Symphony’s premiere incorporates distance rules
The San Francisco Symphony and its new music director, EsaPekka Salonen, plan to take a key first step in the direction of virtual programming next month, with the online premiere of a commissioned work by composer Nico Muhly.
Muhly is one of the eight “collaborative partners” that Salonen has enlisted as a cultural brain trust for his tenure with the Symphony, which began in September. The new piece, a 19minute creation titled “Throughline” and scheduled to debut Nov. 14, is designed as a showcase for members of the group, who also include flutist Claire Chase, guitarist Bryce Dessner, bassist Esperanza Spalding and soprano Julia Bullock. It marks the orchestra’s first performance since Salonen took over for Michael Tilson Thomas, who retired in the summer after 25 years.
Recording both audio and video for the piece, in Davies Symphony Hall and elsewhere, meant working within a complex set of social distancing
guidelines, which Muhly said informed his creation of the music.
“The original task was to write a piece for the collaborative partners that obeys these restrictions, and where the restrictions are the point,” he told The Chronicle in a phone interview from his New York home.
“There could only be six musicians onstage at one time, who had to be at least 6 feet apart. If there was a woodwind player, they had to be alone onstage. We knew it would have to be recorded in layers, within the space of one week, and with the collaborative partners added in no knowable time or order.
“There was a Talmudic specificity about the process, which I became obsessed with,” Muhly said.
“Throughline” will be part of an online event that also includes chamber works by Ellen Reid, John Adams and Beethoven, and a reprise of Kev Choice’s “Movements,” which premiered earlier this fall in the “Currents” series. It will stream for free on the orchestra’s website ( www. sfsymphony. org) and be broadcast locally on KQEDTV.
For Salonen, “Throughline” represents an initial exploration of the kinds of online musical content the orchestra can offer, not only during the COVID19 pandemic but beyond.
“The challenge is to create content that doesn’t seem like an apology — like, ‘ Sorry we can’t play live concerts, so you get this instead,’ ” he said during a phone interview from Hamburg, Germany, where he was conducting. “Humankind is in the same boat on this, and everyone understands the sadness when something central like live music is now suddenly not available.
“So this is a new work by a leading composer who is writing the piece for the medium, rather than adapting it.”
In the short linked movements of “Throughline,” Muhly throws a spotlight on the specific character of each of the artistic collaborators, while also providing room for members of the orchestra to shine. Violinist Pekka Kuusisto starts off with a delicate, eloquent solo. Spalding takes an improvised solo turn, Bullock sings a shimmer setting of a poem by the 17th century English poet Thomas Traherne, and roboticist Carol Reiley is represented by a melody composed by an artificial intelligence program of her devising.
And although Muhly, not Salonen, conducts the performance, he found a way for the music director to participate. In the last movement, the work incorporates Salonen’s conducting gestures ( filmed at his home in Finland) as a kind of visual rhythmic counterpoint to the music onstage.
“I’m not sure yet what it’s going to look like,” Muhly said, “but I wanted to take advantage of his expressive physicality.”
For Muhly, part of the pleasure of creating the piece — both the score and the performance — was the way it put an emphasis on new artistic priorities and opportunities.
“Because there was no way to have all the musicians play at the same time, I couldn’t write an orchestra piece,” he said. “But we do have the weird luxury of these individual winds, which is a special effect; in the first movement, you have the piccolo and solo violin and solo viola all in same focus, which you could never do onstage.”
Regardless of how long the coronavirus keeps live inperson performance impossible, this kind of offering may become more common.
“For an organization like the San Francisco Symphony to have developed the technology and skill to produce these things will make it an important part of our output for years to come,” Salonen said. “The idea is that the digital and the live parts of the orchestra’s activity inform each other and support each other.”