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New and Old Novelty In Worthy SF Symphony Concert

Jeff Dunn on October 12, 2013
Supersinger Luna leaps tall F sharps
Supersinger Luna leaps tall F-sharps

Unfamiliarity is not usually an important component of a good time in classical music. Two of the three works on Thursday’s San Francisco Symphony program were new to most people. One was new (2004), the other old (1843). Neither received the reception it deserved, especially considering the outstanding singing that accompanied each. The third, a comfy classic, fared better with the audience despite a less-than-stellar rendition. So it goes.

The newest part of the program concluded the first half, scenes from Thomas Adés’ Shakespearean opera The Tempest. It received lukewarm applause at best, and comments from the many patrons I interviewed at intermission like “Why don’t we ever get a melody,” “A parody of opera,” “Like NFL football,” “All recitative,” “My ears hurt,” and “Unreal.”

These reactions are not the typical “I hate Modern Music” complaint. People are used to the old Modernist clichés, like them or not. Adés’ music is more deeply unsettling; nearly in the revolutionary manner that must have stunned audiences that first heard Berlioz, Wagner, or Stravinsky. The foremost innovation smacking listeners in Tempest is the part for Ariel, stratospherically conveyed by the remarkable Oregonian coloratura Audrey Luna on 17 high Es and even F-sharps, six half-steps above the usual top high note for sopranos, a high C.

Pablo Heras Casado

 Luna’s rendition was most visceral in Adés’ setting and librettist Meredith Oakes’ effective rewrite of “Full fathom Five” (“Five fathoms deep”—wisely, she didn’t write “30 feet down”), with its seven or more astonishing leaps and a curlicue on the word “strange.” Rod Gilfry’s rich baritone and stern demeanor created a memorable Prospero. Audience perception to the contrary, tenor Alek Shrader and mezzo Isabel Leonard delivered heartbreaking melodiousness as Ferdinand and Miranda. Subtle and ingenious orchestration accompanied but never overpowered the singers.

The overall effect was not a reverent do-again of an old play. it was the shipwrecking of the listener on another planet altogether where all expectations are left at the wayside—exactly what Shakespeare had in mind for his audience, who had heard of fantastic discoveries from imaginative chroniclers of the New World.

After intermission, the impact of new and old was doubly resonant in a performance of Felix Mendelssohn’s cantata Die erste Walpurgisnacht. This was a setting of a Goethe ballad about supposed Druids in the Harz Mountains scaring away Christians spying on their pre-Mayday rituals by rattling sticks, waving torches, and screeching like owls. This was just a temporary setback for Christianity, for, as Goethe put it, “… it must continually recur that an ancient, tried, established, and tranquilizing order of things will be forced aside … by rising innovations.” The shock of the new eventually becomes the opiate of the old.

The shock of the new eventually becomes the opiate of the old.

But here was the first Symphony subscription-concert performance of a highly theatrical, rarely heard Mendelssohn work. It was new to my ears, and pleasurably so, with plenty of storm music, whistling piccolos, a bass drum, and superbly articulate chorus and soloists. But think how it must have sounded to its first listeners. Possibly electrifying, possibly offensive to religious zealots, scary. To modern ears acquainted with Berlioz, Wagner and Berg, it was smilingly quaint, with formal and melodic defects therefore more to the fore. But it was “new,” and a welcome change of pace from greater yet overplayed works like the composer’s Violin Concerto. Especially impressive was the terrific singing and diction by Ragnar Bohlin’s Symphony Chorus, Gilfry, Shrader, and mezzo Charlotte Hellekant. All put heart and soul into their work.

The evening began with Mendelssohn’s Suite from A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Bernard Shaw wrote in 1892: “One can actually feel the novelty now, after 66 years.” The same can apply to this “old” piece today after 121, with the light and magical opening of the Overture. But a spell has to be cast with the first three notes of the flutes. This didn’t happen when the first and second flutes failed to coordinate their entrance. The rest of the suite, competently performed, sounded old hat.

The guest conductor was Pablo Heras-Casado. He is an energetic arm-waver with a permanent smile who is particularly effective at articulating accents in the music before him while eliciting well-paced results from the players. Before his style becomes too tranquilizing in the Goethean sense from my side of the auditorium, however, I’d like to see him increase his repertoire of gestures and their range of pacing. He is to be congratulated for a well-executed, mostly fascinating program.