S.F. Symphony Chorus makes superb return with joyful set
There’s no better time than right now to celebrate the resilience and splendor of the San Francisco Symphony Chorus. What a couple of years it’s been for this ensemble — first the pandemic shutdown, then the sudden departure of longtime director Ragnar Bohlin, who refused to comply with the orchestra’s vaccination mandate.
Yet when this group of superlative singers finally took the stage of Davies Symphony Hall on Wednesday, Nov. 24, for the last movement of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, it was as if no time had passed. Under assistant director David Xiques, the group rose to every challenge the composer set in its way.
That meant creating a robust, seamlessly integrated sound in the more athletic and extroverted passages of the “Ode to Joy.” It meant contributing lacy, transparent counterpoint, and landing with magnificent precision the exposed vocal leap with which the chorus offers a mammoth bear hug to all of humanity.
And it meant interacting with both delicacy and force with the singing of the four fine vocal soloists — soprano Michelle Bradley, mezzosoprano Jennifer Johnson
Cano, tenor
Mario Chang and baritone
Rod Gilfry — who joined them in the terrace section behind the stage rather than standing right up front.
It was, as conductor Daniel Stewart observed in his introductory remarks, an aptly joyous occasion.
The presence of the Symphony Chorus also helped bring a triumphal conclusion to a Ninth that had gotten off to an alarmingly weak start. Stewart, who conducts the San Francisco Symphony Youth Orchestra as well as the Santa Cruz Symphony, seemed unable to conjure up any of the mystery or galvanic force of the first movement.
The music instead rolled out in blunt, blocky chunks, disconnected to one another or to any overarching sense of narrative. The members of
the orchestra went through the motions, waiting awkwardly for a spark.
Happily, the electricity arrived in time for the dynamic second movement — thanks in large part to the potent contributions of timpanist Edward Stephan, who simply commandeered the performance and declared that there would be no sleepwalking on his watch. And once the orchestra recovered its balance, the rest of the performance went swimmingly.
There was a current of tender feeling running through the entire slow movement, which came to a head in the oratorical climax near the end. In the finale, the famous “Ode to Joy” melody crept in with surreptitious glee amid the cellos before coming to full fruition in its choral setting.
The evening’s short first half was dedicated to the West Coast premiere of Anna Clyne’s “Sound and Fury,” a patchwork quilt stitched together out of excerpts from Haydn’s Symphony No. 60, “Il Distratto,” and a taped recital of the speech from Shakespeare’s “Macbeth” from which the piece takes its title. It’s an assemblage of rapidly skittering minor scales (sometimes with puckish rhythmic dislocations) and brass chords that fall pleasingly on the ear. What Macbeth has to do with it is anybody’s guess.