Pop! Goes the Symphony

By Eman Isadiar

In its latest concert, San Francisco Symphony was led by guest conductor Edwin Outwater in a premiere of songs from the musical play Whisper House by pop artist Duncan Sheik. The concert also included excerpts from the ballet suite from the opera Faust by Charles Gounod and local premieres of Zipangu by Claude Vivier and music from the ballet Les biches by Francis Poulenc.

The concert opened with selected movements of the ballet suite from the opera Faust. Charles Gounod added this music ten years after the opera was first performed in order to accommodate a more elaborate new production.

The work requires a sizable orchestra for the rich, colorful sounds that are typical to the late romantic period. While San Francisco Symphony is known especially for its unique flare for romantic repertoire, Outwater's conducting brought out the most brilliant colors the orchestra has to offer.

Then came the evening's headliner, Duncan Sheik, whose works include chart-topping pop singles, award-winning musicals and film scores. The concert featured the song suite from Sheik's latest musical play titled Whisper House, which debuted last January in San Diego.

Award-winning pop artist Duncan Sheik performs songs from

Whisper House withSan Francisco Symphony

(photo courtesy of San Francisco Symphony).

The music was especially arranged for the San Francisco Symphony by Sheik's long-time collaborator Simon Hale. The large orchestra included a partially off-stage brass section, whip, wind machine and electric guitar. Sheik was the lead vocalist, with backup by his female counterpart.

Whisper House tells the story of a haunted lighthouse in Maine, whose musical ghosts sing to the eleven-year old orphan living there with his aunt in the 1940s. Prior to their death, the ghosts were apparently musicians on a steamer that crashed nearby in 1912. The songs of the ghosts examine our modern world—as its in 2010—torn by conflict and fear.

The opening number, “We're Here to Tell You,” is a hypnotic tune with an eery orchestral accompaniment. “The Tale of Solomon Snell”—a rather sinister song about a man whose lifelong fear of being buried alive comes true—leaves the listener with a lingering sense of unease. “Earthbound Starlight” has a catchy melody and is deeply emotional. As the title suggests, “I Don't Believe in You” is a callous and mean-spirited song, proclaiming man's inability to change his dark fate.

Sheik's haunting tunes are a perfect fit for a story about ghosts. The lyrics are powerful, poignant and sobering. The orchestration is dazzling and extravagant. While the wind machine evokes the stormy New England coast, the electric guitar provides an impressively wide array of ghostly sound-effects and echoes.

Sheik's music bears the undeniable influences of pop, aspires to Broadway dimension and features an elaborate orchestration all at the same time. By crossing multiple boundaries of genre and style, Sheik is well on his way to creating his own. Something we might call “symphonic pop.”

The next piece on the program was French-Canadian Claude Vivier's Zipangu—a reference to Japan as it was known at the time of Marco Polo. Outwater explained from the stage that the music focuses rather on the “idea” of Japan as the far-away place of mystery and intrigue to Marco Polo, and not necessarily on the country itself or its music.

Zipangu calls for a 13-piece string ensemble and has a striking introspective quality. It takes the listener—as the proverbial Marco Polo—on a distant journey to the remote corners of the self. One of the most prominent features of the music is its rough bowing technique, which draws multiple tones from one note. In this regard, Vivier joins the ranks of 20th century avant-garde composers who used musical instruments in unconventional ways, seeking to produce sounds not originally intended for the instrument.

San Francisco Symphony associate concertmaster Nadya Tichman truly outdid herself, not only with her flawless technique and variety of sound, but also as the musical glue that held the piece together in this difficult and highly demanding work.

Zipangu is a clear testament that, had he not been silenced by murder in 1983, Claude Vivier is likely to have become an influential voice in contemporary art music.

The orchestral suite from the ballet Les biches (“The Does,” as in female deers) by Francis Poulenc made for a strong ending to the concert. While Vivier's music featured sounds the instruments may not have been intended for, Poulenc takes the conventional “intended” sonorities of each instrument to new heights with his breathtaking orchestral writing.

Poulenc originally composed Les biches in 1923 for Diaghilev, but wrote the orchestral suite 16 years later as a stand-alone concert piece. While the subject of the ballet may have been inspired by Nijinsky's choreography of the Prelude to the Afternoon of a Fawn, Poulenc's music has little in common with that of Debussy.

The music prominently features rhythmic motifs well-suited for dance. The rapid tempos and quickly shifting dynamics require an orchestra of the highest caliber, led by a capable conductor. San Francisco Symphony and its own former Youth Orchestra music director Edwin Outwater proved to be equal to the task.

The most striking aspect of Les biches is its use of musical norms established in the preceding century, a stylistic feature now commonly labeled as “neo-classical.” Poulenc's music shares this retrospective quality with that of his fellow members of the group of young, aspiring musicians known as "Les Six" (“The Six”) in 1920s Paris.

Incidentally, Les Six has ties to the Bay Area through one of its members, namely Darius Milhaud, who moved to America and taught at Oakland's Mills College.

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Eman Isadiar teaches piano at the Peninsula Conservatory and writes about music in the San Francisco Bay Area.