San Francisco Classical Voice

There is something of the exceptionally talented schoolboy in the way Britten seems to think of everything, and to make sure you know he has. In "Spring, the sweet spring," for example, the soloists sing one line of onomatopoetic bird sounds three times and, by gosh, Britten makes sure each soloist gets to do each bird. Summer coming in, in the Finale? Got to get "Sumer is icumen in" in there, in effortless counterpoint of course (but he spells it "Soomer is icoomen in" in the score, just to make sure the chorus gets it right. It's medieval, you know). The Finale, the only large single movement, is perhaps the least convincing span. Dithyramb, after all, was not Britten's metier — there is a certain orderliness to his frenzy that suggests one who, at an orgy, would be picking up the stray cocktail napkins and moving glassware out of the way of vulnerable body parts.

Still and all, the work in its total effect is a knockout, and it received a convincing and committed performance from Spano and the Symphony. The Symphony Chorus was in exceptionally fine form, and the sometimes elaborate Elizabethan texts were always clear (even lines like "Crookt age on three knees creeps the street" — try saying that three times fast). They received terrific support from the San Francisco Girls' Chorus and the Pacific Boychoir, who dispatched lines like "Fly Venus and phlebotomy, for they are neither good" with the requisite glee whilst maintaining their almost unnerving decorum.

The soloists each shone in their own characters. Tenor John Mark Ainsley is well-nigh perfect for this sort of assignment, combining lyricism with an acute sensitivity to text that was close to smug, but not too close. Soprano Mary Dunleavy was an ideal foil, bright and agile. Their duet "Fair and Fair" was thrilling in its rhythmic intricacy. Set off beautifully from these was the resonant mezzo of Susanne Mentzer, who sang two of the darker texts, Herrick's "Welcome Maids of Honour" and the aforementioned Auden setting, to tremendous effect.

Spano, now Music Director of the Atlanta Symphony, is an elegant conductor — elegant in the way that well-written, concise computer code is said to be elegant. There is very little wasted motion, and his gestures (all confined to an unusually high "field" of beating — up around the shoulders mostly) are focused and precise. This served the orchestra well in the program's opening work, the San Francisco Symphony premiere of Mark-Anthony Turnage's Three Screaming Popes. This work has gotten a considerable amount of play, thanks in large part to the advocacy of Simon Rattle in his Birmingham days. The haunting visual image of a screaming Pope Innocent X, from Francis Bacon's re-interpretation of Velazquez, has its analogue here in vivid layers of sound aggressively laid over each other — to the point that a background "surface" is barely recognizable. Though the work gets overtly violent towards the end, the overall impression of harsh density was rendered in this performance with surprising lyricism, with edges rounded.

Likewise the Mozart Piano Concerto which followed the Turnage was suffused with a particularly soft-focus glow. It was here a very attractive effect. This, the last of Mozart's piano concertos, is notably undemonstrative, and short on the colloquy that marks so many of his earlier and better-known examples. The lyrical element predominates; soloist Ax and the orchestra obliged with unusually sinuous and approachable warmth. Ax has an uncanny ability to color with the pedal without sacrificing clarity of articulation; it seemed that there was never a foot out of place, never a gesture too large or self-serving. The orchestra accompanied suavely, especially the first violins (led here by Nadya Tichman), time and again proving the adage that a section of twelve violins can actually play softer than a section of six could. It was a performance that could have been marred by a cellphone version of the Introduction to Bizet's "Carmen" (ah, the menace of customized ringtones), but kept going with unflappable good humor. Not a rendition to bring the house down, perhaps, but certainly one to bring the house in — and if they stayed for the Britten, that's a wonderful thing.