TWO PRECOCIOUS
UNDER-30'S: SCHUBERT AND BERG
By Paul Hertelendy
artssf.com, the independent observer of San Francisco Bay Area music
and dance
Week of May 28-June 5, 2009
Vol. 11, No. 106
Michael Tilson Thomas’ June festival this year is a
clever
one, linking the beginnings and end of Viennese romanticism via the
music of
Schubert and Alban Berg. Its launching May 27 was engrossing, even if
the end
of romanticism for many patrons was the beginning of the end, period.
Poor Berg
(1885-1935), with birth and death dates corresponding
to major anniversaries of J.S. Bach, thereby shutting him out of most
of the
attention in modern-day concert celebrations. In addition, he was an
outsider
in his home town. And he died at the age of only 50 from a infection
coming
through---an insect bite.
It would have
made sense for the S.F. Opera’s June season to
produce one of Berg’s modern masterpieces like “Wozzeck” or “Lulu”
concurrently. Still, the S.F. Symphony’s venture does include the
Violin
Concerto and the orchestrated portions of the Lyric Suite before the
curtain is
rung down June 13. The silent catalyst
in all this was Berg’s teacher Arnold Schoenberg, who convinced Berg
that there
was a lot more to music, and to his talents, than just writing songs.
The opening
SFS program provided a blood-quickening, passionate
rendition of the “Seven Early Songs,” with origins from 1905-08, via
soloist
Michelle DeYoung, a home-grown international talent stemming from Santa Clara County. Very much in contrast
with the
previous interpreter here in 1995, the ravishing Scandinavian lyric
soprano Solveig
Kringelborn, DeYoung is a full-throated dramatic mezzo, replacing
serenity with
quasi-operatic intensity. Each voice type has its own adherents;
happily, the
range fit both artists quite comfortably. And, apart from a couple of
minor
blemishes, DeYoung’s German pronunciation was very good.
These are
tonal and rather chromatic songs involving leaps
and some real challenges, like the concluding high note on (translated
here to
English) “the soft sound of a fairy-tale song” in “Dream-Crowned,” to a
deft
love text by Rilke. Even more passionate are the two concluding songs,
“Love
Ode” and “Summer Days,” the latter with full orchestra sweeping you off
your
feet.
Throughout,
Berg establishes fine symmetries through
sections. The same trait also marks the later “Three Pieces for (large,
Mahlerian) Orchestra” (1914), a pricklier 21-minute piece which has
been called
a prelude to a tragedy whose ending cannot be foretold. The closing
March is
tumultuous, as unsettled as any of the music in the tragedy “Wozzeck.”
Here
Berg has deconstructed the traditional march and wedded himself to
dissonance,
battling through thorns of instability that are, yes, very difficult to
play.
The orchestra’s visible response to the animated audience was
significant---not
upbeat, but rather spent, resigned, exhausted, perhaps even relieved.
They had born
the cross, and they bore it well.
MTT introduced
it with choice, terse comments and defused
some audience apprehension. He astutely pointed out the distinction
between G
sharp and A flat---the same note on the piano, but slightly different
on a
string, and decidedly different in its directional vector.
He clearly understands this music and projects it with
feeling.
The Schubert
was an interspersed dessert, capped by the
famous “Unfinished Symphony” in B Minor, (1822), one of the most
ingratiating
contributions of early romanticism. However serene most of its fabric,
there
are stentorian blasts of trombones that suggest an operatic composer at
work
(he wrote a number of operas, rarely performed today). Memorable oboe
solos
came from the reeds of William Bennett.
Did Schubert
consider this short (half-hour-long) two-movement
symphony complete? It’s been debated endlessly. What is known is that
Schubert
left many symphonies or movement-fragments incomplete, in part because
he died
prematurely from syphilis at age 31. There is no flair of upbeat
emotion at the
end of the Andante; this poses a question mark of its own, suggesting
motivation for completion right there. But since Schubert never got to
hear his
later symphonies programmed in concert, he had no reason to believe
that,
50-200 years later, there would be great demand for his work. Thus the
public
apathy of the time and his limited marketing acumen worked against
whatever incentive
he might have had to fashion or consider “completions.”
The concert
and festival opened with the jaunty “Rosamunde”
Overture, written by the precocious Schubert at age 23. Nothing MTT did
impressed me more than his treatment of the opening theme, led by the
oboe---springy, feathery, foamy. Compare it to any recording with the
usual heavy touches, and there's a real revelation here.
These
San Francisco Symphony concerts of the Schubert-Berg Festival continue
through June 16; this program only through May 30. 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
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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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