San Francisco Symphony presents San Francisco Symphony with Thomas Adès, Kirill Gerstein, and Dawn Upshaw
2015-03-05
Davies Symphony Hall
201 Van Ness, San Francisco, CA
8:00 PM, Thursday, March 5, 2015

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• Ives: The Unanswered Question
• Milhaud: La Création du monde
• Sibelius: Luonnotar
• Thomas Adès: In Seven Days [with video]

[8:01 PM lights down, announcements]

Charles Ives (1874-1954): The Unanswered Question (1908)

1. [8:03 PM] (Op.)
   [work ends 8:08 PM; pause for a couple minutes to rearrange things onstage]

Darius Milhaud (1892-1974): La Création du monde, Op. 81 (1923)

1. [8:12 PM] Overture
2. [8:16 PM] Le chaos avant la création (the Chaos before Creation)
3. [8:18 PM] La naissance de la flore et de la faune (the Creation of Plants and Animals)
4. [8:21 PM] La naissance de l'homme et de la femme (the Creation of Man & Woman)
5. [8:23 PM] Le désir (Desire)
6. [8:27 PM] Le printemps ou l'apaisement (the Appeasement of Spring, coda)
   [work ends 8:31 PM; pause for a couple minutes to rearrange things onstage]

Jean Sibelius (1865-1957): Luonnotar (the Spirit of Nature), Op. 70 (1913)

1. [9:36 PM] (Op.)
   [set ends 8:46 PM; all off after a few minutes' applause]

Thomas Adès (b. 1971): _In Seven Days_ (2008), featuring Kirill Gerstein: piano, with video by Tal Rosner

1. [9:10 PM] Chaos—Light—Dark
2. [9:19 PM] Separation of the waters into sea and sky
3. [9:23 PM] Land—Grass—Trees
4. [9:28 PM] Stars—Sun—Moon
5. [9:32 PM] Creatures of the Sea and Sky
6. [9:34 PM] Creatures of the Land
7. [9:36 PM] Contemplation
   [show ends 9:38 PM; all off after a few minutes' applause; no encore]

• Thomas Adès: composer, conductor;
• Christian Baldini: conductor (Ives only, offstage string ensemble);
• Kirill Gerstein: piano;
• Mark Inouye: trumpet;
• Tal Rosner: video artist, filmmaker;
• Dawn Upshaw: soprano vox;
• symphony members vary by program, see the current list.

Tonight's show started with an Ive's trifle featuring three disparate elements: a solo trumpet front and center stage, a flute ensemble, directed by Adès, set up at the back of stage left (where the low brass section typically sits), and a string ensemble located somewhere up high in the rear of the house (in the first tier perhaps?). Mark Inouye, the trumpeter, performed his part from memory, an interesting feat considering that he didn't appear to have any strong reference to the working of the other groups except his ability to hear their parts, and a tiny 4- or 5- inch video monitor set on the floor that probably showed him a view of Adès. Good job!

The following piece, Milhaud's attempt at crafting a synthesis between jazz and the European Chamber Symphony, was a bit more interesting, yet fell far short on the jazz side of the composition. Whether it was the difficulty of the parts, the rigidity of the players, or the actual annotation of the composition, in performance tonight, the piece just didn't swing the way I expected. Rather than the bravura of more recent works by Gershwin or Ellington, we got a tepid version of “blowing” by the solo alto saxophone, backed by off-kilter, broken clockwork rhythms from the contrabass and drums. It wasn't bad, but it was far from great – maybe I would have enjoyed it more if they'd added video accompaniment of the ballet portion of the work.

Luonnotar, third on tonight's program, was a rousing success, with Dawn Upshaw singing the devilishly difficult Finnish lyric as if she was born to the tongue. Tough for mere mortals, but I expected nothing less than excellence from her, considering past performances I'd witnessed where she sang in Assyrian and Persian with equal ease. My biggest surprise was seeing that she'd let her hair grow dark – apparently she's a bottle blonde – who knew?

Preparing for tonight's show, I found a cheesy semi-animated sequence “depicting” Luonnotar via a collage of faerie images collected from disparate sources. Good for a preview of the work, right?

Following intermission, we got tonight's main course, Adès' creation piece, In Seven Days. As the work is performed without break between segments, you'll have to take my timings as a best guess – I probably could have done better with a score and headphones for the click track (or whatever Adès was listening to!). While Stephen Smoliar complained that Tal Rosner's video part was an ill considered accessory, I found it to be a quite enjoyable adjunct to the piece. Accepting that the video was NOT going to depict any portion of the composition directly, it was fun letting my attention wander between the players and the activity abstracted on the screen. I especially liked the sunny church window mandala psychedelia of the late middle portion of the piece – far more engaging than the rolling seas of the first and last sections!

You can decide for yourself whether the video accompaniment is welcome or not by viewing the May 2010 (8th) performance of In Seven Days. Tonight's performance appears to be the 25th, according to the list compiled at the composer's website, so apparently Adès has gained some traction with his work.

Stephen Smoliar posted both a promo article and a grumpy review for the Examiner. I hardly think it essential to read a churlish evaluation, but who knows, maybe he's right – Neils Swinkels posted a similarly grumpy review for SFCV!

Back to the previous event! ☸ Up to the 2015 yearbox! ☸ Up to the 2015 event list! ☸ On to the next event!