The View From Brazil

Ah, the tunes! People were singing them in the subway on Saturday, humming them home in the BART seats behind me. There are at least a dozen Dvořák gifts to humanity in his "New World" symphony, memory-permanent melodies that bring renewable pleasures for years to those to whom they speak — all presented on a silver platter by Roberto Minczuk's spirited conducting of the San Francisco Symphony. But what did the other composers on the program have to offer, Bohuslav Martinů and José Antônio Resende de Almeida Prado? Martinů's 1943 Concerto for Two Pianos flashed out an especially energized joie de vivre with heart-de-synching sets of trochees and iambs, brilliantly performed by Katia and Marielle Labèque. Martinů's offering was a scintillating raconteur you meet at a party: You remember him afterward, but not his stories. And then there was Almeida Prado, a friend of the conductor and fellow Brazilian, with his 2005 Symphonic Variations on an Original Theme. This man was the distant relative and amateur magician who stops by, supposedly with candies, tells the kids they're in his palm — then opens up an empty hand. In my book, if you're going to do a series of variations on an original theme, you had better give an absorbable theme to the audience first. Make it disappear, if you must, later. Instead, there were the Introduction, Theme, and 10 variations in 15 minutes (1.25 minutes per) with an undistinguished theme — the raison d'etre, after all — like a small green flower in an overgrown lawn. Such a thing wilts, if it's grasped at all, despite the sparkling introduction, the strident brass chorale of the fifth variation, the nice string treatment of the seventh, the Latinesque percussion of the eighth, and the overall expertise in orchestration. It was a shame that annotator James M. Keller compared this work with Benjamin Britten's Young Person's Guide, despite their mutual highlighting of sections of the orchestra. The Britten masterpiece strikes a bull's-eye with its Purcell theme from the get-go. Almeida Prado's little arrow, by contrast, flicks off into the woods somewhere. I emphasize this defect because Keller quotes Almeida Prado as espousing "a simpler melodic style which the public more easily embraces." I asked several patrons during intermission if they did any embracing. The best I could get, if they recalled the work at all, was "It was OK" and "The guy who played the woodblocks sure had a great part!"

No Squirrel-Cage Tyro

Minczuk, grandson of Russian/Polish immigrants, has a natural feel for Slavic music. His approach to both the Martinů and the Dvořák was to emphasize the accents and restlessness where appropriate, and rarely to tarry. My only quibble with him came in a couple of instances where a phrase was cut off too abruptly, leaving a fractional second of untoward silence. Unlike some tyros needing a squirrel cage, however, Minczuk can slow down with the requisite breadth for slow movements. And he knows how to develop a climax to the fullest. The Symphony performed well for Minczuk: I salute the brass section for its smooth and pitch-perfect rendition of the Largo chorale in the Dvořák — that item was a chocolate communion wafer. This concert set was Minczuk's first with the Symphony, although he has been to Davies Symphony Hall before with the London Philharmonic. Let's hope he'll return soon. The Labèque sisters also were welcome visitors. Their nervous energy and flamboyant gestures were perfect for the Martinů. The gratitude expressed by the audience earned it a one-piano, four-hands encore of "The Fairy Garden" from Ravel's Mother Goose Suite — a fine present before intermission. Later, with a huge bag of gifts falling out and bouncing all the way to the subway, Santa Dvořák came down the chimney.