WQXR Live from Carnegie Hall: San Francisco Symphony

Yesterday evening's performance of the San Francisco Symphony, broadcast live on WQXR, featured Michael Tilson Thomas conducting the orchestra in a mix of classical Viennese music by Beethoven and Mozart and twentieth century American music by Steven Mackey and Aaron Copland.

The program began with Beethoven's twelve minute Lenore Overture No. 3, Op. 72a from Fidelio.  Opera, of course, was the one form of musical expression that gave Beethoven the most difficulty.  In the end, he only composed one operatic work and that with great difficulty.  Despite several revisions, Fidelio never succeeded in becoming a mainstay of the repertoire, and it is its overtures that are most often performed today.  Of these, the Lenore No. 3 is by far the most popular.  Its great length, however, makes its performance within the opera itself problematic .  Still, this is a rousing piece with which to open any orchestral concert.

There followed Steven Mackey's Eating Greens (1994).  Despite the humorous titles given its seven movements and idiosyncratic instrumentation (including party horns, glass bottles and harmonicas) using no less than forty percussive instruments, this is a major symphonic work and cannot help but have a powerful effect on the listener. Though the work ends with a homage to Thelonius Monk, it also seems to me to be greatly influenced by the psychedelic rock music of the 1960's.  There is a very "spacy" feel to it that makes it totally unique in my experience.

Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 25 in C Major, K. 503, the last of the twelve he wrote in Vienna between 1884 and 1886, is usually considered his greatest work in this genre and is most notable for its extensive use of wind instruments.  The soloist at yesterday evening's performance was Jeremy Denk who has recently attracted as much notice for his writing abilities as his musicianship and was two months ago named a MacArthur Fellow.  Not only was his playing incredibly formidable, but his description of the work - in an interview with WQXR broadcast during intermission - was among the most insightful pieces of musical criticism I've encountered.  Both in his talk and in his performance, Denk brought out levels of meaning in the concerto I'd never suspected were there.

The final piece scheduled on the program was Copland's Symphonic Ode (1929), a youthful work for huge orchestra the composer wrote while still very much under the influence of Mahler and Stravinsky.  Although Copland himself called it his favorite work, it was never popular and is rarely (or, according to Michael Tilson Thomas, never) played today.  That may be due at least in part to the difficulty of the piece.  Originally commissioned by Sergey Koussevitsky for the Boston Symphony, the renowned conductor found the music so complex that he asked Copland to take over the rehearsals before its first performance. Copland eventually revised the work to make it simpler to play and it was finally premiered in 1932, a year later than had originally been planned.

The encore was the Hoe-down from Copland's Rodeo the 1942 ballet choreographed by Agnes de Mille for the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo.  This movement is not original but was taken in its entirety by Copland from Ruth Crawford Seeger's transcription of W. H. Stepp's version of Bonypart (Bonaparte's Retreat).  Whatever its origin, it provided an exciting ending to the concert.