Reunion with "Manny" at the SF Symphony

With Emanuel Ax after the performance at Davies Symphony Hall

After having met a very genial Emanuel Ax a year ago backstage at Davies Symphony Hall, I was excited to have the chance to see and to hear him play again. One reason for the anticipation was that the last time I’d seen Mr. Ax, he'd performed Morton Feldman’s Piano and Orchestra and had “very few notes” to play. He’d told me to come back when he was playing something “a little more substantial” for the piano. A couple of weeks ago I had the pleasure of hearing him play Beethoven’s Concerto No. 3 in C minor for Piano and Orchestra, Op. 37.

San Francisco Symphony Director Michael Tilson Thomas took the podium and began the evening with Gustav Mahler’s Blumine, which along with the introduction of Wagner’s Prelude to Act I of Lohengrin seems to be a favored program opener for the past couple of years. I believe this was the third time I’d heard it played by the SFS. I was struck by the ethereal beginning with solo trumpet; one felt as if floating atop the clouds of the Alps. Mahler deftly weaved melodies amongst various instrumental groups, leading to a climax not unlike that of the Adagietto from his Symphony No. 5 albeit without the ensuing glissando. The piece ended with an ardent and resigned sigh, a sigh that spoke to the joys of relegating oneself to the sweet vagaries of romantic love.

Emanuel Ax sat himself on a regular chair rather than a piano bench, and was very engaged with the orchestra throughout Beethoven’s Concerto No. 3 in C minor. I enjoyed his down-to-earth demeanor and the way he cocked his head in tiny, bird-like movements, cheeks quivering to the music. When the piano entered, solo, the clarity of Mr. Ax’s playing was a breath of fresh air despite the forthright, almost terse quality of the music. The comparison may be imprecise, but I was reminded of a crystalline, austere and highly structured German Riesling wine: steely, unadorned, and blindingly beautiful in its clarity and purity.

Beethoven kept his pianist busy in the first movement (Allegro con brio): arpeggios, runs, long trills, and very satisfying cadences when granted. Mr. Ax played the upper register triplets in the right hand with joy and aplomb. Towards the end of the movement we were treated to a furious cadenza that almost became a fugue but dissolved into silky, arpeggiated passages.

The second movement, Largo, opened with the piano alone. The mood was contemplative and hushed, having left behind the overt, sparkling tone of the first movement. Mr. Ax’s touch here made the piano sound warmly muted, and I felt as if I had gone inside myself for a heartfelt introspection. I noticed that Mr. Ax sometimes flapped any fingers not being used in a two-beat flutter, and lifted his hands in a little flourish when alternating them in arpeggiated passages. Otherwise, he never showed any distracting or flamboyant movements. All other physical gestures seemed to be in direct service to creating the sound quality he desired.

Rondo: Allegro began without pause after a surprisingly vehement finish for such a lovely, dreamy Largo. Beethoven seemed to have no qualms about returning to the furious, busy quality he is well known for. Harmonically I was a bit thrown off, since the piano solo starting the final movement sounded like it was in E minor - the Largo was in E Major - but only later did I realize Beethoven had set it all up to return to the "home key" of C minor. This moment of realization was delightful, but I couldn’t help feeling Beethoven had been toying with us all along.

Beethoven makes use of counterpoint in this final movement, with the strings coming in with a fugal section and what seemed like a two-part invention in a short, bubbly piano solo. Finally, we were granted the satisfaction of an emphatic V7 -> I (Dominant to Tonic) as a joyful coda in C major brought the concerto to a close.

The audience would not let Mr. Ax leave the stage, and after three curtain calls he granted us with a beautiful encore. I am ashamed that I do not remember what he played - I'm now thinking it was Johannes Brahms' Intermezzo. Allegretto Grazioso, from Klavierstücke Op. 76, but I'm not sure. [Update: It was "Des Abends" from Fantasiestücke Op. 12 by Brahms' mentor Schumann. Of course I realized this shortly after posting!] Mr. Ax enveloped us in a dreamscape in which time was suspended and we floated on silver clouds.

After the concert I was pleased that Mr. Ax remembered me upon meeting again, and he expressed happiness that I had finally heard him play “just a little more” than at the Feldman concert. The man has a wonderful sense of humor.

Of course I asked "Manny" to sign my program!

