United States Ben-Haim, Mahler: Israel Philharmonic / Lahav Shani (conductor). Davies Symphony Hall, San Francisco, 6.11.2022. (HS)
Paul Ben-Haim – Symphony No.1
Mahler – Symphony No.1 in D main
On its first American tour since conductor Lahav Shani changed longtime music director Zubin Mehta in 2020, the Israel Philharmonic re-introduced itself to San Francisco audiences with expansive works by Gustav Mahler and midcentury Israeli composer Paul Ben-Haim. They delivered massive sound and a transparent understanding of the place the music desires to go, which resulted in an gratifying night.
Shani, making his U.S. debut, has been related to the orchestra since 2013 as piano soloist, bassist and conductor. The present 10-city tour, which was postponed by the pandemic, started final week in southern California and concludes with stops in Miami on the Arsht Center, Cleveland in Severance Hall and New York at Carnegie Hall.
A grueling schedule of day by day concert events might account for some unsteadiness that made their San Francisco efficiency a bit ragged across the edges. Still, Shani and the orchestra capitalized on the massive, memorable moments in each works.
Ben-Haim holds a pioneer’s place in Israel’s classical music historical past. European-born and educated, he was a conducting assistant to Bruno Walter and Hans Knappenbusch in Germany earlier than emigrating to Palestine in 1933. Ben-Haim composed this First Symphony in 1940 for the nascent Palestine Symphony (which turned the Israel Philharmonic after statehood in 1948).
The 30-minute piece displays the composer’s signature Ernest Bloch-like Romanticism with tinges of Middle Eastern and Jewish musical tropes, notably within the lengthy, unique melodic line of the second motion. The outer actions journey in massive buildups to crashing climaxes. If all of it felt a bit disconnected, the culminations landed squarely.
There’s a Jewish thread operating by way of Mahler’s Symphony No.1 within the wry references to vernacular music, which had been among the many highlights of this efficiency. The massive fanfares and the solos all through the orchestra got here off nice. However, quieter preludes and transitions – the sinews that join these muscle mass – not a lot.
The opening ambiance, for instance, was too loud, and it missed the thriller within the music’s ethereal portrait of nature. Shani’s regular tempos on this introductory part minimized what ought to have communicated a way of improvisation. The muted-trumpet fanfares offstage had been barely audible from my orchestra seat. But as soon as the primary themes arrived, all was properly, with deft shadings of dynamics and a beautiful circulation. Shani made this occur with a knack for coloring each tone and tempo.
The rustic, thumping Ländler of the Scherzo might have danced a bit too genteelly to get essentially the most out of the distinction with the motion’s candy interludes, however every little thing moved alongside well and targeted on all the fitting parts.
The gradual motion left the perfect impression. Principal bass Brendan Kane received issues began with a solemn intoning of the minor-key ‘Frère Jacques’ tune, and it made its manner across the orchestra properly, the tread marked by timpani. Even higher, the transition to and execution of the Klezmer-influenced center part delivered all the colour and swagger one might need.
The chaotic opening of the finale injected the required boisterousness, and the music settled into Mahler’s extraordinary journey from pending annihilation to a way of hope and, lastly, triumphal fanfares and brass hymns. Shani’s pacing was particularly good.
Balances, as with the inaudible fanfares within the first motion, had been a bit off. When the seven French horn gamers stood up and raised the bells of their devices for that last descending scale, we missed what Mahler explicitly needed, ‘to drown out the rest of the orchestra, even the trumpets’. The trumpets and trombones received this spherical.
The end was nonetheless thrilling sufficient to demand an encore, and Shani went again to Ben-Haim for that. Appropriately, it was the six-minute ‘Fanfare to Israel’ that dates from 1950. It opens with a brass fanfare after which begins a protracted construct as much as a triumphant climax, wedging in some Israeli-sounding tunes alongside the way in which. A reprise of the previous couple of pages of the Mahler symphony might need been higher.
Harvey Steiman