Blomstedt brings out Berwald’s best
Anyone who attended San Francisco Symphony concerts in the early 1990s might still harbor faint memories of the music of Franz Berwald. The 19th century Swedish composer has a champion in his latterday compatriot, conductor Herbert Blomstedt, and in those days Blomstedt used his tenure as the orchestra’s music director to introduce Berwald’s symphonies into the local repertoire.
On Thursday, Jan. 30, Blomstedt returned to Davies Symphony Hall for his annual twoweek visit with his old musical collaborators, and he took the opportunity to bring Berwald with him again — in this case the composer’s Symphony No. 1. For better and worse, it felt very much like old times.
Anyone who has attended a high school or college reunion after a lapse of decades will be familiar with the emotions brought on by Berwald’s reappearance in Davies. He’s the roommate or lab partner who got on your nerves back then. Now, with the passage of time, you can still see all the things that irritated you — but you can also discern some virtues you might have missed the first time around.
Or maybe this is only me. The Chronicle archives reveal that when Berwald’s Symphony No. 1 was first performed here, in 1991, I waved it away dismissively. Thursday’s performance made me reconsider, at least up to a point.
Berwald’s music can be most efficiently described as Mendelssohn in heavy boots. His musical dramaturgy is stolid and blocky. His orchestral palette lays it on thick. His melodies establish themselves firmly at every point, like a hiker trudging over rough terrain.
So the effect is charmless — but who says charm is the only goal? Berwald, at his best, finds the virtues in solid construction, in shadowy instrumental textures, in glowering, oracular pronouncements.
That’s particularly true in the First Symphony, which is titled, almost superfluously, “Sinfonie sérieuse.” (Why this Swedish musician, who spent most of his life in Stockholm, Berlin and Vienna, gave all four of his symphonies French subtitles is a mystery for another day.)
The first of the symphony’s four movements is an effusion of darkhued intensity. The trombones, who will predominate throughout the piece, show up early and make their presence felt. There are unpredictable rhythmic effects in the material, but never enough to disrupt the overall sense of a logical structure being painstakingly erected.
The same duality, of surprises that are quickly folded back into the piece’s overall progress, continues through the remaining movements. The slow movement has an expansive, almost Brucknerian sense of scale. Berwald splices the final two movements together without quite justifying the innovation (as Mendelssohn, most famously, always does) and the symphony’s conclusion — a stirring call to attention from the trombones, followed anticlimactically by a sudden drop of the curtain — is simply bizarre.
What music like this needs, always, is an interpreter who believes in it wholeheartedly, and Blomstedt remains that person. His rhythms on the podium match Berwald’s stroke for stroke; you can always sense him saying, “Listen to this, isn’t it wonderful?” And the orchestra responded in kind, conjuring up a performance of robust grace and sturdy elegance.
There was less to savor in Brahms’ Third Symphony after intermission, in a performance that took leisurely tempos and somewhat lax phrasing in no particularly urgent direction. Berwald was the star of this show, and for the most part he earned his billing.