Home Theatre With Michael Tilson Thomas again on the San Francisco Symphony podium, a program of rarities springs to life – Seen and Heard International

With Michael Tilson Thomas again on the San Francisco Symphony podium, a program of rarities springs to life – Seen and Heard International

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With Michael Tilson Thomas again on the San Francisco Symphony podium, a program of rarities springs to life – Seen and Heard International

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United StatesUnited States Debussy, Messiaen, Villa-Lobos: Jean-Yves Thibaudet (piano), Cynthia Miller (ondes Martenot), San Francisco Symphony Chorus (visitor director: Grant Gershon), San Francisco Symphony / Michael Tilson Thomas (conductor). Davies Symphony Hall, San Francisco, 26.1.2023. (HS)

Michael Tilson Thomas and Jean-Yves Thibaudet share a second in the beginning of Debussy’s Fantaisie © Stefan Cohen

DebussyPrélude à l’aprés-midi d’un faune; Fantaisie for Piano and Orchestra

Messiaen – Trois petites liturgies de la Présence Divine

Villa-Lobos – Chôros No.10, ‘Rasga o coroção’

Something further infuses the San Francisco Symphony when Michael Tilson Thomas returns to conduct the band. The musicians’ signature accuracy and adaptability are there, however so is a degree of communication about tone that makes the music breathe, which was evident all through a program on Thursday at Davies Symphony Hall. All 4 items had been featured and carried out by Tilson Thomas throughout his tenure because the orchestra’s music director. Three of them have been heard solely as soon as earlier than in current reminiscence.

The conductor, who had a mind tumor eliminated in August 2021, might have regarded a bit haggard however he nonetheless confirmed full command of and communication with the orchestra. He drew forth a night of devoted taking part in in these not often heard works from composers he has at all times favored – Claude Debussy, Olivier Messiaen and Heitor Villa-Lobos. As at all times, the performances mirrored Tilson Thomas’s means to get significantly colourful textures and full of life rhythms.

The lead-in was the oh-so-familiar Prélude à l’aprés-midi d’un faune. Debussy’s delicate tone poem took on a delicate sheen, the rhythms pulsing gently, the melodic traces undulating, the tone a serene auburn. Under different conductors, Debussy’s music can typically overdo the gauziness or get a bit too clipped, however Tilson Thomas at all times finds the steadiness between precision and comfortable textures.

Guest flutist Blair Francis Paponiu (the principal’s chair is unfilled for now) delivered the opening solo with successful grace. The piece discovered an unhurried tempo that by some means by no means lagged both. What struck me most was the fluidity and unaffectedness of the music’s circulation and the light fadeout on the finish.

The Messiaen ‘Liturgies’ which adopted belied their ‘petite’-ness with the clangor of the composer’s fascination with reworking chook tune into raucous piano music and the sound of the ondes Martenot, an instrument he typically used for distinctive swooping results. An early digital keyboard instrument, the ondes can sing like an organ and swoop like a theremin to carry further whoops to ecstatic phrases, particularly when it combines with the joyful sound of a ladies’s refrain, because it did right here. The redoubtable French pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet executed the piano’s exuberance with aptitude and precision.

Tilson Thomas corralled this right into a coherent 40 minutes, managing to cram in all of the notes after which letting it explode deliriously.

The different Debussy piece, Fantaisie for Piano and Orchestra, is one thing of a rarity. Though written in 1890, it was by no means carried out earlier than Debussy’s loss of life in 1918. A rating revealed in 1919 didn’t include the composer’s vital revisions to rebalance the piano with the orchestral sound. The closing model ultimately appeared in 1968.

Although the sequence of two full of life actions round a gradual meditative Lento displays the type of a standard classical concerto, what makes it totally different is the not-quite-formal construction of the music. The piano by no means stops on this piece, and it will possibly appear as free as improvisation. Thibaudet, who excels at free-form music that may border on jazz, is a grasp of this type of factor.

Debussy’s whole-tone scales and cluster chords are about as daring because the musical language will get, however the sense of freedom and the dearth of familiarity with the piece for each musicians and viewers gave it an additional frisson as all of us found its belongings collectively. That displays one other side of Tilson Thomas’ tenure – his persistent means to search out unfamiliar music with depth and worth that audiences might savor on the primary listening to.

To high issues off got here the rousing rhythms and ear-thwanging harmonies of Villa-Lobos’s Chôros No.10, probably the most well-known of a collection written between 1920 and 1929 that precedes the extra acquainted Bachianas Brasileiras. This one feels extra uncooked, and it really works finest when delivered with a way of abandon. It benefited from the course of Grant Gershon, who obtained the total refrain rockin’ and rollin’ with the driving rhythms to underline what Tilson Thomas was getting from the orchestra.

Over its 12 minutes, the piece appeared to summarize the mix of exoticism and classical rigor that every one these items shared, and it introduced the proceedings to an exhilarating peak.

Harvey Steiman

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