San Francisco Symphony Delights at Carnegie Hall

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Parent Category: Film and the Arts

Category: Reviews

Published on Monday, 10 April 2017 18:51

Written by Jack Angstreich

An extraordinary season of orchestral music at Carnegie Hall continued with two excellent weekend concerts in April given by the superb San Francisco Symphony conducted by its impressive director, the estimable Michael Tilson Thomas.

The first program, which was devoted to twentieth-century music, was presented on the evening of Friday the 7th of April and opened with an strong account of the orchestral version of John Cage’s relatively accessible score for the Merce Cunningham ballet, The Seasons. Soloist Gautier Capuçon then took the stage for a memorable rendition of Dmitri Shostakovich’s wonderful Cello Concerto No. 1. Enthusiastic applause elicited a charming encore: Gregor Piatigorsky’s arrangement of the March from Sergei Prokofiev’s piano suite, Music for Children.

The second half of the evening was even more rewarding, featuring a sterling performance of Béla Bartók’s glorious concert staple, the Concerto for Orchestra. A warm ovation was met by a terrific encore: Henry Brant’s marvelous orchestral transcription of the beautiful third movement, “The Alcotts,” of the remarkable Charles Ives piano work, the Concord Sonata.

The following evening, devoted to the music of Gustav Mahler —of which this conductor is one of the foremost contemporary interpreters —if anything, surpassed the first. Before proceeding, however, Tilson Thomas spoke for a few minutes about Mahler’s Tenth Symphony and described recently visiting Kyoto’s Moss Temple, as well as reciting a few lines from The Book of Hours by Rainer Maria Rilke. He then led the orchestra in a moving reading of the magnificent Adagio from that symphony—its first movement and the only one that the composer lived to complete. The program closed exultantly, with an exuberant account of the astonishing Symphony No. 1.

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