San Francisco Classical Voice

Getty's music has its audible ancestors. One may be the Canadian composer Harry Somers (1925-1999), whose Maritime and Newfoundland folksong arrangements bear similar rocking pulse, syllabic settings, and devotional aspects.

Poe's “Annabel Lee” has been set by many composers. In Getty's hand, written for large orchestra and male chorus in two to six parts, it becomes a work of tender remorse and heartbroken dread. It was what Poe might have done, were he musically inclined. This is a music of simple means and direct purpose. It succeeds.

Getty's song cycle, Young America, is a more substantial enterprise. It is a group of four poems written by Getty himself, interrupted by an orchestral “War Interlude,” and concluding with a short poem by Stephen Vincent Benét. “Hark the Homeland,” full of rolling polymeter, creates a menu of place-names and uneasy drama. “Heather Mary” is a dialogue between women and men, employing more polymeter, a gratifying timbral sense in the orchestra, and typically gorgeous sound from Julie Giacobassi on cor anglais.

“My Uncle's House” is playful and rich with accent. The “War Interlude” was admirably driven by solo violinist Nadya Tichman, and led into the “Daughter of Asheville.” Here, Getty posed a challenging and disorienting series of chords, making it hard for the vocal basses to find their starting pitch D. They triumphed, and so set up the waltz which is central to this song. The cycle ends with Benét's eerie vignette, “When Daniel Boone Goes Out at Night.” It was masterfully comprehended and darkened by Getty.

Alexander Barantschik is an elegant player, cool but never distant. His performance of Mozart's Violin Concerto No. 3, in G was impeccable. Its rhythms were exacting, his pitch unerring, and his bow arm a marvel of economy. In every regard but one, this was an exemplary event. The one? Daring. Because he has such complete control of his resources, Barantschik does not need to take risks, and so the gleeful and improvisational nature of this music was lessened. Only in its three cadenzas did he, excitingly, step closer to the edge.

The final work on the program, Sibelius' Fifth symphony, was the grandest and most expansive display of northern lights that could be wished for. Strings played with high energy, winds with clean articulation and embracing rubato, and brass with the warm bloom of sound for which they are becoming so well-regarded.

Tilson Thomas made a clear and distinguishing aesthetic choice, and it governed and defined his sound. It is a particularly American aesthetic. Conductor Robert Kajanus (1856-1933) always used to force a choice here. He served Sibelius much as Mravinsky served Shostakovich, making early decisions about texture, tempo, and agenda which stuck. Kajanus' recording of June 1932 tells us that he looked for an asperity, an emotional austerity in this music.Quoting Sibelius, he knew that this symphony's details must "swim in the sauce".

This was not the way Tilson Thomas found. Rather, he searched for compelling detail. Folk phrases were given special emphasis, the rhythmic attacks a special startle, and the beginnings of the “Swan” theme in the low strings were granted almost tidal weight. It was majestic stuff.

Finns themselves seem to hear this music differently. The current standard-bearer, Paavo Berglund, emphasizes a homogeneity, a mantle of sound which grants no special place to any special part. Conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen, now in Los Angeles, has described his relationship to Sibelius as being like that of "a Bedouin's relationship with sand." There is a presumed authenticity in all of those readings. The power of Tilson Thomas' version lay in his disciplined determination to make detail fly well above the sauce, and to make it convincing.

Unfortunately, its last seconds were wrecked. The final movement ends with six staggering chords, separated oddly in time, propelled remorselessly by cadence. Tilson Thomas, at the first of these explosions, held his hand steady in the air, signaling that it was not over. Even so, one bozo started clapping in the silence. Tilson Thomas swirled round and shot the dirtiest look imaginable. His reward? Numerous members of the audience started laughing. A disgrace.