SEEN AND HEARD INTERNATIONAL

Tchaikovsky/Stravinsky, Shostakovich, Rachmaninoff: Vadim Gluzman, violin; San Francisco Symphony, James Gaffigan, conductor. Davies Symphony Hall, San Francisco, 1.5.2008 (HS)


When this program was announced last year, Yuri Temirkanov was to conduct it, which made perfect sense. The venerable Russian conductor would have had a field day with a program of music written by Russian composers in the 1940s but which harked back to the High Romantic era. When he bowed out, James Gaffigan, the symphony's associate conductor since 2006, got the assignment. It's hard to imagine this music sounding much better than it did. He led the orchestra in a charming Bluebird Pas de Deux from the ballet Sleeping Beauty, written by Tchaikovsky and delicately revised by Stravinsky; a vivid account of the Shostakovich Violin Concerto No. 1, and a deft reading of Rachmaninoff's Symphonic Dances, Op. 45.

The concerto was easily the high point of the afternoon. Even the gray-haired Thursday matinee crowd, usually half somnulant, roused itself to give the violinist, Vadim Gluzman, a well-deserved standing ovation for his work in the Shostakovich. Ukrainian-born, the 35-year Israeli inhabited the music totally, spinning out his lines like a born story teller.

Shostakovich calls on the violin to carry the load throughout this four-movement piece. The soloist hardly stops playing. In the opening movement, he arched the long melody with seamless legato, never losing an ounce of the Nocturne's gentle momentum. The final pages, with the soft chiming of the celesta and harp as counterpoint, were especially captivating.

The gruff scherzo, which follows, turns the spotlight on the orchestra, and Gaffigan established a rollicking rhythm that left plenty of room for the nasty dissonances and bite that seem to mock an over-the-top Russian vodka party. As sweet and serene a mood as Gluzman established in the Nocturne, he dug in with no fear of coarsening the tone of his Strad in this music.

The tone was different yet in the slow Passacaglia that makes up the third movement. The low register of his instrument, in counterpoint with the Passacaglia theme, sounded like a lament a Russian baritone might sing in a Mussorgsky opera. Again, Gluzman was impressive in the way he seemed to marshal the momentum, culminating in a superbly intelligent and powerful performance of the long cadenza that ties this movement with the finale. In lesser hands, the cadenza can seem repetitious, the reiterations almost bullying, but Gluzman made it fresh and inspired.

The finale, Burlesca, took off like a race car and never flagged. The snippets of music from the previous movements only added to the momentum, leading to the abrupt finish with a satisfying crash.

Gaffigan fit the orchestra's part to Gluzman's nicely, but his work in the opening piece was even better. Stravinsky added some delicate instrumentational glosses and sprinkled occasional tart harmonic seasonings on Tchaikovsky's music, but Gaffigan played it straight. Rather than emphasize these changes, he conducted the piece as if Tchaikovsky had written every note, which is most likely what Stravinsky would have wanted. The results were ravishing.

The Rachmaninoff opus, which occupied the second half of the program, was his last completed work. Although it is sprinkled with waltzes and quick marches, this is basically a serious work, wrought with allusions to the composer's earlier works, some of the references painful. It is a piece that can trudge rather than dance in performance, but to Gaffigan's credit he managed to get some lift from the rhythms and keep the dense orchestration from overwhelming them. Especially pleasing was the serene coda of the first movement, with glockenspiel, piano, harp and piccolo tinkling against a lovely, quiet melody. That worked better than the more densely scored pages.

Harvey Steiman

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