San Francisco Classical Voice

In the big suite Brüggen compiled from Rameau's opéra-ballet Les Indes galantes, some things came off brilliantly. The very fast movements (like the paired Tambourins) were exhilarating; and the very slow ones were delicately colored and serene. The pieces with especially striking instrumental colors were also hits — there was some bustle in the audience at the first appearance of the musette (in this case, sort of a small, greenish, junior bagpipe), and a kind of general perking-up on the few occasions the piccolos got a note in.

It was everything in the middle that didn't quite work. Half the time, the joy of Rameau's dance pieces is in seeing him figuratively toss a ball up at the beginning of a measure, and knowing that it's bound to come back down next downbeat somehow, but not knowing the trajectory until the music shows it to you. The Symphony players simply aren't accustomed to thinking about meter like that. And the strings' few attempts at notes inégales were just sad, not because they weren't trying, but because they were. Done conscientiously, inegalité sounds stilted. Done half-unconsciously, just as "what you do" with a particular sort of figuration, it's a physical gesture almost as natural as breathing.

Brüggen has a distinguished past (and indeed a distinguished present, with his Orchestra of the 18th Century) conducting Rameau's orchestral dances, and he seemed to have worked hard with the Symphony ensemble. All the same, I wished someone else had led this program. A conductor with a more kinetic, gestural physical style (yes, I am thinking of Nic McGegan) might have gotten more out of the Symphony players; Brüggen's gesturally prosaic beat did little to enliven the music. And that's too bad, because Rameau is in some ways about the best possible Baroque music for a modern symphony orchestra to take on — colorful, witty, richly orchestrated, brilliant. It would be a shame if a slightly "off" performance dissuaded the Symphony (or other orchestras) from repeating the experiment.

The first half found the Symphony on firmer ground, but the results were also mixed. Fauré's Masques et bergamasques suite (the incidental music, minus the vocal numbers) was nicely done, with some beautifully blended and tuned playing from the woodwinds in particular, though there was some oddly messy articulation from the strings — I would never have imagined that this orchestra's violins would have trouble playing the third beats in the Menuet together. (Can it have been because of Brüggen's antiphonal seating of the violins? Maybe.) Brüggen added the familiar Pavane as a closer to the suite. The delicate parts of it were lovely, but the sudden unison string interruptions in the middle were underplayed, even given the small size of the section; it was as though someone was afraid of making too much noise.

And Poulenc's 1949 Piano Concerto suffered even more from the deliberately reduced scale. The piece was written for the composer to play with the Boston Symphony, and a string band of 10/10/8/6/4 is just wrong for it. So much of the writing demands a big, sonorous string section — one that can play voluptuously in forte and ethereally in pianissimo and can stand up to the brass (two trumpets, four horns, three trombones and tuba!) without shouting. The Symphony, of course, has just such a section, but unfortunately half of it was missing.

The strings that were there did try, but their quiet playing didn't have the delicacy that a bigger section could bring, their loud playing was uncharacteristically strident, and some of the higher passages in the first violin part didn't invite strict scrutiny. (The end of the first movement comes to mind.) Soloist Jean-Philippe Collard coped as best he could from his post in the middle of the orchestra, like a continuo harpsichordist (what does Brüggen think this is, a second Concert champêtre?), infusing power and wit, but the result was still a bit of a mess. Once again, a missed opportunity.