Pleasure Pearls on Mighty Oaks(sm).jpg

Oak-and-Pearl Night at the San Francisco Symphony

Jeff Dunn on March 7, 2011

In a masterpiece of programming contrasts, Music Director Michael Tilson Thomas dangled multiple pearly pleasures on two mighty compositional oaks, one for each half of Saturday’s concert. The San Francisco Symphony, mezzo-soprano Anne Sofie von Otter, and the maestro himself all contributed to that special kind of concert that seemed to please everyone immensely without generating standing ovations by means of virtuosic displays or riding Tchaikovskian emotional roller coasters.

Anne Sofie von Otter

The first oak was the German composer Paul Hindemith’s Concert Music for String Orchestra and Brass. This is a powerful work, stark in its deliberately limited but vastly contrasting set of tone colors, and stalwart in its direct expression, tautness of form, and steel mesh of irrefutable counterpoint. Formerly considered one of the exemplary works of the 20th century, it has fallen out of fashion, along with its composer. (The piece was last played by the Symphony 20 years ago.) Hats off, then, to MTT and Inside Music lecturer Peter Grunberg for passionately communicating the import of this music to the concert and preconcert audiences.

Turning an Audience Around

Grunberg, with recorded excerpts, brilliant pianism, and, most of all, colorful language, entranced the lecture attendees. He referred to Hindemith’s “striving around the interval of the 7th,” the “volcanic chords in the brass,” the “football kick” of a lick in the second movement, a passage “as if a ghost had come to the door,” and so on. In the concert itself, MTT impressed me deeply with the progress he has made with his audience addresses, undoubtedly a result of the educational DVDs he’s been producing: Unlike earlier efforts some five to seven years ago, they were carefully prepared while still sounding spontaneous, colorful, and, most of all, memorable.

Many patrons I spoke with during intermission told me how the signposts he provided enhanced their appreciation of music they were preinclined to dislike because of its modernism. What struck home to most of those I talked to was not just MTT’s mention of the “shadow of the times” (1930) that lay over the work, and not that Leonard Bernstein had told him he himself wished that he had written it; rather, it was how MTT explained the importance of the idea of unisons in the composition, plus his plain enthusiasm. “Wow!” he exclaimed from the podium; “it’s spectacular!”

Need I add that the orchestra was every bit as inspired as MTT, responding with a flawless performance, and with a tour-de-force contribution from the brass section?

Scandinavian Pearls

Pleasure pearls on mighty oaks

Next came the first string of pearls: a series of exquisite songs, which von Otter (who is Swedish) brought sensitively to life. One composer each from Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finland was represented. In contrast with the abstract, massive formidability of the Hindemith, these were brief, mostly Impressionist-infused love songs, only one of which is generally famous in America: Edvard Grieg’s Jeg elsker Dig! (Ich Liebe Dich, I love you). The orchestration of three Jean Sibelius songs (Kaiutar, Demanten på marssnön, and Var det en dröm) was especially original and delicate. Unlike the other songs on the program, these were from the composer’s more compositionally experienced years. Nevertheless, Wilhelm Stenhammar’s Flickan knyter i Johnannenatten, Carl Nielsen’s Genrebillede, and Grieg’s later En Svane were equally attractive, if not quite as sophisticated.

Generously, von Otter injected some humor into the nostalgic atmosphere with an encore, Wilhelm Peterson-Berger’s sprightly Aspåkerspolska.

After intermission arrived the second pearly oak, this time all in one piece: Brahms’ Serenade No. 1. In terms of weight, his is essentially a one-movement symphony with a pendant six-movement suite — at least, in the way it’s usually conducted. Many commentators have remarked on the symphonic aspects of this fairly early composition. Grunberg in his preconcert talk gave two reasons why it didn’t become Brahms’ Symphony No. 1: It’s “too light-hearted and endearing,” he said, and the composer seemed to have been intimidated by the example of a predecessor — Beethoven — "looking over his shoulder.”

Humpty Dumpty Collection

I think it’s a mood problem. There’s no way you can put together a three-, four-, or five-movement symphony from the parts of this serenade that makes progressively emotive sense, at least compared to the early Romantic models of the time. The best bet might be to take the two more serious movements, the Allegro and Adagio, and call it an unfinished symphony, like Schubert’s.

But there’s no need to do that; it’s better to just sit back and enjoy the fecundity of Brahms’ inspirations, especially the miracle of the first movement, in which the textbook rigidity of its sonata form is both charmingly and gloriously overcome by the quality of its tunes and developmental ideas.

MTT took a unique approach to this movement, doing the best job I’ve heard of attempting to make it less of an oak and more of a pearl, making the serenade more unified in character, by increasing the tempo and lightening the emphases a bit. This worked well, though the goal is a dubious one: This first movement is too great to diminish. I frankly prefer to hear it by itself at home, in slower and more anguished renditions, and compare it to the first movement of Brahms’ real Symphony No. 1, though, unlike that masterpiece, it lacks an Introduction.

In any case, MTT and his band rendered the remaining set of movements beautifully, with an especially sparkly take on the concluding rondo. In short, we enjoyed an outstanding musical evening — trees, jewels, and all.