This week Pablo Heras-Casado has returned to the podium of the San Francisco Symphony (SFS) in Davies Symphony Hall, having made his debut here last season in October of 2010. While his debut program covered a broad span of music history, from Felix Mendelssohn to György Kurtág, for this visit he chose to focus entirely on the twentieth century. Furthermore, perhaps in conjunction with his recent appointment as Principal Conductor of the Orchestra of St. Luke’s, he offered a repertoire of four compositions all on chamber orchestra scale.
The overall result was nothing less than stunning. If the SFS Centennial Season has emerged as an opportunity to appreciate the many facets of the sonorities of the ensemble, then, by selecting compositions requiring smaller-scale resources, Heras-Casado made it clear that there were still many facets to discover and enjoy. Furthermore, he made this point by selecting four composers representative of just how diverse the twentieth-century was in its approach to orchestral music.
He began with the retrospective stance of Igor Stravinsky’s neoclassical period, a concerto for chamber orchestra solidly in E-flat major given the somewhat cryptic subtitle “Dumbarton Oaks 8-v-1938.” The work was composed to celebrate the 30th wedding anniversary of Robert Woods Bliss and Mildred Barnes Bliss (hence the date in the subtitle), named for their estate in the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, DC. The piece is in three movements, played without a break and scored for flute, E-flat clarinet, bassoon, two horns, three violins, three violas, two cellos, and two double basses.
In true chamber style each instrument has its own part, and this is one of Stravinsky’s most inventive explorations into how instrumental sonorities could be combined in profuse variety. All this was cast in the structural forms of the Baroque concerto grosso, beginning with a brash appropriation of the opening motif of Johann Sebastian Bach’s third “Brandenburg” concerto in this genre. However, that motif is just the initial kick that sets in motion a dynamo of joyous themes bouncing from one instrument to another, all with the simultaneous energy of the sort of social chatter than must have dominated the Bliss anniversary party. This is thoroughly cheerful music, untainted by sarcasm or irony.
Heras-Casado established this spirit from his opening gesture and never let it flag for the duration. (There are a few catch-your-breath pauses in the overall flow of energy; but they simply prepare for the next burst.) His balancing of the individual voices was always effective in disclosing the inner workings of Stravinsky’s score, and he found just the right approaches to phrasing to insure the clear expression of all thematic content. There could be no better way for a visiting conductor to greet the audience with, “I’m back!”
For the first half of the program, Stravinsky’s chamber concerto was coupled with Maurice Ravel’s G major piano concerto, composed about seven years earlier in 1931. While there is no disputing the central role of the piano, the accompaniment is one of an extensive variety of solo voices from the wind and brass sections (along with an abundance of percussion). Thus, in the interest of effective balance, it made sense for Heras-Casado to perform this piece with a scaled-back string section. The result was an ensemble execution as transparent in its clarity as the Stravinsky concerto had been; and, if Stravinsky had been motivated by prankish retrospection of the Baroque, Ravel’s motives were unabashedly jazzy, particularly through the influences of George Gershwin’s 1924 “Rhapsody in Blue” and the F major piano concerto he composed the following year.
The soloist for this revealing performance was the young Georgian pianist Khatia Buniatishvili. She clearly sympathized with Heras-Casado’s approach to overall sonority, establishing the piano part as a “first among equals.” This is less the traditional model of dialog between soloist and ensemble and more a matter of individual instruments commenting on what the others have to say. The piano is simply allowed more time to comment but still triggers a variety of comments in response. With her solid command of technique, Buniatisvili could focus on this comment-based approach to the overall discourse, with Heras-Casdo serving as her primary mediator. The result was a strikingly original approach to a familiar score that may easily outclass what is almost a century’s worth of recordings of this twentieth-century classic.
The intermission was followed by an SFS debut: their first performances of Luigi Dallapiccola’s 1954 “Piccola musica notturna.” The title translates as “little night music,” making for strong connotations of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. However, the spirit is much more in keeping with many of the slow orchestral movements by Béla Bartók, many of which he would call “night music.” Actually, the piece is a musical interpretation of Antonio Machado’s poem “Noche de verano” (summer night). Dallapiccola originally scored it for flute, oboe, clarinet, celesta, harp, violin, viola, and cello but then rescored it for full orchestra. Here again Heras-Casado scaled back the strings, thus capturing much of the original chamber spirit of the work.
The music itself is in free serial style, owing more to some of the early efforts of Anton Webern, rather than the twelve-tone techniques of Arnold Schoenberg. The emphasis is on exploring individual motifs and the ways in which they may be combined across different voices in the orchestra score. Of particular interest is the way in which Dallapiccola can use one instrumental sonority to reinforce another with a delayed entry on a sustained tone that shifts the timbral quality of that tone. Heras-Casado had a solid command of the precision necessary to execute such intricate demands; and, while the piece was less than ten minutes in duration (still long enough to provoke the usual rustles of irritation from those still afraid of the serial genre), it was highly compelling in its brevity.
Heras-Casado concluded with the longest work on the program, the complete score that Manuel da Falla composed for the theater piece “El amor brujo” (Love, the magician). Commissioned in 1914, Falla scored the music for flamenco singer, actors, and chamber orchestra; but he then revised the work for full orchestra and mezzo-soprano in 1916. Heras-Casado conducted the 1916 version but again scaled back the string section and substituted a flamenco singer, Marina Heredia, for the mezzo part. This restored some of the original 1914 chamber sonorities, reinforced with the earthier qualities of the flamenco voice (although a microphone was necessary to appreciate Heredia’s command of those qualities). Without actors there is little sense of the original narrative, but Heras-Casado paced the performance as a suite of dances with intervening songs and episodes. Once again the sonorous qualities elicited from the SFS were the main attraction, always expertly managed by Heras-Casado’s sure hand (which never held a baton for the entire evening).
This program of two soloists was highlighted by two respective encores, both of which departed from the twentieth-century theme of the evening. Buniatishvili performed the third (and best known) of Franz Liszt’s Liebesträume piano solos from 1850. Heredia, on the other hand, offered a sample of traditional flamenco, sung without any accompaniment. Heras-Casado remained on stage for both of these encores, demonstrating, in his own quiet way, a commitment to listening that was as capable and sincere as his approach to performing.
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