Pictures at a Concert

Images filled my head, thanks to the provocative content and sterling performances that characterized Friday's San Francisco Symphony concert. It began with Aaron Copland's extract of music for the 1940 film Our Town, based on Thornton Wilder's famous play about the timeless verities of small-town life in "Grover's Corners" (actually, Peterborough), New Hampshire. Writing in a spare, consonant, understated, and simplistic style more in the manner of Virgil Thomson than any of his other works, Copland crafted a score perfectly suited to the film's images. Without them, however, I wonder whether the music is substantial enough to stand alone as a concert work. Music Director Michael Tilson Thomas must emphatically think so, for he's programmed it no fewer than three times since 1999. Compare this choice to that of the concert-concluding warhorse, Brahms' Symphony No. 1, which MTT has programmed only twice since then. The Copland is certainly easy to play as a quick filler, and made a good contrast to the killer second piece on the program, Alban Berg's Three Pieces for Orchestra, Op. 6. Moreover, the insubstantiality of the Our Town music was made into something greater than it deserves by a superb rendition by the orchestra: The strings were marvelously in sync and in one voice, making Copland's ambient quasi-melodies all the more gossamer. Only one player's error in hitting an instrument with his or her bow marred my image of Peterborough, with its symbolic inhabitants floating overhead in an Avalonic mist.

Then, with a deep breath, MTT pulled out a microphone and spoke to the audience at length about how the next work, Berg's Three Pieces, "challenges the perceptions and feelings and remains as amazing and overwhelming as when it was first written [at the outbreak of World War I]." He went on to remark that "It scares us that we now understand what they mean [that the feelings and perceptions foretold, presumably, the horrors to come, up to at least 1945]." More and more becoming the master educator like his mentor Leonard Bernstein, Thomas went on to describe the three movements in some detail. I particularly liked how he attributed to the snippets of melody in the first a "cunning, aimless quality such as you might sing to yourself while doing something else," then sang an example, to audience chuckles. But if MTT truly wants to ascend to Bernstein's level, almost substituting for the Inside Music preconcert talks or the Symphony's Friday 6.5 concept, he should follow Marin Alsop's example at the Cabrillo Festival and have the orchestra play brief excerpts. This would have been especially helpful in the Berg set, where myriad motives flash by, at times like swarms of locusts. Knowing just one of them might have triggered a start for further inquiry for some audience members. As it was, though, the listeners had to like or lump the ultraconcise, atonal barrage of powerful sounds and meticulous organization that Berg concocted to please the unrequited dedicatee of the pieces, Arnold Schoenberg. Those who have studied the music in score have found fascinating interrelationships. Some gluttons for aural punishment, like me, have enjoyed it at first hearing and find that the music rewards repeated hearings. But despite a stupendous performance by the orchestra — this was obviously a labor of love by the music director — the audience jury was out: reasonably loud applause, a couple of cheers, but no standing ovation of any kind. The result for some must have been, as I overheard two separate audience members exclaim during intermission, "The introduction was better than the music."

In the Round

Difficult works need more attention, not only in preparation, which was achieved in spades, but also to the patrons. Even Michael Steinberg's program notes, excellent as they were, did not translate the meaning of Reigen, the second movement. It means "round dance," and according to some scholars seems to have been structurally inspired by Arthur Schnitzler's banned-as-immoral play of the same name, in which 10 couples meet for coitus in 10 scenes in AB-BC-CD ... HI-IJ-JA pairings, thus bringing the argument around full circle. As far as I was concerned, the fascinating, mindboggling complexity of the work forcefully reminded me of a mosaic constructed as part of one of Europe's ugliest art museums, the Kunst Palast in Düsseldorf.

After intermission, the energy and power of the Berg performance hadn't left MTT. He began Brahms' First Symphony the instant he arrived on the podium, before the audience had settled down, and raced through the first movement as if the composer knew, too, that war was coming and hightailed it out of town. Conducting without score, MTT was a dynamo on the platform, and particularly mindful of articulating sudden crescendos and decrescendos. At one point in the first movement, he was swinging the baton with two hands as if it were a Jedi lightsaber. The result, since the orchestra followed along flawlessly, was one of the more stimulating performances of the movement I've ever heard. The second and third movements, however, thrive on a bit more careful gentility, which seemed to be somewhat lacking. The energy came back again rather successfully for the finale. I would have preferred a more luxuriant tempo for the great string theme that quotes part of Beethoven's "Ode to Joy." Fortunately, MTT did slow down the race car for the final statement of the brass chorale in the coda, adding to the pleasure of the final zip to the conclusion. The audience responded with hoots and a fair standing ovation for a Berg-inspired job well done.