Cabrera Does Wonders with Symphony of Teens

By Eman Isadiar

When San Francisco Opera’s artistic leadership was transferred from Donald Runnicles to Nicola Luisotti, the associate conductor under the former régime didn’t have far to go to find a new job. Donato Cabrera, simply packed his baton and crossed the street from the War Memorial Opera House to Davies Symphony Hall, where he now serves as San Francisco Symphony’s newest assistant conductor and music director of its acclaimed Youth Orchestra. Cabrera’s first matinee concert on November 15 was a clear testament to his rare skill not only as a conductor, but as an educator and motivator of young musicians.

Donato Cabrera begins his first season as San Francisco Symphony’s newest assistant conductor and music director of the Youth Orchestra (photo courtesy of San Francisco Symphony).

The program opened with The Infernal Machine by contemporary American composer Christopher Rouse. The title—which is not to be taken in the “diabolical” sense—could refer to the technical demands of a large orchestra, among whose instruments appear a slapstick, ratchet and sandpaper blocks.

Requiring the highest level of rhythmic precision, this brief symphonic work awakens, excites and invigorates with its relentless pace and constant musical surprises. After hearing Rouse’s five-minute showpiece, one could easily spend twice as long wondering just how such sounds were possible.

Rouse later used The Infernal Machine as the second movement of a larger symphonic work titled Phantasmata.

Compared to the works of later composers, Haydn’s plentiful symphonies are often perceived as naively optimistic and gentle. Yet the second piece on Cabrera’s program, namely Symphony No. 92 by Haydn (also known as the Oxford), offered the perfect counterbalance to the opening music by Christopher Rouse.

As though the rhythmic complexity of the preceding piece had somehow heightened the listener’s awareness, the delicate nuances of Haydn’s musical symmetry came through with elegance and clarity.

While the symphony was one of three works commissioned to be performed in Paris, it was reportedly conducted by Haydn in 1791 at a ceremony in London, where the composer was awarded an honorary doctorate in music. Owing to the occasion of its premiere, the work was immediately dubbed the Oxford Symphony.

In passages alternating between major and minor modes, Haydn creates a sense of contrast between light and dark, tension and release. Haydn’s own unique brand of counterpoint is ever present in this work, and clear thematic relationships from one movement to the next bind the symphony together as a cohesive whole.

It was in the program’s final piece, Edward Elgar’s Enigma Variations, where the extraordinary skill and passion of the young musicians came shining through with dazzling brilliance. The piece also brought to focus the electrifying chemistry between Cabrera and the youthful talent now in his care.

The Enigma Variations form a set of theme and fourteen variations, each depicting one of Elgar’s close personal friends and colleagues. Using the individual’s nickname, initials, or a linguistic code as the title for each variation, Elgar keeps the identities of his subjects somewhat secret; hence the “enigma.” Biographers and musicologists, however, have long since unraveled every last one of Elgar’s mysterious subjects in exacting detail.

Specific musical elements in each variation depict one or more of the subject’s character traits—often with affection or humor—as well as a general impression of the individual’s personality. Winifred Norbury’s laugh in Variation VIII, titled W.N., or Dora Penny’s stutter in Variation X, titled Dorabella, are both unmistakable examples of the tender fondness with which Elgar remembers his friends in this musical tribute.

The grand finale of Variation XIV, titled E.D.U., is an allusion to the composer’s own nickname, “Edu”, as he was often called by his wife, Alice, and also contains references to some of the earlier variations. In this section, the music reaches exhilarating dynamic peaks for a befitting conclusion to what has become Elgar’s best-known large-scale composition.

The San Francisco Symphony Youth Orchestra remains among the nation’s top teen ensembles (photo courtesy of San Francisco Symphony).

With such a widely varied program in form and style, the San Francisco Symphony Youth Orchestra once again proved itself capable of tackling the most challenging of symphonic works worthy of its venerable adult counterpart. Under Maestro Cabrera’s leadership, this highly gifted symphony of teens promises to achieve great victories in seasons to come.

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

Close of Landmark Seasons for Youth Orchestra, New Century Chamber Orchestra

By Eman Isadiar

Benjamin 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.

Benjamin Shwartz conducted San Francisco Symphony’s Youth Orchestra in his final concert on May 17, 2009. (Photo courtesy of San Francisco Symphony)

Youth Orchestra Conductor Bids Farewell

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

Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg concludes her first season as music director of the New Century Chamber Orchestra. (Photo by Jim Block)

On her blog, Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg declares herself to be officially “bi-coastal” following her appointment as music director of San Francisco’s New Century Chamber Orchestra. She continues to maintain her primary residence in New York while wrapping up her first season in the Bay Area with record-breaking results, both in terms of concert attendance and revenue for the ensemble.

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.

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