Not so Fast, certainly not Furious

Hot woman, even hotter car, going nowhere.

Lured by an inexplicably favorable review by Mick LaSalle in the SF Chronicle, I went down to my local theater to see my first Fast and Furious movie. I should have known better, because fifteen years ago I did the same thing with the execrable Buffalo 66. Thanks to LaSalle's unfathomable taste, I've now wasted a good four hours of my life and $20 I'll never get back that not even Michelle Rodriguez driving a Jensen Interceptor (my favorite car of all-time) can make up for. The movie isn't fun, fast, nor furious. It's just incredibly dumb, and not in the good way. Even the car sequences, which should be the one thing they get right, fail to excite and are CGI enhanced. Then there's the talented Dwayne Johnson, buffed to alarming, Hulking proportions, so grotesquely huge he's at least as big as Schwarzenegger was in Stay Hungry. Watching him made me queasy and fearful for his prospect of living a reasonably long life. Let's not even discuss the dialogue, plotting, or logic behind the action sequences as they are all ridiculous and poorly executed. Seriously- skip this clunker.

More Beethoven, and then even more Beethoven

Life at Davies felt like it returned to normal earlier this month with the San Francisco Symphony's Beethoven Project. The bad taste in one's mouth left by the musicians' strike was beginning to fade, MTT was back on the podium, the hall was full and there was a palpable excitement at the concerts- especially the Saturday night performance featuring a newly revised version of John Adams' Absolute Jest, which was premiered by the orchestra last year to mixed reviews and my own befuddlement. I expected the piece to sound a bit different, but Adams essentially rebuilt the thing from the ground up, jettisoning the mix-tape/mash-up feel of it which made it seem trifling and opted to revise it into something that sounded almost entirely different. The first third of it was completely new, and Adams inserted a healthy dose of his own earlier work, especially bits from Nixon in China. The new Jest sounded little like the first one and I didn't quite know what to make of the changes, except that I loved the way the 9th's scherzo was deconstructed in the beginning and then put back together piece by piece into a marvelously cohesive chunk.

Having attended a symposium earlier that afternoon which was supposed to feature MTT and Adams, along with a Beethoven scholar from San Jose State (Adams bailed) during which MTT played the piano, I wasn't paying clear enough attention to notice that during the evening he wasn't using his right arm to conduct, which was brought to my attention after the intermission by an out of town visitor. It turns out MTT had injured his shoulder (he's fine now). What's interesting to note is that according to someone who saw the piece performed the following afternoon, when someone else (I don't know who) stood in for MTT, is that what was heard on Saturday was a bit of a hash, and it was Sunday's performance that really sounded as Adams intended. You'll just have to take my word for that. Regardless, it garnered a huge ovation. For an interesting read regarding Adams and this piece in particular, see David Ocker's post about it on his Mixed Meters blog. Ocker, who is himself a composer and used to work with Frank Zappa, has been preparing Adam's scores for quite some time now.

The first half of the evening also featured Three Equali for Four Trombones- another curiosity meant to  present seldom heard music by the composer which was interesting but frankly if I never heard it again I wouldn't notice. However, what followed that, tenor Michael Fabiano's performance of An die ferne Geliebte, accompanied by John Churchwell on piano, was fantastic. You may recall Fabiano from San Francisco Opera's miserably inept Lucrezia Borgia- he was much more impressive here, under much more favorable conditions.

With one arm at his side MTT led the orchestra through a fairly satisfactory performance of Beethoven's 4th Symphony for the second half.

The next week featured the big event of the Beethoven Project, at least as far as I was concerned, which was the return of the Missa solemnis. Almost two years ago the massive work got an eagerly awaited performance that let just about everybody down. It was pretty horrible and its appearance this season as a mulligan raised hopes that this time they would get it right, and sure enough the orchestra, the San Francisco Symphony Chorus and soloists Fabiano, Laura Claycomb, Sasha Cooke and Shenyang delivered on every level this time. Fabiano absolutely nailed his parts beautifully and Cooke was also exceptional. The chorus, which has really been performing at an astonishing level of beauty for the past couple of years, was magnificent. But even if the soloists and chorus had given the best performance the world has ever heard of the piece, without the orchestra performing at the same level the effort is for naught, and this was the problem the last time out. On this occasion they soared through the entire extremely daunting work and it was the fantastic performance which everyone wanted to hear two years ago.

