Proving the Pleasure Principle

The San Francisco Symphony gave its audience an evening of pastoral pleasures Thursday at Davies Symphony Hall. The splendor wasn't limited to Beethoven's Symphony No. 6 in F Major, "Pastoral," though Music Director Michael Tilson Thomas revived the beloved score in a reading that was remarkably rich in sensuous allure. Yet each additional work on the program — Samuel Barber's Knoxville: Summer of 1915, with soprano Erin Wall as soloist, and Haydn's Symphony No. 60 in C Major, "Il distratto" — exerted its own charm. Taken as a whole, it made for a resplendent feast. Tilson Thomas, midway between the cerebral Bernstein works the orchestra played here as well as on its recent New York tour and the daunting performances of Mahler's massive Symphony No. 8 that he will conduct later this week, was in fine form for this program, which seemed built on the principle that even the most rustic music can yield a transcendent experience. Put to the test at Thursday's performance (the first of four in Davies Hall), it proved to be an excellent hypothesis. For many, this program may linger in the memory as one of the unexpected triumphs of the season. The evening's gorgeous centerpiece was Knoxville: Summer of 1915. Barber poured some of his most intimate, affecting, and undeniably sensual music into this setting of James Agee's texts, which recall a warm summer night from the poet's Tennessee youth. The texts are redolent of sense memories: the rasp of locusts, the fragrance of vanilla and strawberry, the rough feel of grass under quilts on the lawn, the "hollow iron music" of a horse and buggy going by. Tilson Thomas, who last conducted the work here a decade ago, returned to it Thursday with a beautifully nuanced performance; under his direction, the orchestra created a gently enveloping atmosphere. Erin Wall was an ideal soloist. The soprano has a large, luxuriant, velvet-tipped voice, and she communicated the heat and wonder of the texts with exquisite poise. Wall, by the way, will be back on the Davies stage this week, joining Tilson Thomas and the orchestra in performances of Mahler's Symphony No. 8. Of course, Tilson Thomas has achieved exciting results with Beethoven's "Pastoral" Symphony in past seasons. Yet this program found him approaching it with uncommon tenderness. Where past performances emphasized the work's architectural design, here he appeared intent on immersing himself, and his audience, in the score's sensuous pleasures. The first movement unfolded at a leisurely pace, with the conductor savoring each measure. Listeners could almost see a breeze ruffling the leafy trees. The "Scene by the Brook" poured forth in a honeyed flow, with the strings sounding buoyant and the woodwinds voicing with sublime distinction. Tilson Thomas gave the bumptious music of the country dance a deliriously lighthearted pace, and limned the fourth movement thunderstorm with thrilling precision; everything in this episode — the tremolo in the low strings, the blazing trombones — came across with wonderful fervency. The finale was wistful and lovely.

Woodwinds a Standout

Throughout, Tilson Thomas elicited the best from the ensemble. The burnished sound of the violins, the low strings' woodsy effusions, the bright-toned brass, were all superb. Still, it was the playing by the woodwinds that set this performance apart, with outstanding contributions from principal flutist Timothy Day, clarinetist Carey Bell, oboist William Bennett, and bassoonist Stephen Paulson leading the way. If Haydn's Symphony No. 60 didn't quite approach the brilliance of the Beethoven, it nonetheless had much to recommend it. Subtitled "Il distratto" (The absent-minded man), the work was doubtless new to many in the audience (the San Francisco Symphony hadn't performed it since 1993). Its structure practically qualifies it as a novelty piece. Cast in six movements, the score is cobbled together from a collection of incidental music composed for a theatrical production of Der Zerstreute (a German play based on the 17th-century French comedy Le Distrait, by Jean-François Régnard). The score brims with humor and contains rustic trios, a feverish Presto, a swaggering fanfare for horns, and a laugh-out-loud gag in the finale, in which Haydn instructs the violinists to abruptly stop playing and tune up. Tilson Thomas emphasized the score's shifts in a charming performance, one that was just as witty and characterful as its title suggests.