Saturday, December 19, 2015

October 18, 2009: Itzhak Perlman: violinist and conductor

The program for this week's San Francisco Symphony concert at Davies Symphony Hall (whose final performance is this afternoon at 4 PM) listed Itzhak Perlman as "leader and violinist."  That may have been applicable for his performance of Johann Sebastian Bach's E major violin concerto (BWV 1042), for which he sat at the head of the first violin section (with his own music stand in front of the "concertmaster's stand" occupied by Alexander Barantschik and Nadya Tichman);  but the remainder of the program required a "conductor" in the full sense of the word.  Perlman set himself some interesting challenges, selecting Edward Elgar's Opus 47, an introduction and allegro movement for a full string ensemble and a string quartet of soloists, to precede the intermission and Pyotr Tchaikovsky's final completed symphony in B minor ("Pathétique"), whose opus number (74) nicely complemented Elgar's (at least for the numerologically minded).

As can be imagined, the Bach performance differed significantly from the one offered on Friday evening by Philharmonia Baroque.  However, if Philharmonia Baroque offered greater allegiance to the sonorities of Bach's time, Perlman and the San Francisco Symphony were far more effective in capturing the spirit of the "concerto experience" of that time.  The size of the ensemble was considerably scaled down to a "chamber" scale;  and, in his capacity as "leader," Perlman led the way through the many intricate paths of invention that continue to remind me why I am so comfortable invoking the adjective "radical."  The ensemble was there primarily to support him, and he directed with a clarity that could guarantee that support.  However, within the first few measures he was already exploring new territory (not the traditional approach to a concerto solo);  and the journey was entirely his adventure until the final cadence.  If this was the sort of performance that had more to do with the tradition of Jascha Heifetz than with Bach's "original intent," one could still take it on its own terms and enjoy the trip as much as Perlman did.

I have to admit that I was both surprised and disconcerted to learn that, before this week, the first and only performances of the Elgar by the San Francisco Symphony took place in December 1930.  I must confess to a bias towards this composition, induced by an orchestration professor who had us study every last note to appreciate the art of composing for a string ensemble.  However, beyond eliciting ensemble sonorities and rhetorical gestures that we recognize in other Elgar symphonic compositions, his concerto grosso approach of providing the solo voices of a string quartet not only reflects back to Bach's time but also provides an intriguing foretaste of his two subsequent major ventures into chamber music, the Opus 83 string quartet and the Opus 84 piano quintet.

For all my studies, however, this was the first time that I heard this music in a "live" setting;  and I was struck by the extent to which those sonorities take on an entirely new dimension in direct physical experience.  So many of those aforementioned rhetorical gestures are all about the control of energy, and recording technology tends to smooth over radical energy shifts while often masking the more subtle ones.  Also, as my once fellow Examiner Scott Foglesong observed, there is a physical reverberation to a full complement of violins playing a melodic line on the G string with forte dynamics that can only be felt in direct experience;  and for me that feeling is very much a visceral one.

Thus, as a conductor Perlman was faced with two tasks.  On the one hand he had to negotiate the tightly-knit structural architecture of this composition, delivering it with all of the clarity and coherence that Elgar had conceived.  At the same time, he had to "go for the sound," for which he was well equipped to do through his personal experience.  Perlman had no trouble rising to the demands of both tasks, and I hope that one of the consequences of his effective and stimulating interpretation is that the San Francisco Symphony will not let another eighty years lapse before giving this music another performance!

The Tchaikovsky performance was the only work in which Perlman faced a full orchestra.  Here, again, he had a keen sense of sound, bringing out many (if not all) of the subtleties in Tchaikovsky's rich orchestration technique.  However, there was some sense that he was running out of steam in the final movement.  This movement is a major challenge, since it is the ultimate gesture of pathos, gradually dying away in the wake of a march-like scherzo that busts at the seams with its explosions of energy.  The "sense of ending" in that movement is so strong that it is almost always greeted with applause, which makes the final movement all the more tragic.  That tragedy demands a sense of urgency, however;  and the absence of urgency in this performance of Tchaikovsky's series of descending motifs felt more like a sense of wilting away than the pangs of pathos.

Nevertheless, it was clear that, where both Elgar and Tchaikovsky were concerned, Perlman was far more than a "leader."  He was the conductor that these works demand.  He was also a conductor well connected to the capabilities of the San Francisco Symphony, and serious listeners had much to gain from the results of this partnership.

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