A pleasant two-hour ride on the EuroStar train through the Chunnel took the 106 members the orchestra, stage crew, and staff to Paris. On the docket were two concerts at the Salle Pleyel in the city’s 8th arrondissement, a stone’s throw from the Arc de Triomph. The 1913-seat hall is home to the Orchestre de Paris, but for the next two nights, the SFS.
The Monday and Tuesday concerts marked our final performances in this hall, as Paris opens a new concert hall next year. An adventurous project, the new Philharmonie de Paris will be situated in the outskirts of Paris, at the Cite de la Musique, also home to the city’s conservatory.
The Jean Nouvel-designed hall is still very much under construction, but MTT, SFS Executive Director Brent Assink, General Manager John Kieser and Director of Artistic Planning John Mangum were given a hard hat sneak preview. Impressive even in this incomplete state, the orchestra’s next visit to Paris will be to the Philharmonie.
MTT with scholar Henri-Louis de la Grange and Marina Mahler, granddaughter of the composer
In a program that also included Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7, the Parisian crowd was most wowed by the French premiere of Bay Area composer John Adams’ Absolute Jest, an SFS commission. With absolutely dazzling playing by the Stanford-based St. Lawrence String Quartet, the audience demanded five curtain calls and burst into the European tradition of rhythmic clapping.
While we’ve seen this on occasion on tour after a Mahler or Beethoven symphony, it was overheard that this was unusual in the Salle Pleyel, especially in the first half and with an American premiere no less. The rest of France will have a chance to hear the work on April 1 when Radio France broadcasts a recording of the concert. For Bay Area fans of the work, a CD release of Absolute Jest on the SFS Media label is planned for next year, MTT’s 20th as music director.
The second program featured Mahler’s Symphony No. 3 that, much like in London and San Francisco before it, brought tears and smiles and profound reactions by many of those who heard it. The Le Monde review has yet to come out but ConcertoNet.com’s Gilles d’Heyres writes:
MTT at the Philharmonie de Paris construction site
"The Orchestra from San Francisco brought to its Parisian audience all that a symphony orchestra can and should provide: breathtaking precision, subtlety, discipline, flexibility, and suppleness... The trumpets and trombones certainly provided their share of the gloriousness; the trumpet virtuosity of Mark Inouye was matched by the infallible trombone of Timothy Higgins. Other sections were not to be outdone, the percussion section impressive with their rhythmic and stylistic exactness, and the strings giving the audience a sound the color of honey." (Thank you pianist Robin Sutherland for the backstage translation.)
A well-deserved day off in Paris followed. Orchestra members scattered in all directions, trips to the Louvre and the van Gogh exhibit at the Musee d’Orsay, day trips to Versailles, Giverny or descending into the famed but slightly creepy catacombs or just getting lost and eating one’s way around the various arrondissements of Paris.
But one musician, clarinetist Steve Sánchez, had a particularly important item to check off his travel to-do list for the day: propose. Steve popped the question to girlfriend Stella Shi at the Rodin Museum. Unlike the sculpture in front of her, she didn’t have to think about it long, she said yes.
A short flight southeast to the base of the alps took the orchestra to its next destination, Geneva, Switzerland. In the beautifully ornate Victoria Hall, a full house awaited them for another breathtaking performance of Mahler’s Third Symphony. In the hall were Mahler’s granddaughter Marina Mahler, distinguished Mahler scholar Henri-Louis de la Grange, and interim head of the US Embassy, Chargé d’Affaires Jeffrey Cellars and his wife Bethanne. The Cellars, who hail from San Francisco, made their way from Bern for the evening to hear their hometown orchestra. Cellars made his way backstage and told MTT that, tonight, he and the SFS represented the United States about as well as he ever could hope to do. And so on to Dortmund.
After the March 21st concert in Dortmund, SFS went on to play in Luxembourg on Sunday, Prague on Monday, due in Vienna for the two final concerts on March 25-26.
