Program is a fitting tribute to Morgan
Michael Morgan, the visionary longtime music director of the Oakland Symphony, talked often about the program he had devised for his planned debut with the San Francisco Symphony. It was a characteristically intricate and eclectic collection of music, centered on the Third Symphony of the African American composer Florence Price.
The program was originally planned for 2020, but then COVID hit. And even though Morgan conducted a joyous pair of concerts at Davies Symphony Hall in July, as the orchestra was easing back into live performance, he died a few weeks later, leaving his official subscription debut as a heartbreaking might-havebeen.
So there was a fair amount of emotion in Davies on Thursday, Feb. 17, when the orchestra finally made good on the project. And the musical rewards were strong enough to confirm that Morgan’s inventive programming — combining Price’s masterpiece with works by Carlos Simon, Brahms and César Franck — had been right on track.
To stand in for Morgan on the podium, the Symphony brought in three young conductors for their debut appearances. That was both a testament to the ambitiousness of the program — perhaps no one but Morgan himself would have had this diverse lineup of music under their belt — and a tribute to his longtime record as a champion for young artists.
Price’s Third Symphony, which Morgan introduced in Oakland in 2019, inevitably left the strongest impression, in a powerhouse performance conducted by Akiko Fujimoto. Written in 1939, it’s a piece that
includes both familiar stylistic echoes (Dvorák and Brahms chief among them) and countless strokes of original sorcery.
The robust, dark-hued slow introduction is one, and the jazzy third movement, based on the African American dance known as a juba, is another. Perhaps most exciting is the up-tempo finale, which is alive with rhythmic vitality and instrumental color. Fujimoto’s leadership was vivid and masterful throughout.
The resonances from Price’s work resonated backward in time to Franck’s exuberantly pictorial tone poem “Le Chasseur Maudit” (“The Cursed Huntsman”), and forward to Carlos Simon’s 2017 score “Amen!” which conjures up the harmonies and rhythms of a Black Pentecostal church service. Both were nimbly conducted by Earl Lee, in performances that underscored those connections.
Simon’s piece is full of brisk evocations, led by a trio of trombones who call the meeting to order with a peremptory swagger. And Franck’s brilliant sketch, which has not been performed by the Symphony since 1976, exulted in smooth execution and a sort of fire-and-brimstone urgency.
The third member of Thursday’s conductorial tag team* was Daniel Bartholomew Poyser, who recently joined the Symphony’s staff as resident conductor of engagement and education. Together with mezzo-soprano Melody Wilson and the men of the Symphony Chorus led by Anthony Trecek-King, he brought an interior glow to Brahms’ “Alto Rhapsody” and a high degree of expressive directness to three spirituals (“My Soul’s Been Anchored in the Lord,” “Give Me Jesus” and “Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing”) in luminous arrangements by composer Jack Perla.
Every moment of the evening felt suffused with Morgan’s spirit and presence. Many of us are still mourning him and will be doing so for a long time to come.