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By Eman IsadiarBenjamin Shwartz mounted the conductor’s podium one last time at Davies Symphony Hall on Sunday, May 17 and led San Francisco Symphony’s award-winning Youth Orchestra in a demanding program of Barber’s First Symphony and Symphonie fantastique by Berlioz.
Later that same afternoon, legendary violinist Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg concluded her first season as music director of the New Century Chamber Orchestra with a concert titled Shadows and Light performed in San Rafael’s Osher Marin JCC Auditorium, featuring works by Mozart, Herrmann, Borodin and Strauss. The concert’s highlight was a new commission by emerging Brazilian composer Clarice Assad, with Salerno-Sonnenberg as soloist.
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Benjamin Shwartz conducted San Francisco Symphony’s Youth Orchestra in his final concert on May 17, 2009. |
Young Israeli-American conductor Benjamin Shwartz has served since 2005 under Michael Tilson Thomas as resident conductor of the San Francisco Symphony and music director of the Youth Orchestra. Shwartz leaves his posts to pursue guest conducting engagements in the US and abroad. He is succeeded by Donato Cabrera, who joins the San Francisco Symphony as the newest member of the conducting staff.
The most striking feature of the concert was the profound artistic maturity of the teenaged orchestra, which, under Shwartz’s direction, could upstage even the best of “grown-up” ensembles.
The Philadelphia Connection
Shwartz opened the concert with Symphony No. 1 by Samuel Barber, with whom he shares a special bond.
Nearly 70 years apart, Barber and Shwartz both attended the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia. Other Curtis alumni include such diverse artists as Leonard Bernstein, Miles Davis and Lang Lang.
Coincidentally, violinist Nadja Salerno-Sonneberg, whose latest concert is covered in the second half of this article, is also a past student of the Curtis Institute
In his Symphony No. 1, Barber condenses the traditional four-movement symphonic form into a single movement, yet preserving the musical processes by which the different sections of a symphony are bound together as a whole.
The idea of a one-movement symphony was rather uncommon at the time, and only one other composer—Jean Sibelius—had completed such a work twelve years prior with his Symphony No. 7, thus providing a model for Barber.
Samuel Barber dedicated his First Symphony to the Italian-American composer and librettist Gian Carlo Menotti, who, by the way, happens to be yet another graduate of the Curtis Institute.
Symphonic Hallucinations
While Haydn and Mozart left it to the listener to imagine a storyline to accompany their music, Beethoven was the first composer to begin the trend of suggesting program ideas to the audience.
Since then, no composer has left such a descriptive—not to mention disturbing—program as that of Hector Berlioz for his Symphonie fantastique.
According to Berlioz, the music depicts an artist who intends to commit suicide over a woman by taking opium. But instead, he finds himself trapped in a series of nightmarish hallucinations, and witnesses his own execution for having killed the woman he loves. Following his death, he encounters his beloved once again in the afterlife, but this time as a prostitute in the company of devils and sorcerers.
Despite the clearly R-rated Symphonie fantastique, the PG-rated orchestra managed to express every last horrific detail of Berlioz’s music. In fact, Schwartz’s rendition of both works on the program was bold, introspective, and filled with refined music worthy of a professional symphony orchestra of any age.
If it were possible to form an orchestra solely of young prodigies, one wonders whether it wouldn’t sound something like San Francisco Symphony’s Youth Orchestra.
A New Era for New Century
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Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg concludes her first season as music director of the New Century Chamber Orchestra. |
Known to the world simply as “Nadja”, she captured the hearts back in 1981 as the youngest violinist ever to win the Naumberg competition with Tchaikovsky’s concerto, which was broadcast live from Carnegie Hall on national television.
Much of Nadja’s tumultuous career since the early days has been dedicated to performing and promoting new music—a cause she continues to champion in her new role in San Francisco.
The program, which was titled Shadows and Light, featured music having to do with nighttime and darkness. Ironically, the concert venue’s stage lighting malfunctioned throughout the entire concert.
It was fascinating to witness the non-verbal, almost telepathic interaction between Nadja and her ensemble of 18 musicians, each clearly an accomplished artist. It is probably not too difficult to follow Nadja’s lead anyway—she is famous for being especially mobile on stage.
Some may frown at Nadja’s romanticized Mozart, with the grandiosity of her gestures and the richness of her vibratos. Many others, however, would find her approach to the program opener—Eine Kleine Nachtmusik—rather refreshing as she breathed new life into an otherwise dusty, old cliché of the string repertoire.
Following Mozart, the audience got a surprisingly powerful musical thrill with Herrmann’s Psycho Suite. While most of the musical ideas of the suite are introduced in the opening “Prelude”, one does not mind the repetitiveness, perhaps owed to the unrelenting rhythmic energy of the piece.
The famous squawking sounds of “The Murder” movement instantly brought to mind the shower scene, the silhouette and the knife.
The public was asked not to applaud in between Borodin’s Nocturne and Assad’s new commission Dreamscapes. The program was planned in such a way as to allow the lushly romantic music of Borodin to prime the listener for a deeper understanding of Assad’s music. Applause would clearly have disrupted the trance-like state intended by the composer.
Borodin’s Nocturne was deeply moving.
It is difficult to determine whether the profound impact of Assad’s work was brought on by the music itself, or by Nadja, in whose hands any piece of music can find sublime expression. Perhaps, it was a magical combination of both. Either way, the performance of Clarice Assad’s Dreamscapes with Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg and the New Century Chamber Orchestra was a rare musical experience of transcendental dimensions.
Had the program ended with Assad, the audience would likely have left the hall in a sleep-walking daze. Strauss’s unmistakably Viennese Die Fledermaus Overture, however, waltzed us back to reality, rendering us capable of operating our respective motorized vehicles home.
Eman Isadiar teaches piano at the Peninsula Conservatory and writes about music in the San Francisco Bay Area.
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