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SYMPHONY REVIEW Brilliance and Uncertainty December 1, 2002
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By Jerry Kuderna
From the way Paavo Järvi began his Sunday concert with the San Francisco Symphony you might guess him to be its regular conductor. His blazing account of the young American Charles Coleman's Streetscape, a work that shows much promise for its 34-year-old composer, was the perfectly calculated curtain-raiser. Full of energy and rhythmic drive, it easily shifted gears into the reflective passages, calling upon the first chairs to contribute some lovely lyric playing. Cellist Michael Grebanier and concertmaster Alexander Barantchik were outstanding. The work was also a showcase for the percussion section of the orchestra, often getting a real big-band sound, mixing idioms, all to fine effect.
Most of the rehearsal time might have been used for the Coleman work; at least, the Bartók 2nd Piano Concerto came off as a vehicle for virtuoso display and not much else. It certainly demands a fearless virtuoso technique from the soloist, and this it had from Stewart Goodyear. But it is also demands careful balancing of forces to have its proper effect. I was able to hear the piano, for example, much more clearly at the softer dynamic levels than in the forte passages. The quiet passage at the beginning of the slow movement was effective, but when the duet with the tympani began, the piano was all but drowned out. Goodyear compensated in the scherzo middle section by playing the ghostly pianissimo repeated notes forte and martellato.
The outer movements had plenty of drive, and it was thrilling to watch Goodyear attack the piano with such verve and aplomb. But Bartók's compositional tour de force whereby the two movements are rhythmic variants of the same material seemed to go unnoticed. The themes themselves lacked sufficient character to make their variation meaningful. I wished for more moments like the one when the piano plays the opening trumpet theme near the end of the concerto at about an eighth of the original tempo. Goodyear did this with grace and repose.
Järvi made what seemed a wise choice for the concluding work in Brahms' Second Symphony. Had his approach been more straightforward, it might have provided the sense of calm so needed after the pounding rhythms of the first half of the concert. Unfortunately, an annoying emphasis on the downbeats that Brahms goes to such great lengths to avoid was all-pervasive, generating stolidity instead of serenity. Järvi tried to counteract this with a tempo rubato that made the simple loveliness of Brahms' themes all the more elusive. In neglecting the rhythmic continuity of the music, Järvi missed golden opportunities to unify his performance. There is a passage in the third movement where the same rhythm, two quarters plus a triplet, is repeated no fewer than twelve times (consecutively). That triplet sets up a metric modulation into a presto in 3/8 time which grows naturally out of the preceding music. Brahms then turns this into the opening gambit of the finale. Järvi treated the passage as just marking time, waiting for something to happen rather than the crucial transitional passage that it should be. It was not the only reason that the Allegro of the finale was not “con spirito,” but it was a reminder that in great works of music, no detail can be taken for granted.
(Jerry Kuderna is a pianist who teaches at Diablo Valley College.)
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Stewart Goodyear
Paavo Järvi