The entire second half of the program was Michael Tilson Thomas’ tribute to the style of concert program championed by Jascha Heifetz to bring attention to the “encore piece.” Mr. Tilson Thomas emphasized that the point of such programs was to create the perfect set of pieces to capture exactly the right mood. He referred to this kind of programming as a “bygone world of music-making” and urged us to hear the music “as one piece; don’t feel obliged to clap in between. Just enjoy the silence between them - you’ll know when we’ve reached the end.”

We were indeed treated to a palette of beautiful colors and moods:

• Copland: Music from the film Our Town
• Debussy: La Plus que lente
• Delius: On Hearing the First Cuckoo in Spring
• Sibelius: Valse triste
• Rachmaninoff: Vocalise, Op. 34, no. 14
• Delibes: Cortege de Bacchus, from Sylvia

Mr. Tilson Thomas was right; everyone knew when the program was over. Delibes’ piece shook us out of our melancholy reverie with trumpets! Percussion! The works! Everything screamed “finale” and the Cortege brought a wonderfully satisfying orchestral sound, full of triumph.

The entire second half was, for me, a nostalgic trip back to the jewel-box musical gems of my youth. Pieces I’d loved as a child but never heard again for years were brought back to me on a warm summer wind. It was magical. Even after I had returned home, I felt a light sheen of fairy dust on my shoulders.

Happy Birthday, Johannes Brahms!

"I shall never write a symphony! You can't have an idea what it's like to hear such a giant marching behind you."

Johannes Brahms was born on May 7th, 1833 in Hamburg, Germany. In celebration of the 180th anniversary of the birth of one of my favorite composers, I thought I'd share a review I'd written last year about a performance of his First Symphony by the San Francisco Symphony, originally posted on the Symphony's now defunct social site. Brahms' first symphony was long in coming. It took more than a decade to complete (1862 - 1876), and the composer was haunted by the inevitable comparison to the late behemoth of the symphony, Beethoven. He was at once expected to carry on Beethoven's legacy and yet to forge new paths. In this remarkable work, he accomplished both. As New York Philharmonic Program Annotator James M. Keller wrote, "...Brahms has digested and, to a certain extent, purified Beethoven's visionary achievement in the realm of the symphony. In so doing, he earned his own stripes as a symphonist, and with them the right to move forward as Beethoven's truest heir."

The haunting, inexorable dirge of the timpani opens the First Symphony.

Symphony Night Thoughts: Soaring with Brahms

On Friday, September 16th I could hardly contain my excitement. I admire Yo-Yo Ma, who was on the program that night to play Hindemith's Cello Concerto, but what I was truly looking forward to was Brahms' Symphony No. 1 in C major, Opus 68. While I eagerly anticipated hearing how MTT (Michael Tilson Thomas, the San Francisco Symphony's respected leader) would guide the music, I felt no little anxiety: What if I didn't like what I would hear? I grew up absolutely in awe of Herbert von Karajan's recordings of Brahms' Symphonies, and you know how it goes; the first version you hear is usually the one you like best.  

Although the Symphony in its entirety is wonderful, my favorite movements are the first and the second. The plaintive, slow scream of the strings in the first movement ascends ever higher as the timpani almost goads them on in an inexorable march towards the inevitable. It's enthralling. When listening at home, I would wait until I was alone and turn up the volume until the whole house was filled with Brahms. For me, hearing the first movement is at once a guilty indulgence and an atonement. I don't know of what other music has this effect on me. (Wagner may come close, but the effect is wholly different and I hesitate to use the term 'atonement' in his case.)

Speaking of Wagner, this brings me to the second movement. I am usually reminded of Wagner in certain sections, but where Wagner would have continued the surge of emotion and brought it to the forefront quite overtly, Brahms pulls back just when you think your heart will burst its dam and flow over. This, to me, embodies so much of what I've learned about Brahms as a human being - tender and passionate, yet fastidious and careful. (I fully admit to not being a Brahms scholar; I've only read Jan Swafford's biography of the composer, and Avins and Eisinger's anthology of his letters.) The second movement is replete with the banked fire that I so love about Brahms' music; the way he reins himself back to a self-conscious gravity just when the lush melody swells so ardently seems perfectly fitting. The sensation is overwhelmingly bittersweet, noble, and beautiful.

I admit I found the opening of the Symphony a bit rushed; I revel in the slow, tortuous ascent of the beseeching violins underscored by the dirge-like beat of the timpani. But for this, I was in raptures. This was the first time I'd experienced Brahms' Symphony live; the effect was electrifying. I felt my spirit soar and my heart pound with the beautiful phrasings MTT drew from the musicians. By the Symphony's triumphant end, I was on my feet and just a little disappointed that the evening of music had drawn to a close. But in my head and in my heart, the music played on. 

