Triple-Threat Treat

On Friday night, the San Francisco Symphony offered up a unique program as part of its 6.5 series: a chance to observe three of the Symphony’s staff conductors — Benjamin Shwartz, Ragnar Bohlin, and James Gaffigan — conducting back to back. At the start of the evening, Shwartz, the orchestra’s resident conductor and director of the SFS Youth Orchestra, jokingly dubbed the program a “tag team” concert. But while there were many instances of high-level musicmaking over the course of the evening, the team was occasionally on different pages of the playbook. As in all 6.5 series concerts, Friday night's included commentary delivered from the podium, allowing the audience to hear all three conductors speak, as well as see them conduct. Shwartz, who began the program, spoke affably and enlighteningly about the work he was conducting, Mark-Anthony Turnage’s Three Asteroids: The Torino Scale, Juno, Ceres. Starting with general comments on how the piece was commissioned, he moved on to lucid descriptions of the work’s three movements, using the orchestra to provide musical examples. Friday was the United States premiere of Three Asteroids (although the third movement, Ceres, was previously performed by Robert Spano and the Boston Symphony). But it should not be the last time Turnage’s work is performed by the orchestra. Three Asteroids is a welcome addition to the orchestral literature, with engaging cross-rhythms, masterful interweaving lines of orchestration, and a clear overall shape. Unfortunately, though, the Symphony’s performance of the work fell flat. Despite Shwartz’s energetic conducting style, there were many problems of ensemble, especially in the first movement, which features a repeated syncopated figure in the horns and divided cellos. Furthermore, the orchestra seemed to hold back in terms of dynamics, frequently ignoring the many ff and fff markings that can be found throughout the score.

Conductor: 10, Speaker: 3

The second conductor up to bat was Ragnar Bohlin, the Symphony’s chorus director. Bohlin programmed Francis Poulenc’s rarely heard Figure humaine (The face of man), a work scored for two unaccompanied six-part choirs (for a whopping total of 12 independent lines). Unlike Schwartz, Bohlin failed to connect with the audience during his commentary, reading dryly and diffidently off a written text he held in his hands. The contrast between his speech and his conducting could not be greater. Bohlin proceeded to lead Poulenc’s masterpiece entirely from memory and with enormous passion and conviction. The San Francisco Symphony Chorus was in rare form, performing with excellent diction, a wide range of tone color, and exquisite balance. The final work on the program was Bártok’s Suite from The Miraculous Mandarin, which seemed an odd follow-up to the Poulenc. While Figure humaine is an uplifting hymn to liberty in the face of violence and oppression, Bártok’s ballet score is famous for its seamy plot line, a tale of thuggery, eroticism, and murder. The performance was led by James Gaffigan, the Symphony’s associate conductor, who had the audience in stitches with his humorous description of the piece, which he compared to an episode of Law and Order. Gaffigan’s Mandarin was a fast-paced thrill ride, one that emphasized the climactic ending of the work rather than stopping to smell the smut along the way. As in the Turnage, though, it often seemed as if the orchestra was holding back, failing to give all it had in terms of dynamics and energy. A notable exception to this was the clarinet section, led by principal Carey Bell, who performed the prominent solo clarinet part with great finesse.