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SYMPHONY REVIEW
At Sail on the Chromatic Sea
November 9, 2001
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By Michelle Dulak
Someone really ought to be vetting guest conductors' programs at the San Francisco Symphony. Everything on the first of Roberto Abbado's two sets at Davies Symphony Hall was beautifully performed, but it's hard to understand why a conductor with any sense would have put these three particular pieces together on a program. Chausson's Poème de l'amour et de la mer and Ravel's Une barque sur l'océan seem quite enough of evocative chromaticism without Schoenberg's Pelleas und Melisande following after.
The Ravel, which opened the program, is one of his little orchestrational miracles. Nothing in the orchestration even hints at a piano original; everything takes to the orchestra like, well, a boat to water. The performance was taut and brilliant, but no more than an appetizer for the Chausson.
We may be positively awash in fine mezzos these days, but Susan Graham is a marvel even in that company. Such a voice! — rich, warm, smooth, with an extraordinary internal glow in the sound and a plangent edge to it when she sang full out. (Something in the sound reminded me of Janet Baker, who oddly enough gave the only other performance in the Symphony's history, more than twenty years ago.) Graham has specialized in the French repertory (Berlioz, Massenet, Hahn), and Chausson's impassioned setting of two poems of Maurice Bouchor could hardly have found a singer better suited to the music, nor one more in love with the words. (I do not know French well enough to judge Graham's diction, but there was no mistaking the care and tenderness with which she treated the text.)
The Symphony did its best to keep the audience around for Pelleas und Melisande, which took up the second half. The orchestra's website stressed that the piece is "pre-serial." The pre-concert lecturer, Laura Stanfield Prichard, went further, openly urging the listeners not to "sneak out" at intermission, because they'd miss a treat. You know, the huge orchestra (she emphasized the four harps — there were four, though the score calls for only two), the "chamber-musical" delicacy of scoring, the soaring melodies, the romantic harmonies. It didn't work; there were gaping holes in the seating after intermission. I have a sneaking suspicion that the over-selling itself was largely to blame. Really, if people are begging you to stick around for the second half, isn't that the clearest sign that you ought to get out while you still can? The assumption that the "pre-serial" Schoenberg is easier on the ear than the twelve-tone music is a mistake, anyway. Schoenberg's serial music isn't especially dissonant (most of Bartók's quartets are much more so), and none of it demands such audience endurance as Pelleas does. The literary program might seem to be a lifeline to the listener, but there are few landmarks; this isn't Don Juan. The piece is a vast, seething chromatic sea. Jump in, and you too can experience the uncanny sensation of treading water while slowly sinking. (Give me the string trio, or even the Serenade. I want some ground underfoot.) But this Pelleas was a joy for another reason. Abbado had the truly wacky idea of putting the violas in the first violins' usual place. The firsts were opposite them, where the cellos usually are; the cellos were adjacent the violas (with the basses massed behind them) and the seconds adjacent the firsts. The idea obviously was to point the lower strings out, and mute the violins. It made for an unusually rich and suave string sound, even by SFS standards. And those who (like me) always wanted to see Geraldine Walther in the concertmaster's chair finally got their wish. The performance itself was all one could want — okay, all I could stand (listeners with yet higher seething-chromaticism tolerances might have wanted the thermostat turned up a notch or two). The brass were especially fine — nasty in the "grotto" scene, bold in the few places Schoenberg lets them be. (Michelle Dulak is a violinist and violist who has written about music for "Strings," "Stagebill," "Early Music America" and The New York Times.) ©2001 Michelle Dulak, all rights reserved |
