LEILA, 'E.P.,' AND
WAGNER---A POTENT BREW
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By Paul Hertelendy
artssf.com, the independent observer of San Francisco Bay Area music
and dance
Week of Dec. 12-19, 2011
Vol. 14, No. 30
The San
Francisco Symphony’s centennial week was so crammed with doings &
surprises, the centennial itself essentially bit the dust, to be
honored in
other parts of the season. The Boston Symphony was available for a
double on
tour---who’d ever turn that down?---and, with the SFS home town crew
scrunched
down to just the three other remaining days, we got a bracing,
important new
violin concerto played authoritatively. The new concerto certainly
deserved
more and better.
Just
for
the record, the SFS’ very first concert had been Dec. 8, 1911. A
century later,
we heard none of that music repeated, as it was pushed aside in favor
of music looking
toward the future.
I
yearn for
another encounter with Esa-Pekka Salonen’s Violin Concerto (2009), with
the
composer conducting, and soloist Leila Josefowicz, in as stimulating a
contemporary-musical
event as you could wish for. The two artists, one Finnish, one Southern
Californian, collaborated on the genesis, communicating regularly on
tour via texting,
email and Skype in a hand-in-glove artistic compatibility appropriate
to 21st
century contact. No postmen hauling scores and sketches back and forth!
There
are
mile-a-minute runs on the violin, to the very furthest limits of
virtuosity,
much to the delight of Josefowicz, who devours passages from the pen of
"E.P.," as she likes to call him) that would make lesser players
cringe. The large orchestra has a sumptuous role---Salonen is no slouch
as an
orchestrator---but the emphasis is on the violin throughout.
It’s
an
appealing, tonal work through its 31 minutes and four movements, with a
languid
slow movement and then an uninhibited furious “Pulse II” movement,
somewhere
between a mad syncopation and a bacchanale. Calm returns in the finale,
with a
sensuous, evocative violin line, and some truly angelic tones. This is
a
concerto that warrants rehearing. But Leila J. played it so
idiomatically, so
well attuned to Salonen, you wonder if it would have the same impact
without
their participation.
Modern
music rules! At least, the refined Wagner performance that followed got
less
applause from the Dec. 10 audience at Davies Hall than the Salonen
piece.
Clearly, there is a significant fascination with newer music at the
SFS, reflecting
a recent phenomenon in New
York City,
where given an encore choice between Bartok and Schubert, Bartok was
the symphony
audience’s choice. Perhaps it’s time other performing groups abandon
their traditional
squeamishness and take advantage of the audience’s bold tastes???
Salonen’s
conducting is not four-square main-line, adorned as it is with sweeps
and
squiggles. But it works, and he had the orchestra inspired. He closed
with a
generous 42-minute Wagnerian excerpt from “Götterdämmerung”
that transcended
what you hear at the opera, as the orchestra came through at full
volume and
voluptuous impact, and not muffled by the pit. Four different segments
were skillfully
spliced together, culminating in the Immolation Scene closing “The
Twilight of
the Gods” tetralogy, with soprano Christine Brewer giving a powerful,
memorable
performance in excellent German.
It
was a
night to remember, leaving a very fine and rarely heard Sibelius tone
poem, “Pohjola’s
Daughter,” back in the dust, overshadowed by the high drama that ensued.
THE
VALUE
OF MUSIC ED---After the concert, Salonen was asked about his native Finland’s
formidable music education programs, resulting in more musicians per
capita
than in any nation in the world. It began, he said, with Finland
under
foreign domination, with music perhaps the only nationalistic-cultural
enterprise not running foul of censors. Subsequently, however, they
found that youngsters
getting music ed and instrumental instruction also did better in
academic
courses, lifting the intellectual level all around. Getting that point
across in
this country could save many music programs from erosion during hard
times….
Salonen
made a profound career shift two years ago, resigning as music director
of the
Los Angeles Philharmonic, since he wanted to devote major time to
composition.
Was it a good move? Hard to say, as guesting with the SFS, he was
making both
poiuts simultaneously.
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These
San Francisco Symphony concerts continued through Dec. 10 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 2011
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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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