It’s All About the Pianist Upstage
How gratifying, that the musician in the back row can be the star of the performance, whether the percussionist, or the lady harpist, or the pianist.
This time, it turned out to be the South-African-born guest pianist Anton Nel, unobtrusively hidden behind the row of S.F. Symphony string players in an all-French chamber program. Nel, who had been a Naumberg Award winner three decades ago, brings to the keyboard a deft and nimble touch, a thousand shadings of dynamics, and the kind of phrasing that has you anticipating his next measure again and again. And please, do not refer to him as “accompanist.” He is a stellar interpreter.
Early-20th-century French music often is veiled in the mists, like a Monet painting, or simply referred to as piquant—intriguing, with a hidden air of Je-ne-sais-quoi mystery or uncertainty that our own musicians, however skilled, find elusive. Happy to say, Nel is also a teacher in conservatory settings from Manhattan to Texas.
On paper, it all looked so apt, having an all-French chamber music program out at the art museum Palais du Legion d’Honneur, alias the Palace of the Legion of Honor, full of French furnishings and art. And a sellout audience filled the gorgeous, rotund 300-seat Gunn Theater for Debussy, Poulenc and Fauré. What’s more, violin soloist Alexander Barantschik would perform on that priceless 1742 Guarneri instrument with his SFS colleagues.
What worked best this night was an earlier romantic piece as closer, the half-hour-long Fauré Quartet No. 1 in C Minor (1878). The masterful Adagio, unreeling from that cello theme, is funereal to the core, salvaged by a finale that is a wild gallop, forceful and animated, garnering a deserved ovation. Earlier, the players had rendered Poulenc’s Violin Sonata (1943) and Debussy’s First Cello Sonata (1915)—hitting all the notes, yes, but showing little Gallic aesthetic.
Chamber Music at the Legion with San Francisco Symphony players at the Gunn Theater, Palace of the Legion of Honor, S.F. Dec. 1. For SFS info: (415) 864-6000, or go online: www.sfsymphony.org.
