SHEER SERENITY AND HAMMER BLOWS IN NEW OPUS
        Unlikely Partnership Powers a Violin Concerto to Remember  
                                              By Paul Hertelendy 
        artssf.com, the independent observer of San Francisco Bay Area music and dance 
                                                                 Week of Feb. 27-March 5, 2009
                                                                  Vol. 11, No. 70
          At least this time, the intermission chatter revolved around her music rather than her strapless gown on stage. 
            An astounding performance by the German artist Anne-Sophie Mutter with the S.F. Symphony introduced  to North America the Violin Concerto No. 2 (2007) by Sofia Gubaidulina, the elder stateswoman of Russian composers. This concerto is an unabashedly passionate one-movement opus without end, a work I would put alongside Bartók’s Violin Concerto of 1938 in this genre of fiery modern dramatics coming from both mind and heart.
            The galvanic new concerto given Feb. 26 is the capstone of the two-week residency here of the 77-year-old composer, representing an especially close intertwining of Sofia-&-Sophie---two totally dissimilar individuals, yet two spirits on closely allied tracks. In fact Mutter, who has invested heavily in launching contemporary works over the past 20 years, stated categorically that this one was “the greatest experience I have had until now with a modern score….Boy, did I sweat!”
            The work builds up from total serenity, with Mutter’s violin playing a plaintive melody alone on the (highest) E string, progressing to an electric intensity and tumultuous fortissimos. Like a Shakespeare play, it’s a two-level concerto. While Mutter is mostly in the stratosphere, the orchestra is shorn of violins and plays mostly in the bass register---adding even Wagner tubas, little heard outside 19th-century Wagner and Bruckner. If that makes the soloist sound angelic, rest assured that there is a lot of the underworld welling up, as if the orchestra and soloist are locked in combat for 32 minutes of grappling and jousting within a one-movement, no-holds-barred  framework. 
            Left standing as a colossal question mark, long after the dust has cleared, are the “blows of fate.” Going well beyond the characteristics of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5 and Mahler’s Symphony No. 6, this new concerto has the orchestra striking sledge-hammer smashes of fate, around a dozen of them in short order fortissimo at the middle of the new work, as if trying in heated dispute working to silence the soloist. These will be analyzed ad infinitum. But they fail to quell the indominable spirit of the soloist, who is outnumbered but decidedly not vanquished. The soloist persists past it all, going into a lengthy cadenza, with varied forays both into the high country as well as the throaty G string’s ground floor.
            At the other extreme from the reserved Sofia is the loquacious and career-driven Anne-Sophie, at 45 and motherhood still endowed with a traffic-stopping glamour figure boasting an hour-glass form poured voluptuously into tight designer dresses. But it’s not about appearance, it’s about animated music-making, pouring heart and soul into am unerring performance via a violin with a robust sound carrying to the hall’s farthest corners.
            Though not built of Olympic proportions, she is deceptively powerful, one who could bench-press more weight than most of the men in the audience, I suspect. Her unflagging vigorous bowing endures throughout, with hardly a  moment’s rest. I say it’s lucky that the work is dedicated to Mutter---another dedicatee might have deemed it physically unplayable (as had happened with Samuel Barber’s Violin Concerto).
            Her power is prodigious, her lyricism glowing. I think all those of us turned away from interview requests by Sofia-&-Sophie forgave all resentment and rancor is hearing the two women's voices in this piece.
            Ultimately Gubaidulina (this week’s preferred pronunciation seems to be Goo-Buy-DOO-lina) is fascinating by mysticism, delving into openly expressed philosophical musings, especially that of time, which may or may not be devined from the music. The concerto bears the subtitle “In Present Time”---but it clearly reaches into epistemological questions, into those of the human gazing into questions of posterity.
            While quite different in its sonic texture and tuning, the concerto has some commonality with the previous week’s offering here by the composer, “The Light of the End,” which also suggested a mystical voyage with uncertainties.
            All the concerto’s tumult and violence comes from an unlikely source---the tiny, frail, soft-spoken  Russian composer who spares no orchestral energy and shows herself the master of the sizable ensemble.  She attended the concerts here, took bows from the artists’ box, and applauded Mutter, who blew her kisses in return.
            In the absence of violins, sitting in the concertmaster’s seat was a visiting young violist, Jonathan Winocour of the St. Louis Symphony, who might or might not be trying out for an appointment here. 
            Music Director Michael Tilson Thomas, with whom Mutter appeared to enjoy a fine rapport here, concluded the evening with two desserts from Ravel: “Valses Nobles et Sentimentales,” and “La Valse,” one of the most intoxicating dance-music ever here. But I’m not sure anybody noticed.
            The evening had opened with Prokofiev’s stiff, boisterous “American Overture.” And most nights ended with Mutter signing CDs. She had already recorded this one on the DG label with Gergiev conducting. 
            MUSIC NOTES---The modern sound of this epic week now points the way toward the SFS’ Schubert-Berg Festival upcoming May 27-June 13.

           These San Francisco Symphony concerts continue through March 1 at 2 PM (with Mutter playing Mendelssohn instead at some reprises). 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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