Entirely dazzling Barber concerto
Samuel Barber’s big hit among casual music lovers and even some dedicated aficionados is the luscious, emotional Adagio for Strings. But I sometimes wonder whether that’s only because the slow movement from his Violin Concerto hasn’t shown up in enough movie soundtracks.
To hear this music played live — and to hear it rendered with the expressive grandeur and openness that violinist Gil Shaham brought to it in his appearance with the San Francisco Symphony on Thursday, March 16 — is to marvel anew at Barber’s melodic gift. As the movement unfolds, and becomes ever more urgent in its communicative goals, the listener feels more and more keenly the role that this kind of rhapsodic beauty has to play in our musical lives.
And the rapture doesn’t all come from the soloist, either. Barber understands perfectly well that the fundamental premise of a concerto is to place the soloist in the spotlight, and he does it unabashedly in the expansive first movement and the breathless stretch of unbroken rapid-fire passagework that makes up the finale.
But the opening act in the slow movement belongs to the orchestra’s principal oboist, and on Thursday in Davies Symphony Hall, Eugene Izotov used that long, initial melodic solo as a sumptuous setup for what was to come. By the time Shaham came back on the scene, everyone’s ears had been primed for the lush allure of Barber’s writing.
If the slow movement was the high point of this performance, it was well supported by the music on either side. Shaham swept into the first movement in a rush of opulent string tone, bringing with him a wealth of instrumental color and fine-grained yet forceful phrasing.
Although the perpetualmotion machine of the finale sounded as sleek and brusque as ever, Shaham also leavened the proceedings with rhythmic
clarity and a touch of delicate irony. One encore, the Gavotte from Bach’s E-Major Partita, brought his appearance to a sprightly close.
The rest of the evening, led by guest conductor Juraj Valcuha, was more of a hit-or-miss affair. It opened with the first Symphony performance of Franz Schreker’s Chamber Symphony, written in 1916 for performance by the composer’s fellow faculty members at the Vienna Music Academy.
For a listener expecting to hear something of the orchestral and textural brilliance that are on display in Schreker’s operas (“Die Gezeichneten” or “Der ferne Klang” most notably), the opening strains of this 25-minute piece did not disappoint. The harp, piano and celesta combine to create a misty, magical landscape in which just about anything seems possible.
Unfortunately, what follows is comparatively mundane, at least in Valcuha’s stolid, rather workaday reading. There’s a rustic woodland scene that sounds as if Dvorák had accidentally wandered in from a separate concert hall two doors down, and plenty of luxuriant but short-lived exercises in late-Romantic note-spinning. Beguiling inventions show up and disappear moments later, like Richard Strauss in a fidgety mood.
Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony occupied the concert’s second half, in a performance that made a mixed bargain by opting for power and rhythmic force at the expense of finesse. The brass players went astray early and often, and although a gathering sense of momentum helped the last two movements find their footing, the results were largely heavy-handed.