San Francisco Classical Voice

In the best of all possible musical worlds, a conductor's vision of a piece is so heartily shared with the orchestra that it results in magic. Yuri Temirkanov and the San Francisco Symphony gave a brisk, energetic and polished performance of the Dvorak Symphony No. 8 Saturday night that had even orchestra members smiling with delight. The strings were in fine form all evening, from the opening cello section, to the rich balance of all strings in the second movement, to the precise ensemble of the third movement. The winds were a marvel, and if not careful, the brass, with their uniformly excellent intonation, could give brass players a good name. The fourth movement was flat-out exuberant ensemble virtuosity. Temirkanov manages all this with minimal, seemingly effortless gestures, like a jockey giving a thoroughbred its head.

Rodion Shchedrin's Suite from his 1961 opera Not Love Alone opened the program. The Suite, in five movements, depicts scenes from Russian village life with a narrative thread that was sensed even in the absence of the opera's vocal lyrics. This is writing of high craft, utilizing various harmonic styles as the dramatic situation requires. The orchestration is virtuosic, everything from parallel flourishes in the woodwinds to a pizzicato fughetta in the strings, and the orchestra responded gracefully and stylishly. Temirkanov took full advantage of the piece's charms and challenges.

One reads that Bartok's Third Piano Concerto is a grippingly personal and lyrical farewell gift from the dying composer to his wife, the pianist Ditta Pasztory, but, Yefim Bronfman did not confirm this in presenting the first movement of the concerto as more related to the hard-edged acerbity of Bartok's first two piano concertos. The second movement's evocation of Beethoven's "Sacred Hymn of Thanksgiving from a Convalescent to the Deity" (from the slow movement of his A Minor String Quartet, Opus 132) was more on target, except that Bronfman unfortunately decided to do some silent passage practicing of other music during the orchestra's beautiful opening moments. The third movement found soloist, conductor, orchestra and concept in accord for a blazing finish.

Called back for an encore, Bronfman produced a reading of Chopin's Etude in C Minor, Op. 10, No. 12, the so-called "Revolutionary." Curiously, he brought out the lyrical side of the right hand part at the cost of subduing, even hiding, the rhythmical propulsion of the left hand part. Would that he had imbued the first movement of the concerto with that lyrical warmth.

(James Carmichael, pianist, lives and teaches in the East Bay.)

©1999 James Carmichael, all rights reserved