Every conductor has to negotiate between the natural tendencies of an orchestra and the actual notes on the page. When those pages are by Gustav Mahler, that’s a fine balance to strike.
The Austrian composer drew on his expertise as a conductor when crafting his orchestral parts, writing additional admonitions for players not to rush or swell in measures already straining with musical information. Thus, the contemporary conductor’s conundrum: Do too much and you’re an egomaniac, but do too little and the music fails to emote.
On Thursday, Feb. 6, at Davies Symphony Hall, Estonian American conductor Paavo Järvi led the San Francisco Symphony in a performance of Mahler’s Seventh Symphony that was risky but exciting, like a reverse dive off a cliff.
From the piece’s opening fanfare, which portends much darkness to come over the next 75 minutes, the sound was bracing, the pacing desperate. Some of the phrases unraveled; a few players came in wrong.
Whatever Mahler’s score says, it’s unusual in concert for this initial storminess to stick around through the symphony’s triptych of contrasting inner movements. Some of the music’s oddities here were lost to the sheer speed of the performance. Shocking dissonances in the second movement were glossed over. The dots of the pointillistic Scherzo were so tiny as to be indistinct.
On the other hand, the determination of the second “Nachtmusik” movement, a moonlit serenade, rang true. Who can’t relate to the pressure of having to find a date on an amorous night? Many of the best moments in this section and throughout the performance came from unexpected places — a brash offbeat in the Scherzo or a sudden, shrill cry from the clarinet.
The call of the tenor horn in the first movement, played with a round and assured tone on euphonium by Paul Welcomer, set a high bar for the solos to follow, which were excellent across the board. Concertmaster Alexander Barantschik and principal cello Rainer Eudeikis shared ardent outpourings in the second “Nachtmusik.” In the first, the whole cello section came together for a slinky duet with the oboe and English horn, who imbued the line with a touchingly mournful air.
When it came to the collective sound, however, it wasn’t always clear what Järvi was trying to create. (Certainly not the delicate shading favored by Symphony Music Director Laureate Michael Tilson Thomas in his performances of Mahler’s Seventh here.) Only in the work’s most confounding movement, the Rondo-Finale, did the playing become refined in its pointed references to earlier styles, notably the pageantry of Richard Wagner.
The turmoil in the finale turns, perhaps too easily, into a triumphant processional. Is this real joy or Mahler throwing up his hands? This performance might have suggested the latter, but when it comes to the composer’s inner world, there are no easy answers.
Dmitri Shostakovich’s Piano Concerto No. 2, which soloist Kirill Gerstein performed with the Symphony on the first portion of the program, is likewise the work of an intensely private composer writing for an immensely public setting: the solo debut of his son Maxim, who would turn 19 on the day of his conservatory graduation concert.
Loving sarcasm suffuses this scholastic piece. The licks start in C major and progress, as they do in the hateful piano technique book by Charles-Louis Hanon, through increasingly difficult key signatures. The cadenza is like a moronic version of an invention by J.S. Bach.
Yet the concerto’s slow movement, with its graceful sarabande rhythms and heart-tugging suspensions, is a tender tribute to music that came before, the composer Sergei Rachmaninoff in particular. Gerstein’s gentle way of phrasing here — and in the Rachmaninoff piece he would offer as his encore, the Melodie Op. 3, No. 3 — felt all the more sweet amid the thunderous and exuberant playing of the outer movements, where Gerstein sounded every bit the young artist thrilled finally to stand in the spotlight.
This story was first published in Datebook in partnership with the San Francisco Chronicle.