The Missa solemnis was preceded by selections  from Palestrina's choral work Missa Papae Marcelli, composed circa 1560 and meant to inform us about from where Beethoven drew inspiration. It was beautifully sung, but one could sense the audience wanted the main event and could have lived without this appetizer.

The following Sunday afternoon featured a very well-attended performance of three of Beethoven's string quartets, each performed by a different group of musicians from the orchestra. I need to nitpick about an issue that may seem trivial to some but drives me slightly bonkers, and that's the issue of how the musicians dress for performances. I don't care who you are or what you're playing, when you have one musician onstage in what looks like her pajamas and the others are reasonably dressed for a professional engagement it makes everyone look foolish. The same thing holds true when the ensemble looks like they were randomly selected from malls in four different states, none of them within a thousand miles of the other. Please people, have some sartorial flair. I don't expect everyone do dress at the same level of Justin Timberlake-ish style sported by Jonathan Vinocour lately, but make an effort- we all know you can afford to go shopping for a decent wardrobe. As for the performance, it was good- how could it not be given the material and the skill of the players? But it would have been more illuminating to see one group traverse all three quartets (No.s 2, 10 & 12) which would have brought a deeper sense of how one engages with the composer.

The Beethoven Project

The San Francisco Symphony's Beethoven Project began Thursday evening with a quirky program of his early work and rarities. The concert opened with the song "Adelaide," written in 1796 and being performed in these concerts using an arrangement by SFS Chorus Director Ragnar Bohlin. The opening minute and a half seemed like a mash-up using bits of Fidelio and the Miss Solemnis, while Robin Sutherland accompanied the chorus on piano pulling what seemed like an entire sequence of notes from the jaunty transition between the 2nd and 3rd movement of the 4th Piano Concerto. I enjoyed it, but at six minutes it's more amusing than revealing. The same can be said for the Sonatina in C major for Mandolin and Fortepiano. Clocking in at roughly three and a half minutes and almost completely forgettable, one wonders how it made it onto the program and why, unless it's meant as a bit of a joke. The piece was inspired by the Countess Josephine Clary, who, according to the image of her used in the program, was quite well-endowed and probably inspired a great number of men to do foolish things and waste much of their time, Beethoven among them.

Well, okay, it is nice to be reminded in programming like this that it's not all about the big and famous works we already know. In fact, what was great about this program was its decidedly contrarian programming, especially what was for many the main attraction- a chance to hear the Cantata on the Death of the Emperor Joseph II. I've never heard this performed live and I can't imagine many opportunites to do so exist, but it was an important topic when I took a class on Beethoven while in college so I was quite pleased to get a chance to hear it. LVB was only 19 when he composed it, but again one can hear parts that would eventually show up in Fidelio almost note for note, as well as many works in the "heroic" era and later. MTT and the orchestra, with a brilliant performance by the string section (the first one I've heard from them since returning from the strike) and led by the fabulous singing of the marvelously attired soprano Sally Matthews (who really needs to perform more here in the States) really made a case for the work as more than just an interesting historical or academic side note. A stunning (and pregnant) Tamara Mumford (a shout out to her neighbor Maria Gostrey out there in Sandy, Utah), Barry Banks and Andrew Foster-Williams were also on hand. If close attention to MTT's actions at the end of a performance can be interpreted, MTT was keener on Foster-Williams' performance than on Banks'. Truthfully I didn't notice because there was a woman seated directly behind me doing her best impersonation of Ozzy Osbourne hacking up a lung at the beginning of the Black Sabbath song "Sweet Leaf" during the entire thing. Speaking of Black Sabbath, did you know tickets go on sale for what's likely to be the band's last tour together tomorrow? I would love to go, except the damn thing is at Shoreline, a venue I hate, and I know that I won't be able to tolerate thousands of stoned 50 and 60-something-year-old men yelling "SAAABAAATH!!!!!" and "IRON MAN!" all night long. On the other hand, if someone gave me a ticket I would definitely be happy about that. Things like people coughing or talking during a performance used to bother me much more than they do now, but this woman was really starting to annoy the piss out of me. Somehow she thought it best to cough during the moments of silence, which is a really bad decision. Of course human nature being what it is, soon there were other coughers, though this is the fucking month of MAY already, people! Thankfully the coughing woman and her date left at intermission never to return and I didn't have to turn around and give her nasty looks of disapproval, because that's always so effective, right?

