When going to the concert at Davies Symphony Hall last Thursday, we expected a feast for the ears. But visiting conductor Alan Gilbert made it quite a visual show as well: an unassuming man with the bulging pouch of a computer programmer, he looked a bit younger than his almost 40 years, and became quite possessed with the music, his hands fluttering like little birds in Dutilleux's Mystères de l'Instant. In Schumann's Manfred overture, his demeanor was by itself worth the admission price. Manfred, based on Byron's semi-autobiographical poem, is a tormented young man, and Gilbert was not only channeling that torment, he looked like he was rehearsing for the next sequel in the Karate Kid series.

We are not here to solve chicken and egg problems: did Gilbert look this way because the orchestra sounded that way, or the other way around? In any case, the sound threads conductor and orchestra wove together were by all means appropriate. Dutilleux's 1989 opus, ten short pieces fused with no interruption as a single one, was played delicately by a small string orchestra plus percussions and cimbalom. The piece-shifting textures and tonal centers seemed to depict the difficulty of catching the instant, never settling long in the same mood: dramatic glissandos resolving in light pizzicatos, soloists passing the baton seamlessly to one another, here Alexander Barantschik at the violins, now Michael Grebanier at the cello. We thought of the sound of birds which Dutilleux claimed inspired him for the piece (they also inspired the other modern French composer Olivier Messiaen in a few works). We also thought of rain drops: ten short pieces, ten musical haikus, briefly evoking nature and going away. The cimbalom (we believe manned by Jay Stebley) stepped in and out, bringing a curious metallic, almost synthetic and oddly appealing sound to the piece.

Picture from Alan Gilbert's press portfolio. He did not wear glasses Thursday though.

Manfred --both Schummann's and Byron's-- on the other hand is no haiku: it's not that subtle, and the orchestra went vividly at it, painting broad and bold strokes, going for broke for every hair raising moment. It was quite an enjoyable moment, especially following a rather dull rendition of Schumann's piano concerto No. 1. The piano concerto, and its soloist in particular, the 30yo Israeli pianist Shai Wosner, came out as timid. Ok, we can make bad puns: Shai was too shy. And you know that feeling when you wear that nice flowery print dress at a wedding and someone else shows up in exactly the same one? Well, it happened to Alan and Shai, except with black Nehru outfits. Shai did impress us by the softness of his touch and his hand independence, his left even and delicate while his right jumped through the technical difficulties. However, he did catch a few notes which were not on the score and his musical vision was a bit faint-hearted: the concerto opens on a piano arpeggio which did not command the attention it deserves, and to book end the concerto, the last chord was not in sync with the timpani in particular, and the orchestra in general, a quarter beat early. Obviously, Shai was in a rush to go home. Other soloists were a bit out of it as well, just to even the blame: the clarinetist had decided -had been instructed?- to play his first movement solo bits as if jumping up and down, when a smooth uninterrupted melodic line would have done just as well.

The concert finished with Richard Strauss's Death and Transfiguration (not to be confused with the Blue Danube's Johann Strauss, not a relative) and Alan Gilbert did avoid the temptation of kitsch, a danger ever looming when the theme is death and two harpists sit in the orchestra. We could have had a pompous goo with little angels flying to the sound of the harps until the gong rings, which it did. We instead had a subtly evocative atmosphere opening in a minor key, a melody slowly developing and building up to a percussion climax, in another fully embraced hair raising powerful moment, all eight basses see-sawing in anger. The piece -and the orchestra- then returned to the initial mood, now shifted in the major key, and we found Gilbert's hand deft enough in closing the loop from death to transfiguration.

San Francisco Symphony
www.sfsymphony.org
Davies Symphony Hall
201 Van Ness Ave
Box Office (415) 864-6000