BARTOK'S PIANO, TCHAIKOVSKY'S BALLET AT THE S.F. SYMPHONY
               The Strings on Little Cat Feet, and the Coitus Interruptus of "Swan Lake" 
<>                                              By Paul Hertelendy 
        artssf.com, the independent observer of San Francisco Bay Area music and dance 
                                                                 Week of June 17-23, 2011
                                                                  Vol. 13, No. 109
            A near-sellout crowd turned out to hear—Bartok. Yes, Béla Bartok’s thorny Piano Concerto No. 2, which makes no concessions whatsoever to the weak-hearted. Here Bartok revels in creating clashing elements with utmost delight.
            The soloist was the remarkable sylph of a pianist, Yuja Wang, 23, one of the brightest young stars of the keyboard world. Widespread fears about a possible cancellation were quelled when she materialized in a floor-length blue formal as scheduled with the San Francisco Symphony June 16, with the full moon playing on the outer façade of Davies Hall.
            Earlier, an arm injury had forced her to drop her June 21 recital on this same stage. But she held fast, doing both the chamber program and the concerto in rapid order in this notable Ubiquitous-Wang week, just as though nothing had happened.
            And her command was nothing short of sensational. The percussive side of the piano so favored by Bartok  was grist for her technique. She performed with astounding velocity through the dense forests of notes that Bartok had wished upon himself long ago as premiere pianist. Wang boldly fenced with the winds through the stormy first movement while the strings sat on their hands.
            While her volume was not thunderous, it was quite adequate to the occasion.
            And in the soft petals (and soft pedals) of the Adagio, this elfin artist from Beijing  coaxed sounds that could soothe a raging buffalo. There she also managed a close duet with the timpanist, David Herbert.
            This confidently dissonant (though tonal) magnum opus from 1931 marked composer-pianist Bartok’s latest dose of antidote to the hand-me-down German romanticism still dominant in his native Hungary. This was the neoclassicist-individualist who was sticking it to the Philistines, with gusto.
            For him, structure was supreme. His pyramid structure offers strong similarities and symmetries recurring as you come down on the far side. None of this evolves into tunes you hum to your beloved. But it’s a bold assertive exercise in austerity of sound, in elevated density and compression through the half-hour outpouring.
            Music Director Michael Tilson Thomas executed all this adroitly, with the big brass parts particularly memorable. At the other extreme, the start of the slow movement offered strings coming in on little cat feet, barely audible, but thoroughly seductive.
            As lagniappe, MTT tossed in Bartok’s brief Rumanian Folk Dances, written in a far more popular style.
            The orchestra closed with 34 minutes of music taken from Tchaikovsky’s “Swan Lake Act Three,” which furnished surprises in spades. First, MTT never conducts ballet, though he has played concert versions such as “Romeo and Juliet” suites several times. Then, much of this music is not heard in staged ballet performances, where so much of the massive  205-minute score has to be trimmed simply to get audiences home before the sun comes up.
            Finally, the balletomanes’ high point, the Black Swan Pas de Deux, was nowhere to be seen or heard in this version.  That was akin to stopping 50 feet from the summit of Mt. Everest and heading back down. That flashy segment for the diabolical black clone of a swan queen is an interpolation by the St. Petersburg composer-conductor Riccardo  Drigo, sent in to “improve” on the Tchaikovsky score after the latter’s death. Whatever Drigo lacked in finesse he made up for in dramatic punch.
            Without the Drigo this time, MTT’s “Swan” foray ended up like a coitus interruptus.
            NOTES---Yes, ring tones went off in mid-concert, with orchestra patrons craning their necks to locate the offending phone tucked away. A stranger near me blurted out defensively, “Not mine!” Fortunately, it occurred during the brassiest part of Bartok’s first concerto movement…..Wang is the latest of a line of stellar artists from the Far East gracing our concert scene with unprecedented talent over the past three decades. Her performance was attended by some 50 music critics from around the country, coming to San Francisco for their annual national conference.
               These San Francisco Symphony concerts continue through June 19. 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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