Brahms' ein deutsches Requiem
Each year, the Symphony organizes a summer festival dedicated to a theme or a composer. Next year sounds pretty intriguing: Schubert/Berg, two Viennese schools, two different styles to contrast and highlight each other. We're looking forward to it. This year, not so much: the festival was dedicated to Brahms, and we were like, blah. Programming Brahms is as exciting as a dinner of mac'n'cheese: the League of American Orchestras computed the most performed pieces of the 2006-07 season, and Brahms pieces rank 1st, 4th, 6th and 8th. We feel, why set up a special extra Brahms session when you can't swing a bow without hitting one of his symphonies. It's not like we're Brahms-deprived and need an extra dose.
And yet, we went, twice, and had a great time. We saw MTT lead a muscular piano concerto No. 2 with Leif-Ove Andsnes, a pianist who'd keep his cool in a pressure cooker. We'd want him to play Macgyver in the upcoming movie, his hands were so relaxed and deliberate in the hairy technical passages, as if he operated in a parallel time dimension, he'd defuse bombs admirably.
And then we saw a soothing performance of the Deutsches Requiem on Wednesday evening. And we had to concede the wisdom of the summer festival: there's no such thing as too much Brahms the way it was presented to us. The star performer of the evening (beside the San Francisco Symphony chorus) was Matthias Goerne, the German baritone. We had just received his latest CD release, an intense, emotional recording of Schubert lieder, which had set our expectation of him quite high. He came up on stage in an unassuming black suit that seemed to tight, and sat on his chair at the feet of MTT's podium, looking as if he wanted to disappear. There's no turn for the soloists in the first two movements of the seven movement requiem, so they just sit down waiting and Goerne took a slightly embarassed, almost uncomfortable posture. Then at the third movement, "Herr, lehre doch mich," he sprung up, opened his chest to fill it up so much we feared he'd rip his jacket, so much his faced got red, and he threw himself into the song. He manages to be quite intense, yet in total control. The movement repeats itself, and the second time around, he turned the passionate knob another notch, his deep, rich, warm voice keeping a steady, assured legato. He was close to dislodge our prior baritone reference on this stage, Thomas Hampson. We're now really sad that we missed Goerne's SF Performances recital of a week ago!
The other soloist, soprano Laura Claycomb, did not demerit by any means, but her slightly metallic voice is sharper, and the score calls for a comforting tone. "I will comfort you as your mama," the lyrics roughly say and Claycomb's comfort had a bit too much edge for us to find solace. She looked quite stunning in red hair and deep purple dress, so we'll let her tuck us in bed. MTT did find the right tone, tuning down the forceful, athletic hand with which he led the orchestra in the previous concert we saw of the festival. He found the right blend of majesty and intimacy. Oh sure, there were some display of raw power in the Bach-on-steroids passages, but the timpani also found the softest heartbeat. We have to tip your hat to anyone who can blend so seamlessly Davies Hall's big organ and a pair of harp. We also have to salute the job Ragnar Bohlin did with the Chorus.
The concert opened with a few more pieces for chorus. It opened with the Geistliches Lied (Song of the Spirit), which the program notes describe as a "double canon at the nineth," for organ and chorus. It sounds technical, and what this means is that it is quite a sophisticated piece in its construction, and we would not describe it as a curtain raiser. Rather, it was a soft, peaceful, soothing calm balm to our ears. Then Four Songs for Women's Chorus followed, with a strange orchestration of two French horns and a harp. Who knew the horns could sound like violas, and the harp like a pizzicato bass? We feared the orchestration would be too bare after the first couple songs, especially since the songs were written as educational tool for an amateur chorus, but Brahms manages to pull surprises out of his bag of tricks. A funny moment happened prior to intermission, when MTT attempted to get a round of applause for the organist, who, unbeknownst to the conductor, had slipped out after his first piece.
This program repeats tonight and tomorrow at 8pm.
SF Symphony
Davies Symphony Hall
201 Van Ness Ave.
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