and soloists, we in San Jose are not getting our money's worth. That I say so is not important, but that audience attendance and red ink attest to it is a much more meaningful statement.

(Musicologist/author Dan Leeson is a former member of the San Jose Symphony Orchestra, a retired businessman, and an editor of the 220-volume complete Mozart edition published by Bärenreiter.)

©2000 Dan Leeson, all rights reserved