#sfcm sfsymphony bernstein strauss ageofanxiety heldenleben mtt

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At SF Symphony, a Mixed Bag

by Evan Pengra Sult

With the recent announcement that Michael Tilson Thomas will be soon be retiring from his position with the San Francisco Symphony, you might expect his remaining concerts to have a sense of urgency or excitement about them, especially when they feature music he’s been a noted champion of. You’d be wrong. The November 5 concert at Davies Hall offered an intriguing program: Bernstein’s meandering, loosely programmatic Second Symphony paired with Richard Strauss’ meandering, loosely programmatic tone poem Ein Heldenleben. Sadly, the performances were shockingly uneven, the utter lack of vitality in the Bernstein standing in stark contrast to the verve and splendor of the Strauss.

Bernstein’s Second Symphony is subtitled “The Age of Anxiety” and takes as inspiration the Auden poem by the same name. Meant to capture the postwar moment with its heady cocktail of youthful hijinks and existential ennui, it veers between spiky, dissonant syncopations and eloquent, sighing lyricism. But none of that was on display on Sunday. With Jean-Yves Thibaudet as the underwhelming piano soloist, the orchestra rarely rose above a mezzo-piano dynamic. Everything was just too delicate, too French, and depressingly bland. While Thibaudet and the Symphony did succeed in bringing some clarity to challenging music, they did so at the expense of warmth, contrast, or direction. The end result captured a very different era: The Age of Xanax.

Signs of life returned after intermission in Strauss’ popular Ein Heldenleben, usually translated as A Hero’s Life. With its soaring melodies, full-bodied orchestration, and expressive chromaticism, it’s a prime example of why Strauss is such an audience favorite. If the performance was anything to go by, it’s a favorite of the orchestra, too, for they brought to it all the bombast and ardency that was missing from the Bernstein. Constructed from a series of musical episodes, Strauss’ tone poem tells the story of an unidentified Hero (who many interpret to be Strauss himself) who finds love, goes to war, returns triumphant and eventually reaches apotheosis. Concertmaster Alexander Barantschik did an admirable job serving as soloist during the “Hero’s Companion” section, which is meant to portray Strauss’ wife. Assuming Strauss’s portrait is accurate, you have to wonder what their home life must have been like, for the music shifts, lightning-fast, between charm and fury. In a later section, “The Hero’s Works of Peace,” Strauss cleverly mingles music from his previous compositions. This includes a particularly humorous passage where the heartfelt oboe solo from Don Juan (played with aching beauty by Eugene Izotov) is interrupted by the jaunty clarinet riffs from Till Eulenspiegel.

But despite all the fun, the second half of the program couldn’t make up for the disappointment of the first. Strauss’ music, lovely though it is, can be heard regularly both at Davies and in symphony halls around the world. But “The Age of Anxiety” is a relative rarity, and it’s a real shame it didn’t receive better treatment, particularly because it’s part of MTT’s yearlong tribute to his musical mentor and his ongoing quest to champion American composers. That continues November 10-12 with the symphony playing music by Ives and Gershwin; here’s hoping Tilson Thomas and the Symphony give it some life.