Contemporary
English composer Robin Holloway, best known
for his concertos for orchestra and his opera,
Clarissa, has a particular fascination
for Debussy. His scholarship on the turn-of-the-century
French composer, conducted in his role as
a professor at Cambridge University, is considered
pretty much definitive. So, an inspired orchestrator
well versed in Debussy seems the perfect composer
to tackle the task of bringing Debussy's two-piano
work, En Blanc et Noir (1915), to the
full orchestra. The new version of the 16-minute
work was commissioned by San Francisco Symphony
and given its debut performances in this week's
subscription concerts.
As
a realization of the timbral and textural
possibilities in Debussy's music, the piece
is endlessly fascinating. Less successful,
to my ears, are Holloway's responses to the
challenge of transferring pianistic flourishes
to wind instruments. In the big, sweeping
gestures, Holloway finds some thrilling solutions,
but single lines don't always work. In the
opening measures, for example, there's a melody
with a grace note at its apex, a lovely touch
on a piano, not so great when played by a
row of French horns. It just sounds like they're
missing the note -- in both iterations of
the melody -- until the phrase is repeated
in the woodwinds. These shorts of details
make an audience uncomfortable for the wrong
reasons.
At
other points in the work, the wash of sound
gets a bit thick and muddy, missing the clarity
Debussy so carefully crafts, even in his big
moments. And En Blanc et Noir has some
big moments. Debussy wrote it at a point in
his life when he was turning away from big,
orchestral works. This was the beginning of
the period of his life when he was turning
to smaller-scale sonatas and chamber works.
Despite his reputation for cushiony harmonies,
Debussy gives us plenty of big gestures in
these smaller works, and Holloway misses no
chance to amp them up for us. The result is
a work that seems a bit over-the-top on the
calorie count.
It
didn't help that it was followed on this program
by John Adams' 2003 work, My Father Knew
Charles Ives, also a San Francisco Symphony
commission. Adams, who calls himself an "American
ethnic" composer, pays loving tribute to that
quintessentially original American musical
force in the dense layering of colloquial
and symphonic elements and the reiterations
of elements familiar to those who know Ives'
orchestral works. Anyone familiar with Three
Places in New England will recognize Ives'
three-part form, each part anchored to a specific
location, and the Impressionistic scene-painting
achieved by juxtaposing gauzy, colorful nocturnes
with pages of craggy polyrhythms.
Hearing
the piece a second time in less than a year
-- Tilson Thomas and the orchestra took it
on tour to Europe last year and are taking
it through the eastern United States next
week -- solidifies my earlier estimation that
this is one of Adam's most successful scores.
In the opening measures, a long trumpet soliloquy
floats over a gorgeous carpet of softly dissonant
harmonies and colorful woodwind and harp interjections.
Repeated hearings reveal subtle, complex harmonies
and orchestrations. Adams is clearly a master
of his craft, and the highly personal references
-- reminiscences of the music he heard wafting
across the lake in his New England youth,
quotations from other works, from Beethoven
to the dance bands in which his father played
clarinet -- would have made Ives smile in
recognition.
My
Father Knew Charles Ives is a tour de
force of compositional chops by America's
leading composer. It's not as easy to listen
to as some of his earlier works for a big
orchestra, such as Harmonielehre or
Naïve and Sentimental Music, but
it seems to me it will take its place as one
of the important signposts in serious American
music.
Nicolai
Rimsky-Korsakov, himself a renowned orchestrator,
did some of his most vivid work in Scheherezade,
which occupied the second half of the concert.
It was an opportunity to hear the orchestra's
principals put their own personal stamps on
Rimsky's generous scattering of melodies for
them -- most notably concertmaster Alexander
Barantschik, who played the heroine's sinuous
tunes with slender and slyly sexy charm, and
clarinetist David Breeden, who shook a little
extra pepper on his moments in the spotlight.
Bassoonist Stephen Paulsen and oboist William
Bennett also distinguished themselves in their
brief turns.
Tilson
Thomas steered Rimsky's music down the middle
in a reading long on charm, emphasizing the
orchestral colors and various personalities.
On the way out, thought, the mist on that
New Hampshire lake in Adams' music was still
wafting in my ears more compellingly.
Harvey
Steiman
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