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Reviews
OPERA
Other Worlds
By Tom Grey
San Francisco Opera
Der fliegende Holländer
(11/10/04)
CONTEMPORARY MUSIC
Mixed Results
EARLY MUSIC
Monteverdiana
RECITAL
Not Quite There
RECITAL
Lang Lang — Take Him or Leave Him?
CONTEMPORARY MUSIC
Broad Span
MUSIC NEWS
Runnicles: 'Five More Years'
QUESTION OF THE WEEK
Responses to Our 11/9/04 Question of the Week
By Jules Langert
Earplay
(11/9/04)
By Michelle Dulak Thomson
Magnificat
(11/14/04)
By Stephanie Friedman
Michael Schade
Malcolm Martineau
(11/14/04)
By William Wellborn
Lang Lang
(11/13/04)
By Miguel Galperin
Sacramento New American Music Festival
(11/9-10/04)
By Janos Gereben
Robert Commanday, Senior Editor
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The San Francisco Symphony returns from its latest overseas tour this week. You didn't know? Care? Does anyone? This one took the orchestra to Spain, Italy and Greece, countries where the visit of a great symphony is probably more welcome, or at least less usual and less redundant, to home ensembles than those on its normal itineraries: England, France, Germany, Austria.
It's not at all clear what the home team gets for the very large outlay, $1 or 2 million or something between. The answers given by executive director Brent Assink in the newspaper's November 3 send-off puff piece were time-honored, but they hardly added up. "Touring helps our orchestra develop an ensemble." Excuse me; at the current high performance level, that hardly washes. Fifteen years ago, yes.
"Touring also helps us recruit new orchestra members." That's a good one. The orchestra has something between four to six openings a year, receives hundreds of applications for each, and — no wonder — has its pick of the best. The pay is tops, in line with the country's other leading and biggest-budget orchestras. Add in job security, given the SF Symphony Association's financially secure situation, regularly in the black and having a remarkable endowment. Add in, too, the great place to live, and it wouldn't seem that recruiting was even an issue, except in going after a particular individual musician, which, as it is for athletes, is a simple matter of money.
Touring in order to combat "biased notions in Europe about California," its "shallow view of culture," is another "What's that again?" Notions about California as compared to where else — and so what? "Someone who hears us in Madrid will be encouraged to get the recordings" (after hearing the orchestra live). Times have changed. The recordings — produced in this case by the symphony itself, not by, say, Deutsche Grammophon — are not marketed heavily and distributed widely, as in the old days. The Madrid sales might be in the low hundreds, if that. It's a long time since record sales and the prestige and income associated with it were a big deal and major reason for touring.
A better case might be made that the demonstration of such artistry and the visit of such fine people as our musicians might help soften the widespread current anger against the United States. That cause could be furthered if it were set up for our visiting players to give master classes, work with local students and young professionals, let them sit in during part of a rehearsal. Nothing like that has been mentioned. One other thing: how do the players themselves feel about foreign touring? Those with whom I have spoken find it very tiring; some try to get out of it.
My own view, based on 40 years' observation, including several trips made either with the orchestra or alongside, reviewing representative performances abroad, is that in 2004, the activity is dated, much less productive, if anything more expensive. It's the traditional or conventional thing for a major orchestra to do. Even this latest tour's repertory was as conventional as it gets, with the sole exception of Copland's Orchestral Variations and perhaps Robin Holloway's SFS-commissioned orchestration of Debussy's En blanc et noir: Rachmaninoff's Second Piano Concerto, Sibelius' Second Symphony, Tchaikovsky's Romeo and Juliet, Debussy's La Mer and, instead of a major American work, Shostakovich's Ninth Symphony.
Traditional or conventional is what the San Francisco Symphony is about, not only in the admirable sense of preserving a great and essential institution and its irreplaceable contribution to life here, but in the static, unprogressive approach to its role. Where that hurts is in its programming.
