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SYMPHONY REVIEW
May 8, 2004
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By Eric Valliere
We're lucky in the Bay Area to have an agreeable assortment of regional orchestras (a species dubbed the “Freeway Philharmonic” by the many freelance musicians that belong to most of them), each with its own season, music director, and artistic point of view. Under conductor Jeffrey Kahane, the Santa Rosa Symphony is perhaps the most adventurous, with a season featuring over a dozen 20th-century works and even several premieres. For their final concert of 2003-04 on Saturday, the ensemble balanced two certain crowd-pleasers with a very ambitious mounting of Britten's Spring Symphony.
It's not often we get to hear the Spring Symphony. In 1947 it was the latest in a long and proud tradition of works celebrating the seasons in music. Then as now – as Mr. Kahane pointed out in his comments preceding the performance – it provided a message of hope (spring) after the darkness of a great global conflict (winter). [We might expect to hear more performances in the coming years, as musicians respond to the proliferation of international crises.] With marvelously inventive settings of poetry by Auden, Barnefield, Peele, Blake, and Beaumont & Fletcher, Britten revels in all of spring's delights: schoolboys at play, flowers in bloom, the return of the sun, innocence, love.
Several of the songs are set for soloists. Elissa Johnston had a deliciously clear soprano, agile and winning despite some rhythmic difficulties. Tenor Alan Bennett made an excellent impression, particularly toward the end of “When Will My May Come” when his sweet upper register silenced the fussy audience. Mezzo-Soprano Barbara Rearick had an imposing stage presence and a voluptuous sound; her “Welcome Maids of Honor” was one of the evening's highlights.
Other songs call for various choral groupings including adults and children. Britten's writing for choir is a marvel and a delight, an effortless mix of humor and sublime pathos. Rich a cappella passages alternate with declamatory unison bits. Sadly, the adult choirs here were simply not up to the task. Fifty or so singers from the Sonoma County Bach Choir were joined by about eighty students from Santa Rosa High School. Despite this staggering number of voices (plus the 30 children), the sound was timid and untrained. Not that they hadn't prepared – they clearly knew their parts. But their voices could not balance the polish and depth of the orchestra's professional players. Brahms' rarely performed jewel, Nänie (Op. 82), was equally disappointing. An excellent programming choice – the work contemplates the passing of life through Friedrich Schiller's text, beginning with the line “Even beauty must die.” This is an elegant and mature work, played with calm reflection by the orchestra (although the brass had not warmed up sufficiently to maintain proper tuning). But once more, the contrast between the orchestra's professionalism and the volunteer choir's inexperience was just too great. Kahane (and SFS Choral Director Robert Worth) deserve credit for their ambitious decision to program these works. Mr. Worth is a seasoned conductor who prepared his choirs well under the circumstances. But those circumstances compel further reflection: why do ensembles persist in their desire to mount challenging works for chorus and orchestra with untrained, unpaid singers? With instrumentalists (reportedly some of the best-paid in the Freeway Phil circuit) coming from as far away as the South Bay, why is it necessary to rely on a “community” choir when there are hundreds of trained professionals well within the radius of Santa Rosa? Despite clear hard work and good intentions, the available voices were simply not equipped to do the job required of them. The first movement of the Johann Nepomuk Hummell's 1803 Trumpet Concerto in E-flat Major has all the rhythmic excitement of an ice cube, and soloist Guy Few displayed an appropriately suave coolness, while sacrificing none of his abundant charm. The second movement allowed his expressive gifts to come through a bit more, with long lines and liquid trills. The finale showed Mr. Few and the orchestra – particularly the crystal clear articulations of the strings – at their finest, and earned an extended standing ovation.
(Eric Valliere completed his doctorate in composition from New England Conservatory in Boston, where he was also on the Musicology faculty. Currently, Eric serves as Executive Director for Volti (www.voltisf.org) and the Noe Valley Chamber Music Series (www.nvcm.org), and as Managing Director of the BluePrint Contemporary Music Project (at the SF Conservatory). His critical writings have also appeared on www.classicstoday.com and he is a frequent contributor to www.andante.com.)
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Elissa Johnston
Barbara Rearick
Alan Bennett
Guy Few
