Berlioz, Foss, Brahms: San Francisco Symphony, Dawn Upshaw, soprano; Michael Tilson Thomas, conductor, Davies Symphony Hall, San Francisco, 29.09.2006 (HS)

 

 

Back from a two-week residence at the Lucerne Music Festival in Switzerland, the San Francisco Symphony seems to have taken on a decidedly European sound in is first subscription concerts since returning. The high-calorie string sound, burnished brass and mellow woodwind timbres certainly suited the program, which began with Berlioz Benvenuto Cellini overture and climaxed with Brahms Symphony No. 4. In between came Lukas Foss' strange little 1960 song set, Time Cycle, an awkward fit at best.

 

Music director Michael Tilson Thomas hasn't conducted a lot of Brahms here, generally leaving that to conductor emeritus Herbert Blomstedt, who has made that composer something of a specialty over the years in his two-week visits.

 

Tilson Thomas favored stately tempos, even in the scherzo. This may run contrary to his usual approach of barely restrained vigor, but it works for Brahms on several counts. By backing off on the tempo, the conductor gave the work the space to bloom. The orchestra reveled in Brahms' sonic world, and we had time to savor the jingling triangle underlining a chord in the scherzo, Brahms' plush voicings of the strings in the opening measures of the finale, and the gentle laying on of woodwinds in the slow movement's climaxes. The slower pace also made for gentle rubatos here and there to spice things up and emphasize some of Brahms' gestures.

 

Also, the slower tempo lent a bit more gravitas to Brahms' autumnal symphony, his last and weightiest. This is not, after all, sunny music, and it doesn't triumph at the end. On the other hand, this performance never lagged. An underlying rhythmic propulsion kept the music flowing, even surging at times, without ever feeling rushed. That's a neat trick, but it's a measure of the communication between this conductor and his orchestra.

 

The Brahms was so strong that it almost completely overshadowed the first half of the program, which opened with a lively but sonorous account of Berlioz' oft-played overture. It gave every section a chance to show off, always a feature of Berlioz, whose orchestrations are nothing if not colorful.

 

Soprano Dawn Upshaw was the main reason to hear Time Cycle, in its full orchestral version. The lyric soprano, who makes a specialty of modern music, lavished her bright, creamy sound on Foss' jagged melodic line, and actually managed to corral it into something highly listenable and meaningful. She was especially moving in the fourth song, Nietzsche's "O mensch! Gib Acht!" Where Strauss and Mahler made the poem into something noble and stirring, Foss goes for resignation. The filigree of orchestral textures and delicate chiming of the antique cymbals at the end emerged gorgeously.

 

The weirdnesses of the first three settings, of Auden, Houseman and Kafka, are of a time and place when composers were flailing about, seeking new approaches to serious music that seemed boxed in by serialism. Foss adjusts his tone rows to make them more harmonic than were Schönberg's, his model for this. But it still sounds dated and fussy, until you get to the fourth song.

 

Tilson Thomas took a delicate approach to draw out as much charm as possible, but in the end it was Upshaw who made the most of it.

 

 

 

Harvey Steiman