Other areas of the Symphony's activities are admirable, even forward-looking: the large education program, with its outreach to the City's schools; the Youth Symphony; the pre-concert lectures and other audience preparation measures; the support of the San Francisco Symphony musicians' Sunday afternoon Chamber Music Series; the Great Performers' Series (though limited to celebrity artists), and in recent years, the Symphony's CD recording projects. That's grand, but the musical offering is what counts first and foremost, and the San Francisco Symphony's programming, Michael Tilson Thomas' and the Marketing Department's programming, is about as conventional as it gets anywhere. Nor is it particularly imaginative in contrast and in the grouping of works on particular programs.
This is not an argument per se for new pieces, more American works, and more than a couple of representations by distinguished composers resident in the area — although a reasonable amount of that would be welcome, important, honorable. Indeed, a little of that would go a ways to support Tilson Thomas' unjustified reputation as an advocate of music of our time, and would make the San Francisco Symphony a more honest representative of our culture. No, this is simply the expression of a hope that this distinguished institution might in the near future begin exercising the creative imagination that is assumed to be part of its artistic role. Right now, the imagination in regards programming is somewhere between dormant and bankrupt.
This can only come from the professional leadership. The 97 members of the Board of Governors cannot be expected to be involved in or even be critically aware of the quality of what is essentially an artistic expression. Programming is certainly that. They must feel, as perhaps do many of our readers, that everything must be fine because things are going so well for the Symphony. Ticket and subscription sales are great, possibly unmatched in the "industry"; the houses are full, the budget is balanced, God's in his heaven and all's right with the world. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. In comparison with most, if not all of its peers, many of them struggling financially and with contract negotiations, the SF Symphony is at the top of the heap.
That, however, isn't how artistic performance and leadership is measured. There is absolutely no reason to believe that if the programs were better planned — again, not necessarily including a significant number of "New" works or other pieces that might seem off-putting to the casual concert-goer, just more interesting — the box office would be affected negatively at all. The "casual concert-goer" might not even notice the difference, that anything had changed, until experiencing it.
This would entail not only more stimulating choices of works and better design of programs but also an improvement in the guest conductors, two or three more who are truly distinguished. Enough with an Itzhak Perlman as conductor, and Herbert Blomstedt with his tired repertory and never anything else.
It is reasonable to believe, however, that some of these 97 trustees, many of whom I know and respect, would be able to question the wisdom of such an expensive visit to Madrid, Pamplona, Zaragossa, Barcelona, Turin, Athens (Nov. 4-13), and wonder if a similar effort or resources might better be spent in another direction. If touring is a good idea, what about the California communities; what about inspiring the young people in Sacramento, Modesto, Fresno, Bakersfield, Santa Barbara, San Luis Obispo? Or communities elsewhere — Eugene, Corvallis, Tacoma, Spokane, Helena, Idaho Falls. It is not all private money that's being received and spent. There's considerable Symphony income that comes from NEA grants, from foundations, almost $1 million from the San Francisco Hotel Tax. The members of the Board of Governors, it should be remembered, are trustees.
It is their responsibility, as it is ours, to press, question and variously engage the symphony that this great institution surpass its current achievements and aspire to the best realization of its grand potential.
(Robert P. Commanday, senior editor of San Francisco Classical Voice, was the music critic of The San Francisco Chronicle, 1965-93, and before that a conductor and lecturer at the University of California, Berkeley.)
©2004 Robert Commanday, all rights reserved
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From September 1, 1998 to November 16, 2004, we have published, in addition to the Music News, feature pieces and weekly editorials, 1947 reviews of Bay Area performances by: 50 symphony orchestras (410 reviews), 83 chamber groups (230), 33 new music ensembles and programs (210), 37 opera companies (264), 26 choral groups (123), 15 music festivals (85), 32 early music ensembles (147), 21 chamber orchestras (85), 6 musical theater groups (14), world music (14), recitals (343), youth music (10), other (12).
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