SEEN AND HEARD INTERNATIONAL

Brahms, Berg: San Francisco Symphony, Michael Tilson Thomas (conductor), Yefim Bronfman (piano), Davies Symphony Hall, 26.11.2010 (HS)

 

When a youthful Johannes Brahms, still in his mid-twenties, wrote what became the Piano Concerto No. 1, his first impulse was to mold it into a symphony. It still feels like a symphonic narrative, eschewing for the most part the showy frills of most Romantic-era concertos, and that was one important reason it fit neatly into the second half of the San Francisco Symphony’s subscription program last week, in the place usually occupied by a symphony.

Having Yefim Bronfman at the keyboard added nothing but class, too. Only two weeks since a week’s hospital stay in Germany for severe diverticulitis, Bronfman gave not an inch in a subtly shaped and precisely articulated performance of the concerto. Heard Friday in the second of three performances with Michael Tilson Thomas on the podium, the big moments lacked nothing in power or rhythmic drive, but the most compelling attributes lay in the details.

Bronfman effortlessly articulated the layers of trills for the pianist that tie together so many elements in the narrative, sometimes a single line, at other times in octaves or in whole chords, and in both hands. Phrases had shape. They pulsed, dodged and darted, always pointing to the next one. Bronfman drew a wide tonal variety from the Steinway’s sounds. The opening piano phrase, which so many pianists rush in an attempt to make it seem flashier, stayed in tempo, with the same sense of flourish as the orchestra’s approach. None of this felt weighty or mannered. The music flowed.

 

This was especially so in the Adagio, which Tilson Thomas never allowed to drag, always with a gentle pulse, completely ravishing in its sonorities. On the other hand, the outer movements never felt pushed or hurried, even as they scurried along. They never flagged. A totally satisfying performance all around.

The same could not be said for Brahms’ Academic Festival Overture, which opened the concert. All of it was carefully played, but it lacked the effusiveness that can make the final pages such a joy. Tempos seemed stodgy, dynamics subdued, and there wasn’t much to differentiate the opening bits from the climax.

Much better was the second work on the program, Berg’s Three Pieces from the Lyric Suite. Adapted for string orchestra by the composer, it consists of three of the six movements from the original suite for string quartet. The sequence begins with the Andante amaroso, goes on to the Allegro misterioso—Trio ecstatico, and concludes with the Adagio appasionato. As the movement’s tempo markings suggest, this is hardly the intellectual 12-tone music usually associated with serialists such as Berg. Dissonant it is, but Berg seems more interested in creating beautiful resonances, and even sneaks in a triad here and there.

Tilson Thomas was in his element with this piece, drawing music that can almost be described as coquettish in the first movement, a delicate filagree of skittering muted strings in the second, and outright Romantic exultation in the finale. The finish, with its quiet sonorities, seemed to settle into something resembling reverence.

Harvey Steiman