San Francisco Classical Voice

SYMPHONY REVIEW

Showing Many Colors

November 7, 2003

By Michael Zwiebach

The San Francisco Symphony concert on Friday night at Davies Symphony Hall was the kind of affair where the cheap seats in the balcony and behind the orchestra sell out first. Youth was served, and that audience knew what it was getting into. The conductor David Robertson led the musicians in two Symphony first performances — the string orchestra version of Steve Reich's Different Trains and Kurt Weill's Violin Concerto — finishing with a zippy account of Igor Stravinsky's propulsive Symphony in Three Movements. With the SF debut of violinist James Ehnes in the Weill, the concert breathed an air of discovery.

Different Trains, — originally for string quartet, three prerecorded quartets, and taped voices — brings together two images as larger metaphors for experience. In the first movement, Reich's old governess and a retired Pullman car porter reminisce about the romantic age of cross-country travel in sleek, modern trains. Then the voices tick off the years leading to America's involvement in World War II and, at the height of the music's forward surge, the rhythm suddenly slows for the second movement, "Europe — During the war," which coalesces around the voices of Holocaust survivors remembering the lumbering cattle wagon trains taking people to the concentration camp at Auschwitz. The music's patterns are more irregular as well. The final movement, "After the War" concentrates on evanescence, as the stories, like the trains and the music, recede into memory.

The new version of Different Trains was co-commissioned by the Orchestre National de Lyon, where Robertson is music director. Essentially, the orchestra takes over all the quartet parts and, in the process, dramatically increases the power and presence of musical sound as well as the number of actual bodies onstage. Instead of a memory piece, the orchestral version, with its dynamic conductor out in front, feels more like a bold-colored theatrical presentation. The substance of the piece was still there, but the added physicality subtly altered my experience of it.

Generally well done

The best parts of the Symphony's performance were therefore the emotionally-charged transitions between movements and the hard-driving, exuberant climaxes of "America — Before the War." On the other hand, the melodies, which are all taken from the speakers' inflections, were a little heavily underlined and not as limber as in the well-loved Kronos Quartet recording. Throughout the last two movements, the rhythms were often too measured, instead of feeling like shifting and overlapping strands. It was not a perfect performance, but it was certainly satisfactory and communicative. It deserves to remain in the Symphony repertoire.

The performance of Weill's Violin Concerto was characterized by dashing, alert playing on the part of the orchestra and soloist Ehnes. Completed in 1924, when the composer was 24, it comprehends a heady diversity of moods, themes and sonorities. Weill scored his concerto without strings, except for double bass, heightening the contrast between soloist and orchestra. This also introduces the textural clarity of such contemporaneous pieces also scored for a wind band as Stravinsky's Piano Concerto. Though the violin wanders through some Romantic passageways, for the most part the work, with its spare, balanced orchestration and sharp contrasts as well as a certain interest in nightclub sounds (the xylophone in the nocturne section), points the way to the more mature composer.

Ehnes' tone and technique were brilliant throughout, especially in the showpiece cadenza, but he is not an overly flashy player. His best moments came with the tricky melodies and passagework of the Serenata movement, which he pulled together beautifully, and in the final movement's bustle. There the soloist is heard in rapid-fire exchanges with the orchestra, and in the contrasting middle section there are serene wisps of melody. Ehnes's thoughtful energy was matched by Robertson and the orchestra, who partnered the violinist exactly.

Could it be that Robertson chose Stravinsky's Symphony in Three Movements to close the program because its off-kilter ostinatos remind the listener of Reich's music? Or because he once allowed that he had been influenced by World War II newsreels in composing the piece? Whatever the reason, the finale was well-chosen and the Symphony musicians gave a performance that was every bit as memorable as the one they gave in the Stravinsky Festival four years ago. There was ferocious energy in the opening fanfare that immediately came under control in the piano-inflected ostinato that follows. The Andante was finely balanced, and the Con moto was handled with almost nonchalant assurance.