Woody’s [rating:5]
San Francisco Symphony conductor Michael Tilson-Thomas
- Violin soloist James Ehnes
My wife last heard George Gershwin’s “An American in Paris” played in the flesh 49 years ago in Manhattan.
I heard it in-person much more currently — 33 years ago — also in New York.
Sadly, neither of us can remember a thing about those concerts other than we were there. But the San Francisco Symphony version we caught recently, with Michael Tilson-Thomas conducting with his usual exemplary zeal, is apt to linger in our memories a long, long time.
And not because the music stand of a musician in the last row slipped down with a clunk before the Davies Hall concert began.
But because the performance was as luscious and joyous as the first bite of a truffle.
And then some.
The audience agreed. It gave the musicians — and MTT, of course — a standing ovation.
Tilson-Thomas conducted it at a good clip, conjuring up all the vibrancy possible from Gershwin’s instrumental dialogue — aided, naturally, by the incredible finesse of San Francisco’s finest music-makers.
Together they painted a melodic portrait that evoked the same images and feelings Gershwin must have experienced in the vital, avant-garde Paris of the 1920s.
MTT didn’t settle for just Gershwin, however.
He constructed an amazing program that beguiled the audience, starting with “The Alcotts,” a six-minute rendition of an unexpectedly sweet Charles Ives movement from “A Concord Symphony” — replete with passages that hint of church hymns and Beethoven’s Fifth.
Then, soloist James Ehnes, whose lightning-fast bow was a visual blur at the same time he created stringed exactitude, drew a standing ovation for his artistry on Samuel Barber’s ”Violin Concerto, Opus 14.” Some pundits have found the explosive, ultra-fast third movement disconnected from the first more pensive two, but Ehnes made any previous criticism vanish.
My wife commented of the “Presto in moto perpetuo,” only half in jest, that “his virtuosity made Rimsky-Korsakov’s ‘The Flight of the Bumblebee’ sound like it’s flying in slow motion.”
MTT gently pushed Ehnes back on stage for an encore. Niccolò Paganini’s “Caprice No. 16” earned him another standing ovation.
Tilson-Thomas also paired George Antheil’s “A Jazz Symphony,” a multi-faceted pastiche from 1928, with the Gershwin closer, suggesting Antheil was “deliberately out there, to delight and provoke.”
He urged the crowd to “fasten your seat belts — here it goes.”
The piece, with layered textures, colors and rhythms, with musical pauses as effective as those in a Harold Pinter play, included blow-your-mind riffs from trumpeter Mark Inouye and pianist Robin Sutherland.
One muted horn segment infused its bluesy strains in my mind and heart at once. A brief clarinet segment duplicated that impact.
An ad campaign of the ‘70s and ‘80s repeatedly proclaimed that “When E.F. Hutton talks, people listen.” I suggest the slogan be updated for the 2013-14 season: “When MTT conducts, everyone listens.”
His work so inspired my spouse, in fact, she rushed home to frolic with “An American in Paris” on our Yamaha piano.
She’d never played it before but thought it “would be fun.”
It was.
For her and me.
But in good conscience I must admit the symphony did it a teensy-weensy bit better.
Maybe, dear, it was just because they’d rehearsed.
If you missed this performance, you might want to catch one of these upcoming concerts: “MTT and Jeremy Denk: Beethoven, Mozart, Copland,” Nov. 7-10; Natalie Cole and the symphony, Nov. 25; Dianne Reeves with the orchestra, Dec. 11; Burt Bacharach and the symphony, Dec. 13; “MTT and Yo-Yo Ma,” Feb. 28. Information: (415) 864-6400 or www.sfsymphony.org.
