San Francisco Classical Voice

Next came the Bay Area premiere of Jennifer Higdon's blue cathedral, a work comparable to Christopher Rouse's Rapture in terms of theme and immediate popularity with audiences. Both works were written early in 2000 and have made the rounds of many orchestras since. Both are upbeat, tonal and feature accelerated pacing toward a climax, but the Rouse ends at the climax while the Higdon subsides into a more spiritual plane.

Steven Ledbetter's program notes state that blue cathedral has become Jennifer Higdon's "most frequently performed score — and no one who hears it will need to ask why." Just a few of the reasons the work is attractive include its transparent orchestration, melodiousness and concision. Higdon is expert at varying soloistic opportunities among instruments. Only twice does the orchestra lay it on thick in full tutti. Especially memorable is her use of a quartet of two cellos and violas.

Even more memorable are important solo parts for flute and clarinet. In her notes for the recent CD of this work, Higdon reveals that these parts represent herself, a flutist, and her recently deceased brother Andrew Blue, a clarinetist. Higdon writes, "I was pondering a lot of things about the journey we make after death. I was imagining a traveler on a journey through a glass cathedral in the sky (therefore making it a blue color)." So the piece is in general a meditation on the afterlife, general because of the cathedral and sky reference and the fact that "blue" is deliberately not capitalized in the title.

In particular, however, the piece is a leave-taking from a flute to a clarinet, sister and brother. At the work's conclusion, clarinet and flute solos overlap at first, then the flute fades out as the clarinet goes on alone for several bars, all accompanied by the cello-viola quartet. (The very capable flutist and clarinetist were Kathleen Lane Reynolds and Roy Zajac.) Meanwhile most of the rest of the orchestra members begin rolling, one by one, Chinese "exercise" or "reflex" balls, creating an increasing background accompaniment of very gentle tinkles. The rims of eight wine glasses, tuned a fifth apart, mix in the ether — a barely audible glass harmonica component. Finally the clarinet dies away, to sighs from the audience. Magical!

For those not quite ready to transmogrify before intermission, a chance to regress back to traditional 19th-century fare was in the offing. But not the old-hat Tchaikovsky, Brahms or Schumann concertos. Instead, Kahane brought forth the 1886 Piano Concerto No. 2 of Edward MacDowell, a relative novelty in the concert hall, but well known to fans of Van Cliburn's 1962 recording. Soloist Norman Krieger was up to the Lisztian task of bounding up and down the keyboard, whether passionately or jocularly as the score required. Krieger was capable of considerable delicacy and interpretation, and was flawless in execution. The audience was impressed, and not put off by the excellent if unfamiliar melodies thrown up by MacDowell. Wouldn't it be nice if more soloists took up the less warhorsey concertos of the era, also-ran piano concertos like as the Saint-Saens Fourth, the Dvorák, or the Bruch two-piano, and they were considered for future programming?

After intermission came a Shostakovich symphony, but not the Fifth, nor the wannabe-warhorse First, Seventh, Eighth, Tenth or Eleventh. No, it was one of his two Surprise symphonies, the Ninth (the other is the Fifteenth). The surprise was for Stalin, who expected an "apotheosis," a symphony in his honor at the end of the war in 1945. "He would be able to say, ‘There it is, our National Ninth,'" as Shostakovich went on to say, according to Solomon Volkov's "Testimony," "He was deeply offended, because there was no chorus, no soloists. And no apotheosis. There wasn't even a paltry dedication. It was just music, which Stalin didn't understand very well and which was of dubious content."

The content was dubious all right, even subversive, and marvelously portrayed by Kahane and crew. The frenzied opening movement is a gem of militaristic, forced cheeriness punctuated by parodistic "oompah" refrains from the brass. The decadent undertone of the second, a waltz, was well conveyed by Kahane. One could imagine the dancers discovering that their dance floor was really a mass of bodies killed by Stalin and the war. Then another frenzied presto, broken by a grim, totalitarian brass passage that announces the desolate largo of the fourth movement. The conclusion, brassy and manic, brought the audience to their feet. Principal bassoonist Carla Wilson was deservedly lauded for her lengthy solo in the largo.

And the audience, sent home warhorseless, was immensely gratified, proving other horses can be just as good.