Monthly Archives: April 2025

Music of the Americas: South & North

Davies Symphony Hall, San Francisco, April 10, 2025 — This concert was interesting, innovative, excellent. The conductor was Marin Alsop. It was her first appearance conducting the San Francisco Symphony on a subscription program. Her conducting is expressive through arm and hand movements. Her body language is clear and powerful. It was exceptional. The orchestra was with her as she led them in compositions new to many in the audience.

Marin Alsop

The concert opened with Antropolis, by Gabriela Ortiz. It is fantastic. The title is an invented name for the sounds of Mexico City. It is best to quote the composer: “a piece that narrates the sound of the city through its dance halls and nightclubs…I wanted to pay a very personal tribute to some of those antros or emblematic dance halls of Mexico city that left a special sonorous imprint in my memory. These cabarets or dance halls represent the nostalgia for rumberas and live dance orchestras, such as El Bombay, where it is said that Che Guevara would twirl, or the Salon  Colonia, which seems to have come out of dreams taken from a film of the Golden Age of Mexican cinema…”

Gabriela Ortiz, Composer

This music’s rhythms are sensational; the percussion section has so many different kinds of percussion instruments. They include timpani, cymbals, suspended cymbal, cowbell, almglocken, claves, maracas, guiro, metal guiro… Well, there are eleven more, but the list will take over the whole article. Only ten minutes long, I would have gladly heard it again. The composer, among other awards, was the first woman composer “inducted into the Collegio Nacional, 2022. She now holds the “composer’s chair at Carnegie Hall.” The SFS musicians had smiles all over their faces; something challengingly different. Musicians and audience had a great time.

Gabriela Montero, composer/pianist

Piano Concerto No. 1, Latin, by Gabriela Montero; she played the piano in her Concerto. Her compositions often have a political, humanitarian purpose or represent events in Venezuela, her home country. She composed Ex Patria for piano and orchestra in recognition of the 19,336 individuals who were murdered, in 2011. She wrote Canaimo: A Quintet for Piano and Strings, 2024. She received the Vaclav Havel Prize for Creative Dissent from the Human Rights Foundation. The Quintet was premiered at the ceremony. The composer describes her thoughts: “European formalism and the informality of Latin America’s rich, rhythmical identity merge in a complementary dance of both the joyful and macabre. Writing my concerto, I set out to describe the complex and often contradictory character of Latin America, from the rhymically exuberant to the forebodingly demonic… ”  The Concerto has three movements; Mambo, Andante moderato, Allegro venezolano. There is a strong shift from the exciting dance music of happy people to the danger of the evil forces which, in the real world, are dedicated to destroy that delightful dance and, as the composer wrote, holds “our continent hostage to tyranny in its multiple guises.” This very special Concerto puts reality into music that is as exquisite as it is frightening. The audience’s enthusiastic applause led the composer/pianist to improvise an encore which might have been imagined by Haydn.

Aaron Copland, composer (1900-1990)

Percussion was a theme of the evening. Aaron Copland wrote Fanfare for the Common Man for a project from the Cincinnati Symphony. Eighteen composers were invited to create a fanfare for percussion and brass. The fanfares would open the Cincinnati Symphony’s programs, in 1942-1943. American citizens were fighting in World War II. The Symphony’s conductor, Eugene Goossens’ intention was to create patriotic feelings. Copland said he had thought of different themes for his fanfare, but he chose the “common man, after all, who was doing all the dirty work in the war and the army….He deserved a fanfare.” The piece was played with care. It was not rushed; the brass announces pride and determination. It is only three minutes, but it delivers its salute majestically.

Joan Tower, composer

Joan Tower’s three minute Fanfare for the Uncommon Woman No. 1 was a perfect parallel. It was also written for brass and percussion, but her list of percussion was longer.  It includes snare drum, medium bass drum, cymbals, high and medium gong, tam-tam, tom-toms, large bass drum, temple blocks and triangle. Copland had bass drum and tam -tam.  Tower’s Fanfare premiered in 1987, with the Houston Symphony. Her idea caught on; there are now six Fanfares for the Uncommon Woman. No. 1 was dedicated to Marin Alsop. Tower kept on with the Fanfares, and dedicated each one to an adventurous woman who take risks. Four of the six are scored for three trumpets, four horns, three trombones, tuba, and percussion. That is the instrumentation of Copland’s Fanfare. The second one (1989) added one percussion. The third one, debuted 1991, has a double brass quintet. The fourth and sixth are scored for a full orchestra; the fifth was commissioned by the Aspen Music Festival, 1993.I listened to find the differences between them. It seems to me that the percussion instruments added decoration. The light, sort of circular sounds, were more delicate and used the diverse percussion instruments to give Tower’s more of a universal sound. They added sounds that might have come from South America, possibly Asia. Actually Copland’s and Tower’s make a good pair.

Samuel Barber, composer

The program closed with Symphony No. 1, Opus 9, by Samuel Barber. He wrote it in 1935-36, but revised it, in 1943. The SFS played it beautifully and kept the emotional aspects on the surface. Barber did not hide from the dark and occasional light moods of his four movement Symphony. The movements are not separated with pauses. Instead, like a view seen over hills and fields, the view encompasses the variations into a whole, going into darkness and climbing up to sunlight. There are pieces by Barber that bring me down. Then, I need to listen to a different selection. The strength that Marin Alsop and the SFS brought to Barber’s Symphony No. 1 was a success that can open one’s heart.