The most familiar piece on the program was the Symphony No. 2, which was the key to knowing how MTT is going to approach Beethoven for this particular series of concerts. Now I have to admit I have not always admired MTT's approach to Beethoven in the past, though once in awhile he switches things up, takes a new tack, and surprises everyone with the usually stellar results. Last night's 2nd was performed in MTT's usual approach, which is either growing on me or is exceptionally well-suited for this piece. Fleet and lean, with brisk tempos throughout, this is Beethoven without any sturm und drang but with plenty of heart. He wrung every bit of transparency he could from the strings, which jabbed and penetrated into the rhythms, and if the horns seemed to bobble it in the opening of the first movement, soon everything was clicking along beautifully- a vibrant, lively reading of a Symphony that deserves greater recognition among its peers.

The program repeats tonight. See the Symphony's website for the rest of the schedule.

Hype happens: Goerne & Eschenbach at Davies.

Cristoph Eschenbach and Matthias Goerne. 

Baritone Matthias Goerne visited our fair city last week for one of the most anticipated appearances of the season and apparently I'm the only one who wasn't impressed. In a pair of programs which took place at Davies Symphony Hall (the first for three nights with the San Francisco Symphony conducted by Christoph Eschenbach, followed by a Great Performers series recital accompanied by Eschenbach on the piano) Goerne took up a lot of space and did precious little with it.

The Symphony program began with two Wagner excerpts- Die Frist ist um from The Flying Dutchman, followed by Wotan's Farewell scene and the Magic Fire Music from Die Walkure. In the Dutchman segment the orchestra was flat, at least the strings were- especially to anyone who heard this same orchestra bring this same score to thrilling life a few years ago under MTT, but even with the flat tone of the strings Goerne struggled to be heard, left little impression of the character, and gave no hint as to why he wanted to sing it in the first place. As Wotan he wasn't any better, and though the much enlarged orchestra made it clear just how far the composer had grown in his musical language in the fifteen year span separating the two works, Goerne sounded spent at the conclusion of the segment, making me wonder how he could ever hope to make it through an entire performance of the opera. Though he has a large, warm tone, his voice sounded ragged at the edges and the words which could be clearly heard were few and far between, despite the fact that he's a native singer.

The second half of the concert featured Dvorak's Symphony No. 9, From the New World, the fondness of which is something else I don't have in common with most of the planet, but in passages, some of which were played at pleasingly loud volume, I could easily see what does draw people to this work. It's just something that's always left me cold. I feel the same about Bach passions, for what it's worth.

A couple of nights later I returned for the recital, and it seemed like everyone was there. They weren't of course, but when one turns around and finds Chip Grant seated behind you, it feels indeed like everyone is there. The program this time was Schubert's Winterreise- twenty four dark, lonely and despairing poems by Willhelm Muller set to music that creates a narrative arc of alienation, loss, anxiety, fear, and finally defeat. It's a heady 70 or 80 minutes, and definitely not everyone's cup of tea in the same way that Handel or Wagner may not be for everyone, but there's no denying the genius of the work and it's the kind of melodramatic Romanticism for which I'm a complete sucker.

Eschenbach's accompaniment lacked a light touch when it was most needed, his foot sometimes never left the pedal, and he played too loudly in key moments, reaching over Goerne's volume. In short, there was an absence of grace in the playing which would have been of benefit to the whole as the problems I had with Goerne's appearance on Thursday were still evident on Sunday- a woolly wound, rough at the edges, mushy diction, and a lack of dramatic involvement or appreciation for nuance (Erstarrung and Ruckblick were taken very fast, and the latter became messy), and a tendency to bluster through certain segments (Fruhlingstraum, Einsamkeit, Die Post). They had their moments, notably during Im Dorfe and Der Wegweiser, but in a program of this scale that's simply not enough. A recital should have at least one revelation moment, when one instinctively knows, or hears something, that justifies the fact that a crowd has gathered to hear one lone voice deliver something unique to it. Something truly beautiful- or powerful, frightening, or joyful. Something, but not just anything. Goerne never delivered that moment.

But don't believe me- because everyone else seems to have loved every minute of it, except me, and those who straggled out of the hall, choosing to get lost during the journey. And one last note- a sartorial one- choose a shirt with a good, strong, well-made collar.