Mtt Conducts Mahlers Third With Sasha Cooke Review
Sasha Cooke, Mezzo Soprano. Photo Nick Granito.
The San Francisco Symphony
Davies Hall, San Francisco
Wed, June 23, 2010
Michael Tilson Thomas, Conducting
Sasha Cooke, Mezzo-Soprano
Jonathan Vinocour, Viola
Berlioz, Roman Carnival Overture, Opus nine (1844)
Les Nuits d'Ete, Opus 7 (1843/1855/1856)
Harold In Italy, Opus 16 (1834)
With the conclusion of terminal week'south Symphony performances, the official concert yr in San Francisco has come to a vivid simply unexpected close. Normally, at this time of twelvemonth, ane anticipates listening to a monumental end-of-season work, but logistical difficulties this time prevented the orchestra from putting on Berlioz's elaborate dramatic symphony,Romeo et Juliette. Not to worry!
The Symphony audience was ultimately none the worse for its finale, experiencing instead Les Nuits d'Été and the still insufficiently heralded Harold in Italy, in fine performances served up by MTT, with mezzo-soprano Sasha Cooke and violist Jonathan Vinocour. A snappy rendition of theRoman Carnival Overture began the proceedings, highlighted past Russ deLuna's unusually characterful English horn.
The works of Hector Berlioz appear eminently suited to the musical personality of Michael Tilson Thomas. There is something almost American in the French composer's recipe of dash, irreverence, eccentricity and ultimate classicism. And there is an emotional reserve in the music which, despite its wildness, never crosses the line from cooly observed romantic feeling into sentimentality.
Sasha Cooke walked this detail rail beautifully in Les Nuits d'Été. Her delivery of gentle cadences was particularly supple, sincere and effective. Many a Berlioz song ends softly on a two syllable adjective, with emphasis on the last syllable, as is mutual in French. The text ofL'Absenteeism is a case in point. In English translation, nouns unremarkably conclude a line of French poetry, and this tends to brand of it a blunter experience for the reader than the original. But problems of poetic translation aside, the San Francisco audience was fortunately listening in French—and privileged to hear the artistry of Miss Cooke and her beautifully counterbalanced voice. More, please!
Michael Tilson Thomas oft seems uncomfortable in the brooding world of German sonorities, preferring Mahler's sometimes sarcastic variant of them, but with Berlioz, he can somersault by most such musical expression. Compared with the intimate earnestness of Schumann or the romantic feeling in early Brahms, Berlioz is actually in some ways emotionally closer to Mendelssohnian reserve, even so his sparely orchestrated harmonies, irregular phrases and unexpected rhythms seem today to reach far beyond their era, to challenge and prefigure Bruckner, Stravinsky, Janacek or even Webern, whoseIm Sommerwind, for example, makes apply of the "dry" cymbal crashes pioneered by Berlioz to begin or end a phrase.
In this sense, Berlioz is like Haydn. Sheer cleverness, innovation and energy make him modernistic—and substitute for one's beingness moved. And loftier spirits and creatively kinetic technique, more than passionate tune, get the legacy.
Most composers project power by writing music which becomes thicker in texture equally it gets louder. Whether nosotros are listening to Beethoven's Fifth or The Pines Of Rome, nosotros normally feel the weight of a climactic moment by something heavy coming upon u.s.a.. Artillery barrages rumble underfoot or monolithic phalanxes sweep us away. Berlioz is different. At that place may be no howitzers to knock you off your feet, but you'd improve duck anyhow. It is a lighter, more mobile kind of firepower, and but like mod warfare, information technology tin can be swift and deadly. Berlioz car-guns the audience, and the crispness of the trumpet and timpani-fire pretty much determines who dies!
To his credit, Mr. Thomas understands this peculiar combination of nimbleness and power, and the listening public would exercise well to press him for a recording of Berlioz overtures, not to mention Harold in Italy, so stunningly performed by Jonathan Vinocour in the Wednesday performance I heard.
Every so often, a fine orchestra reveals its potential in the character of one of the principal players. I tin can only report that, if the violas of the San Francisco Symphony keep to internalize the velvet sonority Mr. Vinocour, its new Juillard and Princeton-educated leader, displayed final week, the potential of the section will be unlimited.
Harold In Italy is a somewhat unusual piece, and a bit prophetic of music to come up. It is not hard to hear in its chromatic introduction a dry run for the Cesar Franck Symphony in d Pocket-size, for instance. And I was struck, too, past how the "idee fixe" of the Symphonie Fantastique has evolved in Harold into something closer to Mussorgsky's "Passepied" from Pictures at an Exhibition. The violist tends to complete phrases and sum things up every bit he goes along—in the Symphonie Fantastique, theIdée just interrupts.
Similar the Brahms Second Symphony, Harold in Italy has a long beginning movement with a repeat, merely the repeat works, because the music itself is lively. Brahms miscalculated, I believe, in making and then much of his repeated music slow and glutinous to brainstorm with. Or, every bit I've suggested in an before review, perhaps we merely demand to perform it faster!
No such issues affected this operation, however. The last thirty seconds of the first movement were as wonderful a motorcar-gun burst as I've always heard in Berlioz! Mr. Thomas must take seriously rehearsed the passage to get information technology so tight. Indeed, this was non Charles Munch at the helm, but i would take almost thought then. Fortunately, the pilgrim's march did not go on at Munch'due south domestic dog trot, which always seemed a bit speedy for a crusade, but the serenade was beautifully voiced and colorful in the woodwinds, and the finale every bit filled with explosive mayhem as one might have wished. And every bit an aside, the offstage string quartet near the end was perfectly judged.
A parting idea about the theatricality of Hector Berlioz' music. Information technology is noteworthy that Berlioz, unlike some composers, doesn't actually take his musical "programs" very seriously. The Byronic element in Harold is by and large an excuse for writing colorful music suggestive of crowds, disorder, pillage and rape—all cinematic with moral judgements presumably left out.
We accept already pointed to the curiously weightless manner in which this composer projects power and the manic, restless way his music propels itself….. So, if it isn't that much of a leap to inquire, were Berlioz live today, what sort of music would he write?
Symphonies? No dubiety.
Songs? Surely.
Operas? Why not?
But if there is a composer out at that place who'd compose improve music for "Road Runner" cartoons than Hector Berlioz, I don't know of one!
Await upward! You are about to be flattened by an anvil!
Source: https://newyorkarts.net/2010/07/sf-symphony-michael-tilson-thomas-berlioz-cooke-vinocour/
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