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SYMPHONY REVIEW
Midori Roberto Abaddo October 25, 2006
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Classy Choices, Novel Passion By Heuwell Tircuit
With five performances offered last week by the San Francisco Symphony, the program had better be something special, and it was. First of all, there was Midori as soloist (her full name is Goto Midori) in Benjamin Britten’s Violin Concerto in D Minor, Op. 15 (1939). That work was preceded by the U.S. premiere of Goffredo Petrassi’s Second Concerto for orchestra, written way back in 1951. And, after intermission, the conductor, Roberto Abbado, added Schumann’s Fourth Symphony in D Minor, Op. 120, the only commonly familiar work on Wednesday evening.
Britten was one of the few composer’s who actually made a career primarily from his compositions. For him, the 1930s were largely taken up by work on commissions for theater, radio, or (mostly short) films: eight sets of incidental theatrical music, seven radio programs, plus an astounding 30 films — half of those done in 1935 alone.
Other than that, Britten mostly wrote collections of short pieces, vocal and instrumental. To be sure, some of those became minor classics, such as Variations on a Theme of Frank Bridge for string orchestra, and his Simple Symphony. Then, in 1938 came his only Piano Concerto, Op. 13, which was and remains disappointing, before the major breakthrough in 1939 with his long, intense Violin Concerto, easily the finest of his concert works.
Britten’s concerto belongs to that major bumper crop of important violin concertos written in the ‘30s — Prokofiev’s Second, the Berg, Sessions, Bloch, Schönberg, and the Bartók Second Concertos. But none was as atypical of its composer as Britten’s. Britten’s three movements are as elegiac as Berg’s Concerto and as ferociously violent as Schönberg’s. I know of nothing from Britten that matches such anguished dramatics until his 1945 opera, Peter Grimes. Instead of a scherzo, the central fast movement sounds more like a ghoulish dance, and then there’s that long, grim, passacaglia finale. Of course, considering what was happening in Nazi Germany, and the Japanese war in China, 1939 was hardly a time for happy-feet music.
I’ve heard the Britten Concerto before, but never before with the intensity that Midori and Abbado brought to it. As usual, Midori’s playing was impeccable, but she also brought every scrap of passion in the composition to a new level — surprisingly so. I don't remember ever seeing her writhe so much on stage, she dug into every hint of wrath in the music. Even when she plays virtuoso repertory like the Sibelius Concerto, she has always been the soul of decorum on stage. But for the Britten she transformed herself into something akin to a portrait of Medea raging against Jason (“Has he not children?”) before she murders them. Midori projected that short of dramatic tragedy onto Britten’s Concerto with genuine profundity. The result was nearly frightening the see and hear. Abbado had the orchestral accompaniment at fever pitch for the concerto, and he closed the program with a distinguished account of Schuman’s Fourth Symphony, the composer's shortest and least contrapuntal. There’s one fugal section in the finale, yet even that pales in comparison to those in the Second and Third (Rhenish) symphonies. Abbado set perfect tempos that were subtly flexible, perfect for such a romantically buoyant work. He signaled for many judicious highlights of a phrase and accent, all of which the orchestra instantly honored. Orchestral colorations were just right, whether it was in the vivacious first or last movement, the Romanza slow movement with its exceptionally beautiful main theme, or the joy which cloaks the finale. That’s not so easy to manage considering the movements are continuous. It meant some quick mental gear shifts to achieve those differences in an instant. The quiet linking of the Scherzo to the final movement was breathtakingly quiet, and the trombones section sounded like a dulcet organ. It was truly beautiful playing throughout, especially given that it was a reduced-size orchestra, as many of the normal first-desk players had the night off. That is testament to the depth of quality of our Symphony. Petrassi wrote eight concertos for orchestra, and the Second dates from 1951. Although he was considered something of a star from the 1930s to early 1950s, his long career never caught fire in the international repertory. (He died in March 2003 at the age of 98.) Petrassi’s fate was shared with another major Italian symphonic composer, Gian Francesco Malipiero and his 11 symphonies. Then again, that kind of thing happened to many substantial composers of restrained modernism. Many were shoved off repertory cliffs with the emergence of complex avant-garde music in the 1950 and '60s. Men such as Elliott Carter, John Cage, Morton Freeman, Witold Lutoslawski, Luciano Berio, and Pierre Boulez ascended the throne. Petrassi’s concerto calls for a modest-size classical orchestra of double winds, timpani, and strings. There were only two each of trumpets and horns, no trombones, and no percussion other than the timpani. The reason for this rests on the work’s commission from Paul Sacher’s Basel Chamber Orchestra, which left the world a number of important works, not least of which is Bartók’s Music for Strings, Percussion, and Celeste, Frank Martin’s Petite symphonie concertante, and Honegger’s Symphony No.4, Deliciae Basiliensis. The four movements of Petrassi’s piece are played without pause, as is the case with Schumann’s Fourth. It opens with an expressive prelude, followed by a playful Scherzo, a wonderfully Italian slow movement, and the brisk toccata — the whole piece lasts only 20 minutes. Petrassi’s style is a bit difficult to describe. It’s certainly from the postwar period, but it is also firmly rooted in free tonality. If it is similar to anything, I suppose it would be Honegger, plus a bit of salt-and-pepper à la Hindemith. I could also pick up strong suggestions of “Oh my darling, Clementine” amid the melodic material. What is most distinctive is the volume of sound Petrassi built into his score, and Abbado skillfully brought that forward. Yet, Wednesday's performance sounded as if it could have done with a little more rehearsal time. It was a little scrappy here and there. However, amid such a generally eventful evening, that visionary presentation of Britten’s Concerto still haunts me. Perhaps its ghostly visitation should have been saved for Halloween week. (Heuwell Tircuit is a composer, performer, and writer who was chief writer for Gramophone Japan and for 21 years a music reviewer for the San Francisco Chronicle. He wrote previously for Chicago's American and the Asahi Evening News.)
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Midori
