Last month's Carnegie Hall performance by the YouTube Symphony Orchestra
turned out to provide (among other offerings) a preview of the program
that the San Francisco Symphony will perform under Michael Tilson Thomas
on May 20, 22, and 23 at Davies Symphony Hall. Yuja Wang performed the
second movement from Sergei Prokofiev's second (Opus 16) piano concerto
in G minor, described by New York Times critic Anthony Tommasini as "a rippling account;"
and composer Mason Bates joined the ensemble to provide the electronics
for "Warehouse Medicine," a movement from his suite, The B-Sides, the entirety of which will receive its world premiere at Davies.
Some
of my good friends made me feel very guilty for missing Wang's San
Francisco Performances recital last season, and I really wanted to make
up for the loss. So when the Carnegie concert was released in its
entirety, in the form of two YouTube videos, I was determined to
experience the whole affair for the sake of these two contributions, if
not others. Unfortunately, this effort was thwarted by the YouTube
support technology, designed to deliver five-minute videos, rather than
anything an hour or more in duration. I came out of my attempt with
only a blog post attempting to explain my frustrations.
However,
if we are to believe the thesis of Edward Albee's one-act play, "The
American Dream," ours is a society that aspires to second chances to get
right what we failed to do the first time; and, where these
performances are concerned, the San Francisco Symphony has provided a
new venue, which offers those second chances. The venue is the San Francisco Symphony Social Network,
described by a press release today as "a place where musicians and
music fans can meet each other, post profile information, add and view
video, links, and photos, hear music and audio, start groups and
discussion topics and add their own comments, post and share events, and
organize their own events and music around a passion for classical
music and the San Francisco Symphony." I am not sure whether reviewers
count as either "musicians" or "music fans;" but, as an unabashed
technology maven (but not evangelist), I had to go to this site to
satisfy my curiosity.
One of the first things I discovered was a
two-minute YouTube video (of the more usual YouTube duration) of the
Carnegie Hall performance of "Warehouse Medicine."
The camera seemed to be up in the Balcony section, where it was held
fixed. So there were no close-up shots of either the ensemble or Thomas
conducting, but the viewer got to drink in the light show prepared for
the occasion. More important is that the sound was good enough to
provide a perfectly good foretaste of Bates' composition. My guess is
that the "live" experience in Davies will be far richer (even without
the light show); but this remains a perfectly good way to get a sense
of Bates' sense of language and the rhetorical style he brings to his
linguistic utterances, so to speak.
Further investigation revealed
that Wang had an even more substantial presence through video, although
none of it involved the YouTube Symphony Orchestra or Thomas. Two
movements from the Prokofiev concerto had been captured on video from a
performance that Wang had given with the NHK Symphony under Charles
Dutoit, one of which was that second movement that had so dazzled Tommasini. The other was the first movement, which I had last heard
in a dazzling performance as part of a Senior Piano Recital at the San
Francisco Conservatory of Music back in October. The orchestra for this
Conservatory performance was seriously reduced, so it was a real
pleasure for me to hear it with the full force of the NHK Symphony
backing up Wang's virtuosity. What can I say? My friends were
definitely justified in making me feel so guilty, and I am now champing
at the bit for the opportunity to hear Wang play this concerto in its
entirety.
The San Francisco Symphony program will also include
Jean Sibelius's Opus 63 fourth symphony, reminding me that I have not
heard them perform a Sibelius symphony since they performed his first
(Opus 39) under Osmo Vänskä a little over two years ago.
While Opus 39 tended to follow many of the syntactic conventions of a
symphony, thus establishing Sibelius' "street cred," both the third and
fourth symphonies tend to explore new paths. This will be my first
exposure to the fourth symphony, and I anticipate an informative
listening experience. I also have no doubt that Sibelius will hold his
own against Bates' electronics and Prokofiev's pianistic fireworks!
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