San Francisco Classical Voice

SYMPHONY REVIEW

Variety with Brilliance

January 8, 2005

Measha Brueggergosman

Tigran Martirossian

Luciano Berio

By Lisa Hirsch

The San Francisco Symphony program for last week, heard on Saturday, ended with a bang in the form of Leos Janácek's oversized, extroverted, and celebratory Glagolitic Mass; in a brilliant bit of programming, the concert opened with an even dozen of Luciano Berio's intimate and highly concentrated Duetti per due violini (Duets for two violins).

Berio composed the Duetti to teach student violinists specific technical skills and the very general skill of playing with (and listening to) others. From harmonics to accompanying discreetly to complex bowing methods, these miniatures, which range in length from a minute to perhaps two and a half minutes, cover the gamut of violin technique. Each is named after a friend or colleague of Berio's, or a famous musicion or composer, and each has a distinctly different character and style. They're of varying levels of technical difficulty, so the student need not be a budding Heifetz to play them. Best of all, they are tiny musical masterpieces, complex and densely composed, never pedantic, never patronizing the student performer in any way. They belong in the same pantheon of great pedagogical works where Bartók's Mikrokosmos is to be found.

For this occasion, each of the duets paired a member of the SFS violin section with a member of the San Francisco Symphony Youth Orchestra's violin section. And what a bunch of violinists these young women and men are: poised, musically mature, and technically polished, playing as full and equal partners with the SFS members. I loved them all, and from the rapt and attentive silence in the hall, it's obvious that so did the whole audience. It's impossible to single out particular players when they all played on such a high level, but some of the duets themselves deserve special mention: the unearthly “TATJANA,” played entirely in harmonics; the beautifully lyrical “ALDO;” the hushed and mysterious “PEPPINO;” the wildly virtuosic “LORIN.” To close, all 24 of the violinists (with Music Director Michael Tilson Thomas) joined together for “EDOARDO” and, unsurprisingly, they were as great en masse as they were in duos.

The home team

In between the Berio and the Janácek came the premiere of Thomas's own Island Music for two solo marimba players and four additional percussionists. It was brilliantly played, with Jack Van Geem (the Symphony's principal percussionist) and Nancy Zeltsman taking the two solo marimba parts. Island Music, consisting of an introduction and three parts, invokes the chiming, swirling sounds and repetitive, cyclic rhythmic patterns of the Indonesian gamelan. It starts quietly, with a call-and-response fragment played by the two solo marimbas, and apparently builds many of its larger structures by repeating and transforming small rhythmic and melodic patterns. The program notes describe it as a rondo, but it's difficult to hear that structure over the span of the work.

Island Music opens well and closes strongly. In between, there's some loss of focus and direction; there also isn't quite enough timbral variety to sustain a twenty-minute piece without inducing some aural fatigue in the listener. There's a measure or two right in the middle when one of the percussionists claps a few times; this sounds out of place, to the point where, if my eyes had been closed, I would have thought an audience member had decided to clap along, then thought the better of it. Island Music is an attractive and inviting work; it could be better with some trimming and editing.

Over the last few years, San Francisco Opera audiences have been lucky enough to hear three Janácek operas, all of which left me wondering why he isn't among the most-performed of opera composers. The Glagolitic Mass provides plenty more evidence of Janácek's mastery; it stands with the Verdi Requiem as a great, dramatic religious work by a great composer of opera. It had a bang-up performance Saturday night. Vance George's Symphony Chorus sang with its trademark cohesion, passion, and tonal beauty, handling the Old Church Slavonic text and Janácek�s complex rhythms with aplomb. The Symphony played to its highest standards, and Thomas led the massed forces in a joyous and transcendent performance.

Weighty work

Like Janácek's operas, the Mass is compact and dense. It can't possibly be more than 35 or 40 minutes in length. From the opening fanfare it's instantly identifiable as Janácek and every measure is stamped with his distinctive style. There are the open fourths, fifths, and octaves in the melodies; the vigorous dances; the conversational intensity of the massed cellos. At times, it sounds as though he had taken a few lessons with Stravinsky: some passages could be The Rite of Spring translated into Czech. It is formally a bit odd, opening and closing with an Intrada, and with an organ solo between the Agnus Dei and the final Intrada.

It must also have the oddest apportionment of solos of any work in the repertory. There are long solo parts for the soprano and tenor, and a middling part for the bass, but the alto gets no more than 20 measures of music, and maybe less than that. Still, the Symphony didn't stint, even though there must be chorus altos who could have sung the tiny part: the alto was Jill Grove, a graduate of SFO's Merola program who now has a major career. Bass Tigran Martirossian, who debuted at SFS in 2002's Mlada, sang the bass solos ably and with beautiful tone. Sergej Larin coped decently with the punishing tenor solos, but, really, the part needs a tenor more Helden than he. Tilson Thomas might have helped him out a bit by keeping the full orchestra and chorus down to a mere forte when Larin was trying to be heard.

But it's soprano Measha Brueggergosman, making her local debut, who will live long in memory. She's a big, strikingly beautiful woman (those eyes!) with remarkable stage presence; you couldn't keep your eyes off her between her solos, when all she had to do was sit and listen. When she opened her mouth, what you heard was a warm and ample voice with sufficient edge to cut through the big orchestra; an easy attack even on soft high notes; a firm line in the difficult portamentos of the opening solo in the Sanctus. We can but hope that she'll be back soon, either at the Symphony or at the Opera.

And thus the new year opens at the Symphony: with the kind of imaginative programming that can (and should) inform every last concert in the upcoming months and years.