Youthful sound points fill hall
Most of the musicians in the San Francisco Symphony Youth Orchestra spent their time on the afternoon of Sunday, March 4, on the stage of Davies Symphony Hall. But others fanned out into the hall to create a fully spatial tapestry of sound that engulfed the audience from all sides.
The occasion was the world premiere of “...Within the Shifting Grounds...”, a 12-minute work commissioned by the orchestra from the young Iranian composer Anahita Abbasi. Created in conjunction with the International Contemporary Ensemble and led by Music Director Christian Reif, the piece was also presented in a Facebook Live stream — but you probably had to be sitting in the hall to get the complete effect.
Abbasi certainly made full use of the resources at her disposal. In addition to the players on the stage, she put some of the percussionists in the side and rear balconies, and gave prominent solo parts to four of the ensemble’s instrumentalists (violin, bassoon, trombone and saxophone), who were situated at other points.
The result was an unpredictable succession of instrumental textures, coming now in single notes and now in great waves of sound. Physical space played a key role in the proceedings, since a dialogue between two orchestral instruments registers very differently when they’re calling out to each other across vast distances (or as vast as a concert hall gets, anyway) rather than conversing over a gap of a few feet.
Still, “...Within the Shifting Grounds...” seemed more intent on laying the groundwork for a musical experience than on actually delivering it. One watched with fascination as Abbasi laid out her elaborate box of creative tools, but waited in vain for her to put them to expressive or dramatic use.
The piece did serve the welcome purpose, though, of providing a series of showcases for individual sections of the orchestra, a theme around which Reif built the entire first half of the concert. The brass players got the stage to themselves for sonorous, beautifully blended renditions of two works by the Baroque master Giovanni Gabrieli, standing as sturdy bookends to the muted whispers of Carl Ruggles’ “Angels.”
Strauss’ Serenade in E-Flat, Op. 7, served as a vehicle for the orchestra’s woodwind players, who rose to the occasion with a performance of notable luster and vitality. And the six members of the percussion section, without any help from Reif, made their way splendidly through the gently burbling phrases and tart punctuation of Michael Burritt’s “Fandango 13” from 2013.
After intermission, Reif led his charges through a swift and muscular account of Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony, one that showed clearly just how much this ensemble is capable of. The opening movement shone with bright-hued energy, and Reif took the finale at a breathlessly rapid clip that gave evidence of his faith in the technical prowess of these gifted young musicians — faith they repaid admirably.