In Festival Opener, Berg Trumps Schubert

The San Francisco Symphony's "Dawn to Twilight" festival got off to a more than solid start with its opening run of concerts at Davies Symphony Hall beginning last Wednesday. The festival is meant to explore Schubert and Berg as compositional kinsmen of sorts, working at opposite ends of the Romantic era; this first program initiated an interaction between the music of the two composers that continues for two more weeks. The first chance to assess this approach came with performances of Berg's Seven Early Songs and Three Pieces for Orchestra, and Schubert's Rosamunde Overture and Unfinished Symphony.

I had the privilege of hearing all of Friday's program and part of Wednesday's opening performance. If the direction established this first week continues, it will be Berg's work that will be more deeply explored, its musical and spiritual content more fully revealed.

The performance of the Berg Three Pieces (Op. 6) was a gem. Michael Tilson Thomas and the orchestra produced a performance that would be hard to excel; the many fleeting episodes in Berg's mercurial work, each conveying a brief drama in its own right, emerged as pieces of a grand design that cohered across the entire work. The playing was marked by exquisite balances among parts, highlighting Berg's brilliance as an orchestrator, with each line seeming inseparable from its instrumental assignment. The full range of the music's language was here: enigmatic but extroverted, sweeping, and mysterious.

A Heady Amalgam of Early and Late Berg

Mezzo-soprano Michelle DeYoung joined the orchestra for a performance of Berg's Seven Early Songs that brought the work gorgeously to life. DeYoung's wonderfully full singing, superb German, and wide range of expression, from sweetness to fierce intensity, were just right for this work. Berg's music is a curious and compelling mix, as the late Romantic language of the youthful songs is transformed by the vivid, almost hallucinatory instrumental setting he created when he orchestrated them late in his career. Along with her embodiment of the text and the music's mood, DeYoung's rich voice had the effect of creating another color in the orchestra, even as she stood out from it.

The Schubert performances offered nothing to complain about, but less to celebrate. The program opened with the Rosamunde Overture, in a graceful performance that achieved momentum without quite finding a sense of urgency. The overall effect was a bit polite, and left me wanting a certain gutsiness. That would have felt more appropriate to the opening gesture of a festival, and would have made the work more compelling.

The Unfinished Symphony (in B Minor, D. 759), also seemed a bit tepid on the Festival's opening night. Wednesday's performance was shaped with care and showcased the warm beauty of the strings, along with some lovely wind playing. Again, though, an unneeded quality of stateliness settled over the music and left it seeming a bit contained. That was less the case with Friday's more charged performance; there was real suspense during Schubert's often surprising transitions, and more boldness and intensity this second time around.

Altogether, MTT's approach to Schubert proved to be well-conceived, with some welcome virtues and no great failings. The performance suggested an understanding of the composer equal to that shown in the Berg, but less real identification with the works. The Schubert performances never strayed from the spirit of the music, but never completely inhabited it either.