SAN FRANCISCO'S RUSSIAN WORLD PREMIERE
And Kissine's
Music of Reticence
By D. Rane Danubian
artssf.com, the independent observer of San Francisco Bay Area music
and dance
Week of Feb. 6-13, 2010
Vol. 12, No. 74
A March symphony premiere did a nice turnabout: The work came in
like a lamb and went out like a lion.
Thank Kissin.
Another Kissin, actually, turning up at the San
Francisco Symphony---not the pianist Evgeny, but this time another
Russian émigré,
composer Victor Kissine, born there at the end of an historic era, in
the same
month as the death of both Prokofiev and Stalin. His March 4 world
premiere, “Post-scriptum”
(P.S.) was an enticing piece rolling backward in time. It starts with
the
sparse, themeless, and nearly static modernism
we know from the likes of Gubaidulina and Kurtág---a music of
reticence---festooned
with wispy rivulets of sound in the highest audible registers. The
brass, and
the trio of rare Wagner tubas, get the vehicle into motion, with a
little
violin solo (Alexander Barantschik). Ever more effusive, it ends up
with the
large orchestra sounding out themes, close to 19th-century
style.
Kissine
was
avowedly posing questions in his initial music, in the manner of
Charles Ives;
but unlike Ives, he provided his answer, and that in
a fairly conventional way. Michael Tilson
Thomas led the 17-minute opus like a true believer. The tousle-haired
composer
was prevailed upon (with some effort) at the end to take bows on stage.
Otherwise
the SFS remained in a comfortable silk-robe-&-slippers mode, with
familiar
music from the era 1854-1912. Christian Tetzlaff, a technician par
excellence,
played the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto, with a free and unfamiliar ad
libitandum
beginning. He has a keen rhythmic sense, and a seeming supersonic speed
in his
runs, all produced with a robust tone. Furthermore, he stayed closely
attuned
to the orchestra. I do not find his play evocative, but the audience
clearly
cottoned to him.
The
rest
was reruns from the SFS a year ago: Ravel’s “Valses nobles et
sentimentales” are finely
crafted, a chic French riposte to Viennese waltzes. Five minutes into
the work
you hear early sketches of his altogether unique intoxication in music
“La
valse,” which was to come six years later, after his World War One
service for France.
The
finely
chiseled lines of the perfectionist Ravel stood in sharp contrast to
the
bombast of Liszt’s tone poem “Tasso.” It’s a ponderous piece, wallowing
in low
registers and minor keys, conceived in blocks, and written in a
vertical way,
as if counterpoint had never been invented. At least it provided a good
night’s work
for the rarely used fourth trumpeter and fifth percussionist, all
working
feverishly. But compared to the three other selections, it was as if
swimming
upstream against a flood current.
These
San Francisco Symphony concerts continue through March 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.
©D. Rane Danubian 2010
#
D. Rane Danubian 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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