Uneven Temperaments

It has been an exciting two weeks on the podium at the San Francisco Symphony. Two of the world's most talked-about young conductors — Gustavo Dudamel and Alan Gilbert — came to town back-to-back to guest conduct the orchestra. I had the pleasure of observing both Dudamel's Rachmaninov and Stravinsky last week (see review) and Gilbert's program of Stucky, Mozart, and Nielsen on Saturday. While perhaps it is unfair to compare these two conductors, it was hard not to be disappointed by Gilbert's follow-up performance.

The 41-year-old Gilbert was recently tapped to be the next music director of the New York Philharmonic. His tenure starts in 2009, the same year Dudamel will take the helm at Los Angeles. Gilbert's appointment has been praised by many critics, including most of the music desk at The New York Times. Above all, he is lauded for his bold programming and his commitment to new music. But his program on Saturday seemed more lackluster than bold, with odd choices that neither satisfied in themselves nor created a coherent larger group. Gilbert's dedication to new music was exhibited with the first work in the program, Steven Stuck's brief Son et Lumière, a San Francisco Symphony premiere. Written in 1988, this charming and accessible work displayed the composer's abilities at combining old formal devices (in this case, sonata form) with new musical material. But whether it was a fault of the piece or a deficit in the performance, discerning foreground from background in the work proved difficult. Multiple sections of the orchestra simultaneously vied for attention, with Gilbert doing little to balance them. Similarly, the playing felt tentative, as if both orchestra and conductor lacked conviction as to where the high and low points of the piece lay.

Lacking in Brilliance

The Stucky was followed by Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 18, a work that stands in the shadow of its more famous younger relatives, the well-known group of concertos that followed it. Soloist Richard Goode did little to enliven this work, which lacks the memorable melodic inventions and powerful scope of those later works. He delivered a rather subdued performance that failed to capture the audience's engagement, judging by the muted applause and the lack of an encore. The second half of the program featured Carl Nielsen's Symphony No. 2, "The Four Temperaments," a work that is rarely performed live (its most recent performance by the San Francisco Symphony was in 1989, under Herbert Blomstedt). On Saturday night I was tempted to conclude that its relative neglect is deserved. Written in 1902 — one year after the premiere of Mahler's Fourth Symphony and the same year as the premiere of Debussy's Pelléas et Mélisande — Nielsen's symphony is far more conservative in terms of orchestration, form, harmony, and rhythm than the more canonical works of that period. It also lacks the drama of the composer's Fourth Symphony, "The Inextinguishable," as well as the masterful scope of his Fifth Symphony. Despite some wonderful playing from the orchestra (including a gorgeous set of chorale passages in the brass) and Gilbert's obvious enthusiasm for the work, this was not a gripping performance by any stretch of the imagination.