<>                ARGERICH GIVEN A UNIQUE TRIBUTE
     Legendary Pianist Conquers San Francisco with Sonic Dynamite 
                                              By Paul Hertelendy 
        artssf.com, the independent observer of San Francisco Bay Area music and dance 
                                                                 Week of March . 6-13, 2009
                                                                  Vol. 11, No. 73
         “I think this might be a first in the history of the San Francisco Symphony,” exclaimed an astonished Michael Tilson Thomas, responding to the tumult and ovations over the rare pianist Martha Argerich, as they were about to encore the last movement of the piano concerto, an event that might or might not be unprecedented. The SFS has only been around for 98 years, considerably more than the veteran pianist (now 67) who is endowed with a sensitive disposition as well as a reputation for cancellations that have won her more sympathy than plaudits on this side of the Atlantic.
           This time she came, she played, she conquered, with both her health and digital agility seemingly in top form, much to the relief of her legions of fans. She brought down the sold-out house March 5 with the very familiar G Major Piano Concerto of Ravel, a revelation performance heard as if never heard it before.  She was summoned out three times for bows by the standing crowd, who realized that this might evolve into a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to hear this Argentinian-European  artist with orchestra.            
              Her appearance is deceptive: long salt-and-pepper hair cascading over her face, a measured gait, a phlegmatic appearance. But when she starts to play, it is sonic dynamite. The nimble fingers faster than the eye can see, with the animated attacks, the freedom in slow-movement rubato, and the unencumbered cross-hands technique recurrent throughout this flashy 22-minute French tour de force.
              A true poet of the piano, Argerich drew out the slow movement, the longest of the three, into a dreamy idyll, then returning with zeal to the filigree and flourishes of the fasst-flying remainder.
            The Ravel hit was balanced in the program at Davies Hall with unfamiliar repertory, including one outright experimental opus, the Requiem of the multinational maverick György Ligeti (1923-2006). This austere exercise from 1967 (with some modern revisions) exemplified the musical spirit of the 1960s, when so much of the music was that of rebellion and shock, outraging the traditional establishment (Boulez you recall had even declared that the opera houses should all be burned down). Consequently Ligeti trimmed away large sections of the Latin requiem mass text, left the rest quite unintelligible, and sought out every extreme of chorus and orchestra, from softest to loudest, deepest to highest (pitch), slowest to fastest, calmest to the most explosive. The melismatic symphony chorus was made to sound like swarms of bees, or winds over the plains.  In the midst of the orchestra was a lonely harpsichord, inaudible and unheeded.
             Ligeti clearly tried to link the very modern with very traditional elements in his overly ambitious 28-minute requiem. The efforts of two very fine Swedish singers---Hannah Holgersson and Annika Hudak---were largely wasted, as was the 120-voice SFS Chorus. But Ligeti is too important a 20th-century composer to dismiss; one would hope that some of his better works might later come down the pike.
            Faring better was a four-century-old posthumous sacred choral motet “In ecclesis” by Giovanni Gabrieli, with the added glories of brass sounding out, in effect, the arrival of the baroque era. It was beautifully played under Ragnar Bohlin’s leadership.
            Like the rest of the program, the Liszt tone poem “Tasso: Lament and Triumph” was under MTT’s baton, a heroic musical biography of a flamboyant  Byronic Italian poet who drove people mad and went slightly mad himself.  The piece skilfully links both lament and triumph surrounding the poet, with MTT bringing out both the subtlety and the showmanship that is Liszt all the way.
            THE RAREST OF ENCORES---On rare occasions, an SFS  concerto soloist has followed the presentation with a brief solo encore. But no one in a circle of devotees who had attended the SFS regularly for up to four decades could recall a concerto movement being encored, as the audience seemed to insist on March 5. Those four extra minutes of Argerich-cum-SFS added up to a  unique tribute to be long remembered.
            These San Francisco Symphony concerts continue through March 7 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.
                      #
                        Return to main menu