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By Eman Isadiar |
Martha Argerich appears with the San Francisco Symphony in Ravel's Piano Concerto in G (Photo courtesy of San Francisco Symphony) |
They may have come for Argerich, but they also stumbled upon an unexpected musical jewel: the Requiem by Romanian composer György Ligeti. The program opened with a late Renaissance choral work titled In eccelsiis by Giovanni Gabrieli, and closed with an early romantic tone poem called Lament and Triumph by Franz Liszt.
Only in his second year directing the San Francisco Symphony Chorus, Swedish-born Ragnar Bohlin has clearly hit the ground running. Being four centuries apart and infinitely different in style, each of the program’s two choral works had its own set of technical challenges.
For example, how does one perform in a modern concert hall such an ancient piece as Gabrieli’s In eccelsiis, which was meant to be sung in a church setting?
Perhaps for another choral director, such a dilemma would never even exist, as the rear chorus box at Davies Hall and the stage are the two obvious places for the singers. But Bohlin chose to break up the chorus into three groups of roughly 30 each standing on stage and along the length of the aisles on either side of the audience. This created a multi-dimensional flow of sound similar to the acoustics of a cathedral—at least for those seated in the orchestra-level section.
The instrumental accompaniment in Gabrieli’s music leaves room for different orchestrations, which in this performance was distributed among six brass instruments and an organ. Being primarily an instrument for ancient music, one would have expected the harpsichord in the center of the stage to be used in this piece. Ironically, the harpsichord was for the ultramodern music to follow.
The soloists, namely mezzo-soprano Lisa Scarborough, tenors Thomas Busse and Joel Jay Baluyot, and baritone Steven Rogino each sang their brief parts with impressive skill. Thomas Busse, who had the shortest solo of all, was particularly striking for his virtual absence of a vibrato, which is stylistically consistent with vocal music of pre-classical times.
Then came the evening’s most stunning surprise: Ligeti’s Requiem.
San Francisco Symphony music director Michael Tilson Thomas has repeatedly proven his gift for communicating very abstract and complex musical insights in a language that engages the simple laity and the aficionado alike.
An especially lengthy introduction from the stage, however, can be disconcerting as it usually signals a highly dissonant piece with irregular rhythms or other features not easily understood or appreciated by the average patron.
Perhaps such was the expectation as the audience braced for the Requiem after the conductor used the words “avant-garde” and “experimental” in his remarks. But the guarded, cautious listening soon gave way to a sense of interested intrigue, followed by thoughtful reflection.
Dissonant indeed was the opening Introitus, but not of the type the unrefined listener might find absurd or intolerable. It was a very familiar dissonance, like the hum of insects or the distant sound of an oncoming train—only laden with profound sorrow.
The first movement seemed to end in notated rests, as Tilson Thomas continued to conduct after the last notes had dissipated.
Ligeti’s music was filled with tone clusters—basically groups of neighboring notes played or sung simultaneously. This is especially difficult for the human voice as there is a very strong tendency for multiple voices to shrink into unison when singing in close harmonic proximity, or to expand into an octave when singing in sevenths. But never did the singers’ pitch slide discernibly in either direction, which, again is owed to the remarkable work of chorus director Ragnar Bohlin.
The third movement, De die judicii sequentia, was the most powerful, evoking deep, primal emotions ranging from utter anguish to absolute horror, particularly in the tutti passages. This is where the soloists, mezzo-soprano Annika Hudak and soprano Hannah Holgersson—both also from Ragnar Bohlin's native Sweden—displayed their stunning technique with laser-like accuracy in very uncomfortable harmonies or at the very limit of their ranges.
Another fascinating aspect of the music was the unusual way in which the instruments doubled the voices, making it difficult to tell where one ended and the other began. Also, the extremely low notes for both the voice and the tuba hinted at the chanting of Tibetan monks. In some instances, the notes were so low that they may well have been on the very edge of the human hearing spectrum.
The final movement titled Lacrimosa is where the harpsichord was finally put to use by the symphony’s keyboardist Robin Sutherland. This movement was intensely emotional and brought to mind the deep scars Ligeti must have sustained, having lost his entire family to the Holocaust.
Once again, congratulations to Maestro Tilson Thomas for his constant efforts to instill and cultivate a taste for modern art music in the public. Clearly, it takes not only a certain measure of boldness, but also a dash of faith in the audience’s openness to new musical experiences.
Of course, having a headliner such as Martha Argerich on the program probably made the task a little easier.
Those unfamiliar with Ravel’s Concerto in G will immediately note the composer’s reference to American music, particularly in the first and third movements. Could Gershwin—more than 20 years his junior—have influenced Ravel from across the Atlantic? That is unclear, but it is known that Ravel had taken a keen interest in jazz, which had already reached European shores by that time.
Aside from the Gershwinesque motifs, the concerto also bears signature traits of French impressionistic music, of which Ravel was himself a founder. These include frequent use of the pentatonic mode, parallel harmonies, and a whole-tone glissando of the harp.
Martha Argerich delivered a breathtaking performance, with perfectly shaped phrases and precisely controlled dynamics. She maneuvred her part with great agility from the foreground to the background and vice-versa, weaving through the many layers of music like a sort of musical chameleon. This was reciprocated by Michael Tilson Thomas’ very attentive conducting.
The Adagio movement contains perhaps Ravel’s most sublime music. Argerich produced the purest possible sound by delicately fluttering the damper pedal on the Hamburg Steinway in the most intimate passages. On a number of occasions, it seemed as though her fingers gyrated on the keys as if to create a vibrato similar to a string instrument.
Ravel’s energetic finale requires phenomenal physical prowess and stamina, both of which were found abundantly in Argerich’s musical reserves. Her flawless playing offers irrefutable proof that Rachmaninoff-sized hands are not a pre-requisite for perfect and absolute mastery of the piano.
The audience’s persistent standing ovation was rewarded with a surprising and very appropriate encore: Ravel’s “Fairy Garden” from Mother Goose, a four-hand piece featuring Argerich in the primo and Tilson Thomas in the secondo parts. This piece also exemplifies Ravel at his most elegant, with echoes of his other piano solo compositions such as Le Tombeau de Couperin or Pavane pour une infante défunte.
Seeing the maestro at the piano was a foretaste of next season, which will feature Michael Tilson Thomas as the soloist in Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 23 scheduled for January 2010.
The evening concluded with Liszt’s orchestral work called Lament and Triumph inspired by the writings of Italian poet Tasso. Michael Tilson Thomas gave his fans a subtle hint of his other musical interests by drawing a parallel between Liszt’s tone poem and rock music, naming Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody” and the music of Led Zeppelin. This reference definitely piqued the audience’s interest.
In Lament and Triumph, Liszt establishes the free romantic format of the orchestral “tone poem” versus the highly structured “symphony” of the classical period. Later generations of composers followed in Liszt’s footsteps by composing similar orchestral works, most notably among them Wagner, Strauss and Mahler.
Michael Tilson Thomas demonstrated yet again his facility for this repertoire in a rich and sensitive interpretation of Liszt’s tone poem. In fact, many consider Tilson Thomas a kind of artistic heir to the great romantics through his mentor Leonard Bernstein. He continues to be an ardent champion of the music of Mahler, which—not surprisingly—figures prominently in next season’s program and an eagerly-anticipated CD release.
Eman Isadiar teaches piano at the Peninsula Conservatory and writes about music in the San Francisco Bay Area.
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