 

 

 

 

SF Symphony: Brahms & Shostakovich

Davies Symphony Hall, San Francisco, March 30 — This was a great program. Brahms’ Violin Concerto in D Major, Opus 77 and Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 10 in E minor, Opus 93.

If you ever learn that Gil Shaham, violinist, is playing near you, someplace on this same planet, go to hear and see him. He was the guest soloist playing Brahms’ Violin Concerto in D major. He is a blissful musician and shares the bliss with his audience. As he played, he related to the conductor, Juraj Valcuha, and also turned toward the Concertmaster, Alexander (Sasha) Barantschik. It seemed that he wanted their experiences in the music to fit with each other so that they enjoyed making music together.

Gil Shaham, violinist,  He performs regularly with the Berlin Philharmonic, Boston Symphony, Chicago Symphony, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Orchestre de Paris, Israel Philharmonic. He has multi-year residencies with Montreal Symphony, Stuttgart Philharmonic, Singapore Symphony.

The Concerto is something different in Brahms’ repertoire and new to the late19th century audience for serious music. “Normally,” in concerti of the era, the orchestra was a frame for the music made by the soloist. The soloist dominated the two-some. In this concerto, they are equals. It also offers new, off-center rhythms that made the listeners at the 1879 premiere decide it was a strange Brahms, as though he had heard wisps of this music from E.T. The first movement has a lovely, lyrical method to carry through changes from major to minor and the presence of Hungarian folk tunes folded into this Allegro non troppo. I remember it, even when there are surprising switches, as a deep and moving quiet, moving like a river, not entirely moving like an emotion. This is where an Adagio oboe melody drifts through gentle but never weak, winds. The violin brings more musical strife and then it all becomes calm, but never still. The finale, Allegro giocoso ma non troppo (happy but not too happy) is obviously demanding over-the-top technical brilliance. Shaham was in clover. It was not a bit challenging to him as the full audience were thrilled.

Johannes Brahms, composer (1833-1897)  This is the first Violin Concerto he wrote. He was pounced on by writers and music lovers. What had he done? He had made a great piece with new sounds and rhythms which were not welcomed. The reception rattled him so much that he destroyed his second violin concerto and never wrote another. Occasionally, I hear the finale movement of the Violin Concerto in D major on the radio, but not the whole concerto. It is a rare jewel. Shaham, Valcuha, and the SF Symphony gave it the performance it deserves.

Dmitri Shostakovich, composer (1906-1975)

On one of my first visits to the San Francisco Symphony, I learned that they would not play anything by Shostakovich. It shocked me. The idea was that Shostakovich was a loyal Russian Communist, and therefore an enemy. Later, Leonard Slatkin was a guest conductor. He spoke to the audience and encouraged them to understand Shostakovich’s hunted life, and appreciate the greatness of his music. It surprises me now to note that some music writers still assume that Shostakovich was all about Communism and writing music that supported the current ideals. Some even treat the two times he had lost approval by Stalin’s regime was, “after all, only twice.” This is a great composer. He could not have his work performed. He could not work. He wrote for movies, and tried to be rehabilitated. He had to know that other artists had been sent to Siberia, which was a place to die, or, they were shot. When he was allowed to go to the US as an artist on display but with grim chaperones, he was reported to look like a prisoner speaking what he had to say. He was denounced by the authorities, lost his teaching positions, did not write between his Symphony No. 9, 1945, until the Symphony No. 10, 1953. What happened? Stalin died. So, the question about his Symphony No.10 in E minor, Opus 93 is whether the Symphony was specifically about Stalin. For myself, I think it is about Stalin, but not as a portrait of that dictator. The atmosphere, what there was to breathe, what to think, how not to think was all Stalin and his cohorts all the time. Shostakovich and other artists who lived in Stalin’s world had lives which were continually repressed by the entire regime. Shostakovich was there; his family and private life were constantly in danger.

Shostakovich at the piano

The Symphony opens with the cellos and basses. Moderato, it has a sound lying under the music; that sound says, “Be careful. You may be watched.” The strings carry the movement forward to language from solo instruments: a clarinet solo, a horn fills the music, more clarinet, and a flute accompanying plucking strings. The whole orchestra builds its very loud cries, and the music becomes even louder. Briefly, it sounds like an army. The movement ends with piccolo and timpani. The listener, becoming anxious, catches her breath, but still the eyes open wide in the quiet but ghostly end. The second movement is an Allegro, like a super fast scherzo. It is rushing to the edge of the moon. Is someone running away? Is a whole nation running after…what? It pushes the heart of the music. There is no moment to think; the strings play very, very quietly. The scherzo abruptly cuts itself off. The third movement has three styles: Allegretto – Lento – Allegretto. It is not so fast as the Allegro, but runs briskly. Then, there are slower moments and a return to the brisk movement. There is a teasing, lively mood that has that under lying, troubling, secret sound. The piccolo, flute, timpani, and triangle present a sardonic tone as the music marches on. The Symphony ends with Andante – Allegro beginning similarly to the first movement’s cellos and basses. A lovely oboe almost calms the music as once again the flute flies solo. Now, the wildness of the second movement becomes an energetic, klezmer. It is at last a joyful sound for all of us.