George Benjamin first appeared with the SFS in 1992 as conductor, pianist, and Artistic Director of the Wet Ink Festival, the SFS’ celebration of contemporary composers. Over the course of the festival the SFS performed his At First Light and the U.S. premieres of his works Antara and Piano Sonata. Benjamin also performed an improvised piano accompaniment to the silent films Ben-Hur and The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari. In 1999 he made his subscription series conducting debut with the SFS, leading his own works Viola, Viola (with former Principal Viola Geraldine Walther and current Associate Principal Viola Yun Jie Liu) and Three Inventions, and Ligeti’s Piano Concerto featuring Pierre-Laurent Aimard. At other times the SFS has performed his Palimpsest, Sudden Time and Three Studies for Solo Piano.
“Having always regarded [the SFS] as a quite wonderful orchestra, I’ve been particularly struck in recent years by the development of a remarkable new glow and warmth in their sonority,” Benjamin said. “Their loyalty and interest in my work over the decades touches me more than I can say. In a program that I will conduct, performances of my oldest and newest orchestral works will be juxtaposed with music by my teacher, Messiaen, and also by an earlier composer particularly close to my heart, Ravel.”The core of Benjamin's visit will consist of two concerts in the Symphony subscription series and one chamber music performance:
On January 17 Benjamin will join SFS musicians as pianist in a chamber music concert, where he will perform his Piano Figures. Jonathan Vinocour and Yun Jie Liu will be featured in his Viola, Viola. In pre-concert talks, free to all ticketholders, before the performances on January 7, 9, and 10 Benjamin will speak in conversation with Peter Grunberg and January 14,15, and 16 with Laura Stanfield Prichard. The Friday 6.5 concert on January 8 conducted by David Robertson will include Benjamin’s remarks about his works Jubilation and Dance Figures. Immediately following the concert on Saturday, January 16 Benjamin will participate in Off the Podium, an informal question and answer session free to all audience members that evening.At the first of the subscription concerts, David Robertson will also conduct Felix Mendelssohn's third ("Scottish") symphony and Michael Jarrell's arrangements of three piano etudes by Claude Debussy in addition to Jubilation and Dance Figures. Benjamin himself will conduct the second concert, which will include his earliest orchestral work, Ringed by the Flat Horizon, and the West Coast premiere of his 2008 piano concerto, Duet, with soloist Nicholas Hodges making his San Francisco Symphony debut. The program will also include Oiseaux exotiques, by Benjamin's composing mentor, Olivier Messiaen, and two works by Maurice Ravel, the Mother Goose suite and Rapsodie espagnole.
Those interested in approaching these concerts with some listening experience may wish to begin at the beginning with the Nimbus recording that includes Ringed by the Flat Horizon performed by the BBC Symphony Orchestra conducted by Mark Elder. Another approach would be through Dance Figures, also available as a Nimbus recording with the BBC Symphony Orchestra conducted by Oliver Knussen, since this is a suite of nine short movements. (For those who really want to approach this music in small doses, these movements are also available as individual MP3 downloads!) Having listened to both of these recordings, my own advice would be to start with the short movements of Dance Figures. However, I am not sure that listening for any "dance-like nature" will be any more rewarding than it would be when one listens to the "dance-based" compositions of Johann Sebastian Bach or Robert Schumann, which I recently discussed. What is most striking about these short works is the breadth of sonic qualities covered by the nine movements. The second of those movements, "Recit," even appears to be playing with the physical theory of sound quality as a superposition of overtones. Maurice Ravel experimented with this effect in his "Bolero," as did Toshiro Mayuzumi in his 1958 "Nirvana Symphony." However, Benjamin seems to have moved beyond the experimental efforts of those who preceded him to apply this technique to his own approach to what others have called "spectral music."
After one becomes used to Benjamin's interest in working with "the sound itself," one can then turn to his earlier Ringed by the Flat Horizon. In this case I have to wonder whether he is not only working with sound but also trying to evoke a sonic version of a literary pun. I say this because the (ringing) sounds of metallic percussion both begin and conclude (encircle?) the composition. If he is playing a literary game, then he is playing it subtly and using it as an infrastructure to work with variation in sonic qualities on a time scale longer than that of the Dance Figures movements.
Of course, whenever one needs to tune in to the sort of details of sound quality that a composer like Benjamin (or his mentor Messiaen) can summon, one will always run into shortcomings if one relies on recordings. This music needs to be experienced through live performance in a space that lends itself to all of those subtleties of detail. Davies Symphony Hall is definitely such a space, so those attracted by either of the recordings I have just cited will inevitably find a far broader listening experience by attending at least one of the San Francisco Symphony scheduled performances.
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