United States Mahler, Widmann: Ying Fang (soprano), Alina Ibragimova (violin), San Francisco Symphony / Robin Ticciati (conductor). Davies Symphony Hall, San Francisco, 20.1.2023. (HS)
Jorg Widmann – Violin Concerto
Mahler – Symphony No.4 in G main
Conductor Robin Ticciati made a powerful, and lengthy overdue, debut with the San Francisco Symphony on Friday in a Mahler Symphony No.4 that unrolled with mesmerizing specificity. He and the orchestra discovered a beautiful musical arch within the piece’s hodgepodge of mini-episodes.
Ticciati isn’t any stranger to American audiences, having made splashes with the Philadelphia and Cleveland orchestras and on the Metropolitan Opera in New York. His credentials embody positions as music director of the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, music director of Glyndebourne Festival Opera and (till 2018) principal conductor of the Scottish Chamber Orchestra. This expertise and maturity confirmed up big-time in a program that featured Mahler’s sunniest symphony and up to date German composer Jorg Widmann’s densely packed Violin Concerto.
In the Mahler, Ticciati formed phrases with delicate rubato and a pure really feel for dynamics and orchestral stability. Smooth tempo shifts made the melodies cohere as they bounced across the orchestra (a notable characteristic of this symphony). The outcome was a efficiency that unfolded gracefully, with a way of inevitability.
This orchestra is aware of its means round Mahler, as is demonstrated in its full compilation of all of the symphonies and different huge orchestral works underneath former music director Michael Tilson Thomas from the early 2000s. The principals excelled, from concertmaster Alexander Barantschik to trumpeter Mark Inouye, timpanist Edward Stephan and percussionist Jacob Nissly (on sleigh bells), every contributing a spread of delicate flavors with their very own moments within the solar.
Tempo shifts within the first motion’s bouncy opening, with its rustic tunes and responses from different components of the orchestra, felt completely pure. The improvement turned this manner and that gracefully, and the second motion Scherzo, with its eerie-yet-jaunty solos on the concertmaster’s additional violin tuned a complete tone up, proceeded with loads of juice, albeit quietly and barely held again.
The glories, nonetheless, had been the soul-hugging Adagio third motion and the extraordinary finale, a music of each humor and sweetness that ended with a whisper in suspended silence.
The Adagio performed out with sonorous texture and a delicate pulse that made the lengthy strains glow. Toward the tip of the slow-paced theme and variations, the waves of sentimental sounds shifted into an excellent mode as the total orchestra ventured into an E-major climax earlier than subsiding once more within the house key of G main. That was fantastically articulated by all palms.
The finale introduced out soprano Ying Fang, a well-known determine each with the symphony and the opera right here. Her creamy voice and chic stature lavished beautiful persona on the recurring remaining strains of every verse. The music, which Mahler tailored from ‘Der Himmel hängt voll Geigen’ (‘Heaven Is Hung with Violins’), certainly one of his Wunderhorn songs, describes a heaven of distinctly human character by which ‘We dance and leap, we jump and sing’. The music describes scrumptious meals and the final verse focuses on the music. It all ends on a heart-melting musical phrase that Fang delivered completely.
Before intermission, Russian violinist Alina Ibragimova, who performs within the Chiarascuro Quartet and concertizes largely in Europe, made her San Francisco Symphony debut with the Widmann concerto from 2007. It proved to be a half hour of thickly packed, frankly dissonant polyphony, though the composer’s program observe pressured that he needed the piece to be all about making the instrument sing.
That it does, and Ibragimova performed it with loads of coronary heart and soul, however with little rhythm to leaven the textures it may be tough going for a listener. Ticciati, for his half, centered on retaining every part collectively, leaving the emotional content material to the soloist, who by no means stops enjoying. I for one would have appreciated extra spaciousness within the orchestra’s contributions, which regularly overwhelmed the person violin. Not till the ultimate phrases did the music discover a much-needed subtlety, because it completed with a welcome hush.
Harvey Steiman