San Francisco Classical Voice

Michael Tilson Thomas

Marked by extraordinary performances and programming with a point, the first large-ensemble program of the San Francisco Symphony's Stravinsky Festival showed the Symphony, Chorus, and maestro Michael Tilson Thomas at their very best. It left many listeners, including this one, stunned with the awareness that we had heard a rare evening of magical music-making.

The concerts of June 11 and 12 (this writer attended the second performance) focused on music of "Stravinsky's Russia." Each of the program's four works program had a clear connection with the composer's heritage. Stravinsky himself arranged the text of two of the pieces. Reynard forms a burlesque created from Russian folk tales, and The Wedding (Les Noces) is based on Russian wedding songs. King of the Stars (Zvezdoliki) is on a text by the Russian symbolist poet Konstantin Balmont. The Rite of Spring bears Stravinsky's subtitle, "Pictures from pagan Russia..." And because these works were composed between 1911 and 1917 (the orchestration of The Wedding was not completed until 1923), we were offered a glimpse of Stravinsky's musical as well as literary thinking from this concentrated period.

Reynard is a ballet for four singers and a mixed ensemble of 17 players. The text was sung in a good (but uncredited) English translation, bringing the humor directly to the audience. The singers made a valiant effort to enunciate the text, and it was understandable at the most crucial moments. Tenors Clifton Forbis and Richard Clement and basses Grant Youngblood and Brian Jauhiainen sang with grace and humor, and the instrumental ensemble played with a bright tone and crisp articulation, making references to Stravinsky's soon-to-come neo-classical period. This seldom-heard work was a perfect, light-hearted concert-opener.

The text for Reynard was found as the composer was collecting material for The Wedding. A dance work scored for the unusual ensemble of chorus with four pianos, timpani, and percussion, The Wedding never fails to make a dazzling impression. Yet this performance was extraordinary in the scope of expression produced by the Symphony Chorus and the range of colors produced by the vocal soloists, Susan Narucki, Jennifer Lane, Kevin Short, and Clifton Forbis. Lane's beautiful, dark alto voice was in perfect contrast to Narucki's bright soprano. Forbis's articulation was especially clear, and Short brought humor with his series of high Fs in falsetto. The variety of text-setting techniques (including spoken word), together with the vast palette of sounds created by what at first would seem to be a timbrally limited ensemble, make this an astounding work that I wish could be heard more often.

The program's second half opened with one of Stravinsky's lesser-known works, King of the Stars. Tilson Thomas has long been an advocate of this piece, and his LP recording with the Boston Symphony has an important place in my library. This six-minute work gave the men of the Symphony Chorus another chance to shine, and they performed with magnificent tone and flexible phrasing. That Stravinsky dedicated this score to Debussy is almost redundant as so much of Debussy's sense of tonality and color is heard throughout. The score also contains bits of polymodal and polytonal chords that were to develop in a different way in the great ballets, including the last work on the program, The Rite of Spring.

The performance of this 1913 masterpiece was as clear and as well directed as Stravinsky could have hoped for. The orchestra played flawlessly, as Tilson Thomas let individual lines shine through in some parts and molded vast conglomerations of sounds in others. One of the only criticisms heard about The Rite is that it often takes on the form of an old-fashioned newsreel, with one idea following the next with little connection between them. But by carefully relating tempi between sections and by allowing particular strands of counterpoint to emerge, Tilson Thomas showed absolutely that the connections are there, waiting to be revealed. The performance brought the cheering audience to its feet in a well-deserved ovation.

(Ronald Caltabiano is a composer living in San Francisco and teaching at San Francisco State University.)

©1999 Ronald Caltabiano, all rights reserved