SFist Goes to the Symphony, Which Then Goes to China.
This week, the San Francisco symphony was performing an all Russian program which will definitely be one of the highlights of its upcoming trip to China. However, the trip was momentarily on hold, as the renegotiation of the musicians contract was proving unsatisfactory. They just reached an agreement this Monday morning, which they should sign and disclose very soon. The main sticking point: musicians want a pay package in the middle of the zone defined by the contracts of the seven top orchestras in the country (New York, Chicago, Boston, Cleveland, Philadelphia, LA, and SF) while the current offer from management stands at the bottom. Both sides of the negotiation we talked to offered reasonable and careful statements, acknowledging that talks are ongoing and hoping for a quick resolution.
The trip will happen, and it would have been a shame if it had ended up being cancelled: for one, classical musicians are not being paid much compared to other entertainers in this town, despite being of world-class quality. These guys are the best in their field, yet the average salary with 25 years of experience is $112,000, something that many a non-exceptional engineer will make in the valley, and is paltry compared to the salary of many professional athletes.
Picture Terrence McCarthy, SF Symphony
And secondly, it would be sad for the Shanghai and Hong-Kong audiences: Petrushka and Tschaikovsky's 4th Symphony were beautifully executed, displaying the strength of the symphony. The concert started with Dubinushka, a revolutionary song orchestrated by Rimsky-Korsakov (the revolution being the 1905 prelude to the 1917 revolution which brought Lenin into power). The four-minute cute little piece opens with a bolero beat, makes a little waltzy detour and ends up as a march. It is a stretch to find a parallel between the working conditions of laborers in 1905 Russia and those of the musicians on stage, but the orchestra was inspired playing the song nonetheless.
Petrushka was written for Diaghilev's ballets russes and premiered in Paris in 1911. Stravinsky reworked it into a 1947 version, which the symphony performed. It incorporates different elements, from Russian folk songs not unlike Dubinuhska to jazzy influences to Stravinsky's trademark sawing string ostinatos. The piece dialogues between the orchestra and a procession of soloists, the back and forth perfectly arbitrated by Michael Tilson-Thomas. Among the soloists, one must salute William Williams on the trumpet, in particular in its little interplay with the snare drums, Robin Sutherland at the piano, and Robin McKee at the flute, each being offered a few solos of their own and a delightful little duet. MTT extracts an effervescence of textures and sonorities, from warm and vibrant strings to locomotive sirens to percussive beats, so rich and varied that a ringing cell phone blended in at first. Particularly impressive was his control of the tone, the sound balance under perfect control, except once for one horn surging on the scene with too much energy.
The same masterful execution returned in the Tchaikovsky Symphony No. 4 in F minor. This symphony was the one dissected in the PBS award winning documentary "Keeping Score," describing behind-the-scenes MTT and the SF Symphony preparation for a piece. The documentary will be part of the educational outreach during the China trip. Someone must have kept MTT's score, as he came back without a lectern to lead the orchestra to an extraordinary rendition of the symphony.
Each movement stars a different component of the orchestra: The first movement is a waltz which picks up pace as it goes along, with liquid strings singing out the melody. The second shines the spotlight on the oboe (Jonathan Fischer), with a delicate and melancholy introduction, and a rich, full, and vibrant landscape of strings. The melody twirls around between the oboe, the second violins, the first violins as the accompaniment switches from the violins to the cellos to the flutes, in swirling waves of sound that you just cannot replicate on a cd: stereophony would not do justice to the depth of the sound. The third movement has the strings go pizzicato as if tip-toeing through, while the fourth movement is played to full effect as a wake-up call, almost brutally, by MTT. It is denotated: Finale: Allegro con Fuoco, that is allegro with fire, but MTT's rendition was so explosive, it should have said con TNT. The last chord slashed us as a whip, perfectly crisp, the last perfect note of a masterful performance.