Mozart in Bloom: David Fray and the San Francisco Symphony

My program, signed by pianist David Fray. Lucky me!

I believe a pianist of any level should attend as many live performances of other artists as much as possible, not only for educational purposes but for the sheer  inspiration.  On October 26th, I had the great pleasure of hearing the French pianist David Fray perform live.  Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 22 in E-flat Major, K. 482 (1785) was the centerpiece of the evening, flanked by Wagner’s Prelude to Act I of Lohengrin (1848) and Brahms’ weighty Symphony No. 4 in E minor, Op. 98 (1885). Asher Fisch led the San Francisco Symphony.

I had enjoyed Mr. Fray’s renditions of the Bach Keyboard Concertos through album purchases, but I had not yet heard him play Mozart and was thrilled when San Francisco Symphony announced the inclusion of this program.

Mr. Fray’s interpretation was exquisite.  I confess this was the most beautiful experience I have ever had listening to a Mozart piano concerto.  His touch was sensitive to the utmost without ever pussyfooting; he was deliberate when he saw fit, and alternately tender and tenuous or ever so slyly mischievous.  He approached the work very seriously as an intellectual but also with great feeling. His cadenzas were clearly thought out and yet the effect was akin to crimson hued silk ribbons tumbling forth pell-mell: a glorious, unbridled joy.

Most interestingly, I might have enjoyed the performance even better had I closed my eyes more; Mr. Fray is tall and strikingly handsome in a rather wild, Nureyev sort of way.  However, he sat hunched over the piano - on a chair and not a bench, no less - like the world’s most elegant vulture.  His gestures could almost be misconstrued as flippant.  When not playing, he gripped himself not unlike the classic psychiatric patient; head hung and chest caved in.  But while  his body conveyed a certain degree of sangfroid, the music told a different story: the melodies were so full of life, imbued with flesh and breathing and emotional depth.  It was somewhat of a challenge to reconcile the visual and the aural.

Mr. Fray’s control was impeccable.  He jumped directly into passages almost without preparation, and a rumbling bass passage electrified with its expertly handled yet organic crescendo-decrescendo swell.  Even the most accented notes were tinged with a bit of velvet.

The second movement, in C minor, saw a turn to the melancholy.  Despite the attempts of a flute and bassoon at lighthearted conversation, the mood darkened as the strings resurfaced.  Under Mr. Fisch’s direction and Mr. Fray’s interpretation the piano melody sang above these troubling undercurrents, cushioned and borne aloft by the strings.

The audience visibly perked as the familiar hunting melody of the third movement marked a return to gaiety.  A minuet-like section provided a lovely excursion. Towards the end, Mr. Fray brought this theme back hushed and tentative, working it up finally to its full playfulness.  It was as if the melody had tiptoed back in, looked around, and gradually lost inhibition to delight in itself.  The ending seemed characteristic of Mozart’s sense of humor - a bit of slow backtracking, and suddenly - surprise! - the end.

Mr. Fray had nearly launched himself bodily from the piano at the conclusion of several particularly exuberant passages, but thankfully he was still seated onstage when the audience made its pleasure and gratitude known.

The Prelude to Act 1 of Wagner’s opera Lohengrin was played in all its shimmering, ethereal glory.  The Wagnerian brass stepped in like a warm burst of sunlight towards the end, only to fade away as the strings transcended into the heavens once again.

The evening’s closer of Brahms’ Symphony No. 4 tossed me into a sea of turmoil and doubt, but what more wonderful way to experience such troubled emotions than with Brahms?  The sense of the epic was ever present, but individual voices broke through especially in the second movement with the plaintive cry of the strings.  If there was ever a symphony that started and ended with doom and gloom, this is it.  But as intimated in Thomas Mann’s novella Death in Venice, there can be a singular enjoyment in suffering.

After the concert, I was lucky enough to meet Mr. Fray and I expressed my appreciation of his performance.  He was gracious and signed my program.  Most of all, I was relieved that when Mr. Fray was away from the piano he had excellent posture!  

I am increasingly struck by how a pianist’s mannerisms and stage presence can enhance or detract from the performance.  After seeing Mr. Fray, I will be vigilant so as not to not develop any habits that might distract from the music.  I hope an artist like Mr. Fray is not troubled by this kind of worry, however.  When he plays, the music speaks clearly for itself.