STAR SOLOISTS HAVING NOTHING TO
DO---WHAT TO DO??
By Paul Hertelendy
artssf.com, the independent observer of San Francisco Bay Area music
and dance
Week of June 6-13, 2009
Vol. 11, No. 108
A
funny thing happened at the San Francisco Symphony: They
couldn’t figure out where to put the international star pianist Yefim
Bronfman
for the June 3-4 concerts.
It’s not every day you can
get a Bronfman under contract. He was committed for the Schubert-Berg
Festival,
but apparently no one was told that neither composer had ever written a
piano
concerto which the Russian-Israeli artist might play.
The solution was a razzmatazz
hodge-podge program of bits and pieces, with Bronfman playing a rather
slight piano
sonata (Op. 1) by the student Alban Berg. Hiring Bronfman for the Opus
One is akin to engaging Shakespeare to write a limerick for a school
assembly.
And, to flesh
out the
commitment, there was a seemingly unrehearsed four-hands Schubert piano
prelude
to the concerts by conductor Michael Tilson Thomas, who rarely plays in
public,
and Bronfman, who rarely tackles such every-day Gebrauchsmusik
in public. For
the Davies Hall ticket-buyers that meant a 35-minute pre-concert bonus
in an unorthodox
evening offering eight count ‘em eight
selections.
The fact that
the pair
apparently had not collaborated on the D major Rondo beforehand was
evident in
the Alphonse-Gaston act of the two that ensued, with each offering the
other
the upper hands before squeezing onto the perilously tight piano bench.
The
performance was a delight, closely coordinated, with visual puckish
touches
coming from Tilson Thomas, who admitted that tangled hands was the
major hazard
in this abundant repertoire that the prolific Schubert had left us after his short life. Clearly MTT revels in
such quasi-improvisatory programming, and his off-the-cuff annotation
again
proved both informative and amusing.
The German
violinist Julia
Fischer’s task was hardly greater, playing the solo of the Schubert A
Major
Rondo with string orchestra, showing clean lines, pure intonation, and
appealing personality.
The meat and
potatoes of
this generous musical evening came via the dramatic soprano Laura
Aikin, who
has made her name in Central Europe’s
leading opera
houses. She powered a riveting interpretation of the fickle, amoral
title role
of Berg’s opera “Lulu” (1935), in one of the most tempestuous
masterworks of
the era, as distilled in the “Lulu” Suite. Two of the five sections are
vocal
(partly orchestrated by Friedrich Cerha).
The aftermath
of the
riveting and lurid opera was almost as interesting as the predecent:
Berg died tragically
two weeks after the “Lulu” Suite premiere at age 50, leaving the
orchestration
of the final act incomplete. For half a century the opera was performed
around
the world in a two-act torso as his widow Helene kept the act-three
score
locked away. Her mystical explanations for her curious suppression was
less
convincing than various musical clues in the piano-vocal score showing
the
initials of Berg’s mistress, a source of embarrassment to the widow (as
laid
out in published research by musicologist George Perle.) Only after
Helen died,
many decades later, was the full score scrutinized, and Cerha’s
completion
performed in public as part of the complete opera.
The heavily
driven, stormy “Lulu” Suite was the hit of
the evening when
heard June 3. The piece linked high passion, vestiges of Germanic
romanticism,
and Berg’s rather palatable 12-tone composition. Aikin interpreted both
Lulu’s
Song as well as a postlude lament of Lulu’s lesbian lover, Countess
Geschwitz.
The dessert of
the evening
was Schubert’s highly unusual trio “Shepherd on the Rock” for soprano
(Aikin),
pianist (MTT), and the remarkable Principal Clarinetist Carey Bell, one
of the
finest additions to the SFS of recent years. The work requires more
coloratura finesse
than was heard here, but no one rushed out to complain to
management.
Schubert and
Berg make
intriguing and contrasting bookends marking, more or less, the start
and end of
Viennese romanticism.
MUSIC
NOTES---Bronfman gets
a somewhat bigger assignment June 5-6, playing in the Berg Chamber
Concerto,
along with violinist Fischer, on a program including Schubert’s Great C
Major
Symphony. Fischer is an eminent enough artist that, by now, people
might start
to pronounce her name correctly (try “YOO-lia").
These
San Francisco Symphony concerts continue through June 6 at 8 p.m. For
info: (415) 864-6000, or go online.
Broadcasts on KDFC-FM (102.1) at 8 p.m. on the second Tuesday following.
©Paul Hertelendy 2009
#
Paul Hertelendy has been
covering
the dance and modern-music scene in the San Francisco Bay Area with
relish
-- and a certain amount of salsa -- for years.
These critiques appearing weekly (or sometimes semi-weekly, but never
weakly)
will focus on dance and new musical creativity in performance, with
forays
into books (by authors of the region), theater and recordings by local
artists as well.
#
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