The last time
Osmo Vänskä visited to conduct the San Francisco Symphony, he opened
with the United State premiere of the work of a Finnish composer (Kalevi
Aho's Louhi), followed by an American piano soloist (Emanuel Ax)
playing a concerto by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. This time the program
began with the first San Francisco Symphony performance of the work of
an American composer (John Adams' "Slonimsky's Earbox"), followed by a Finnish
piano soloist playing Pyotr Tchaikovsky's first piano concert in B-flat
minor, Opus 23. This complementarity was somewhat accidental, since
pianist Antti Siirala had been summoned to replace an indisposed Yundi
Li; but the duality of the two events was somewhat fascinating.
It
also seemed a bit odd that Adams' homage to Nicolas Slonimsky should
have taken almost fifteen years to find its way into the San Francisco
Symphony repertoire (and then under the influence of a visiting
conductor). Adams tends to be a favorite with Davies audiences; and
one can make a strong case that his subject for this short (roughly
fifteen minutes) work was the most influential figure in twentieth-century music. In The Rest is Noise Alex Ross would have us believe that the major "trigger event" was the premiere of Richard Strauss' Salome
in 1905; but I find his justification both too Euro-centric for an
"American century" and too rooted in nineteenth-century tradition. Just
one of Slonimsky's many activities provides cause for his displacing
Strauss: In the summer of 1933 he was engaged to conduct the entire
eight-week season at the Hollywood Bowl. He took this as an opportunity
to introduce Los Angeles to a broad repertoire of previously-unheard
music, most of which was greeted with indignation. The crowning event,
however, was a performance of Edgard Varèse's "Ionisation," which was
heard by a broadcast audience in addition to those at the Bowl. The
reactions were so negative that the event provided "an inglorious end to
my conducting career," as Slonimsky put it in his memoir, Perfect Pitch.
Nevertheless, there was one person in the audience who was clearly
inspired by Varèse's decision to compose for an all-percussion
ensemble. That person was John Cage. The rest, as they say, is
history.
Looking at all of the young faces on the Davies stage, I
realized how few performers remain who have enjoyed the opportunity of
hearing Slonimsky talk. Adams had that pleasure and got to know the man
in the last years of his life. I heard him lecture a few times
(including one event at which Cage was the featured performer). He was
always contentious, but his provocations were always delivered with a
puckish style. "Slonimsky's Earbox" deftly captured both the sharp
edges of the man's wit and the playfulness with which he exercised it.
There is also a slightly veiled reference to Charles Ives (another of
the composers that had so offended the Hollywood Bowl audiences) and a
less-veiled acknowledgement of the bustle that opens Igor Stravinsky's
symphonic poem, "Le Chant du Rossignol."
My guess is that Vänskä
never had the pleasure of a direct experience of Slonimsky; but he
conducted as one familiar with the logic, grammar, and rhetoric behind
Adams' approach to composition. Coordinating an abundance of
simultaneous activities is key to making Adams work, and Vänskä is a
skilled coordinator. He engages his entire body to maintain
simultaneous control over multiple sites of activity, and he does this
with a physical disposition that almost glows with love of the music.
We may have had to wait fifteen years to hear "Slonimsky's Earbox;" but
Vänskä rewarded us for our patience.
Following this "ride on a
fast machine" (to appropriate some of Adams' own language) with
Tchaikovsky's first piano concerto was definitely a move to "something
completely different." This is a concerto that it is so familiar that
any performance needs some differentiating factors; but those
are factors to be found in the music itself, rather than in the company
the music happens to be keeping. For Siirala differentiation was a
matter of moving beyond the familiar and bringing attention to the
interplay of inner voices that tend to be obscured by more "athletic"
performances. This is not to say that Siirala was weak. When
Tchaikovsky wanted the piano to roar, Siirala could roar with the best
of them; but he took the trouble to make sure we heard the music between
those roars, much of which revealed compositional expressiveness that
we tend to disregard in the midst of all the bombast. Meanwhile, on the
podium it was clear that Vänskä recognized Siirala's approach and
sympathized with it; so he facilitated it with an impeccable balance of
the orchestral resources against Siirala's more meditative passages.
This was, without a doubt, a fresh approach to an old chestnut,
reminding us that there are always new ways to listen to even the most
familiar music.
The intermission was followed by the seventh
symphony in D minor by Antonín Dvorák (Opus 70). Of Dvorák's four
minor-key symphonies, the most familiar is the ninth in E minor ("From
the New World"); but the seventh deserves as much attention, which the
San Francisco Symphony has tended to give it. The "minor mood" of this
symphony is darker than that of the ninth, drawing more heavily on the
lower registers of instrumental range. While the Scherzo is a clear
Vivace, the haste is colored with the melancholia of Sehnsucht,
triggered by references that may (or may not) have folk origins. That
haste then culminates in an Allegro Finale that practically overflows
with thematic material.
Here the conductor's challenge is one of
negotiating the delicate boundary between control and abandon. Again
Vänskä was served by his whole-body approach to conducting, allowing his
frame to embody a dance-like spirit for those concluding movements but
always keeping the orchestral activity well coordinated. The
performance also fulfilled an evening of differentiated voices in which
the twentieth-century American spirit was complemented by
nineteenth-century nationalism from Russia and Bohemia. This particular
program will receive only two more performances, tonight (October 23)
and tomorrow (October 24), both at 8 PM in Davies; but the experience
is well worth the listen.
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