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SYMPHONY REVIEW
September 22, 2004
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By Lisa Hirsch
Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring and The Firebird aren't obvious companion pieces to Tchaikovsky's Second Symphony, “Little Russian,” but the San Francisco Symphony brought them together last Wednesday under music director Michael Tilson Thomas.
The SFS has, of course, had a long association with the works of Igor Stravinsky. Former music director Pierre Monteux famously conducted the riotous premier of Le Sacre du Printemps in 1913 then introduced the work to San Francisco in 1939. The orchestra has made numerous recordings of the composer's music, under several music directors. The juxtaposition of the two Stravinsky works with the Tchaikovsky was illuminating, bringing to the fore just how Russian a composer Stravinsky was, however often he denied this. The program notes pointed out one direct connection between the Tchaikovsky and Stravinsky: the “Little Russian” was the only large-scale work by another composer that Stravinsky conducted. More interestingly (and not mentioned in the program), there's a marked resemblance between the jaunty main theme of the “Little Russian” last movement, a folk tune called “The Crane,” and the noble horn melody heard at the close of The Firebird.
On the other hand, despite consisting largely of fast movements, by comparison with the Stravinsky pieces the “Little Russian” sometimes sounds meandering. The first movement isn't the most shapely or well-organized Tchaikovsky ever wrote. And why does he hammer for so long at the end of the last movement before finally bringing the piece to a close? The variations on “The Crane” just barely sound like variations and the second theme of the last movement sounds more like a café tune than a symphonic melody.
Perhaps some of the problem lay in how Thomas and the Symphony changed, or didn't change, styles between the opening Firebird and the Tchaikovsky. The Stravinsky was brilliantly played with snapping precision, from the crackling first measures of “King Kashchei's Infernal Dance” to the closing horn solo, gorgeously played by acting principal horn Robert Ward. Then came a veritable game of musical chairs to reduce the immense Stravinsky orchestra to the right size for the Tchakovsky. Despite the smaller and infinitely less colorful orchestra, the “Little Russian” was much of a piece with the Stravinsky: crisply played, with hardly any rubato, when perhaps it needed more Romantic warmth and expansiveness. The Rite of Spring took up the entire second half of the program and got off to a slightly rocky start. The audience took too long to quiet down; there was much rustling, and just as Thomas gave the downbeat for the treacherous opening bassoon solo, a chair in the audience creaked rather loudly. Undoubtedly, there was also some distraction from the cameras all over the stage (and the terrace!), filming an installment of the “Keeping Score” television series. Uncharacteristically, and perhaps for the cameras, Thomas conducted the entire bassoon solo; at past performances I've seen of The Rite, he has given the downbeat, then let the solo bassoonist play freely while cueing the horn and clarinet entries that follow. The performance that followed was played and conducted well, but not quite up to the best of the recent Thomas/SFS Rites. The standard of precision slipped a bit from the first half of the concert and the work didn't flow quite as organically and inevitably as it does in the greatest performances. Still, when a work of such complexity and endless inventiveness is played at this level, there will always be much to admire and to delight in. A consistent miracle is the skill of the winds and brass (19 of each in the huge orchestra, versus eleven each in The Firebird). They play and breathe together as one, and you can hear the special sonority of each individual instrument in the most densely-constructed chords. They leave you wondering just how Stravinsky managed to hear some of the sounds he wrote down. Where did that fantastic wave of wind and brass entries near the beginning of Part I come from? Or the immense and shocking silence near the end? Well – perhaps Thomas will have the answers to these questions, and more, in “Keeping Score.” And the show will present a welcome opportunity to revisit last week's concert.
(Lisa Hirsch, a technical writer, studied music at Brandeis and SUNY/Stony Brook.)
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