Arts & Events

Berkeley’s First Congregational Church was once again the venue for San Francisco Chamber Orchestra’s annual New Year’s Eve concert. Led by Music Director Ben Simon, SFCO offers free concerts throughout the year at various locations in the Bay Area; but their New Year’s Eve concerts are a particular favorite with local classical music lovers. This year the program featured Mozart’s overture to Così fan tutte, Prokofiev’s First Symphony, “the Classical,” and, after intermission, young violinist Stephen Waart playing Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto in E-minor.  

Mozart’s Così fan tutte overture led off the program; and SFCO gave this work a crisp, effervescent reading. The last of Mozart’s three collaborations with librettist Lorenzo Da Ponte, Così fan tutte premiered in Vienna’s Burgtheater on January 26, 1790, and met with considerable box office success, which, however, was quickly curtailed by the sudden death of Emperor Joseph II and the mandatory two-month closing of all theaters.  

The overture to Così fan tutte is a model of concision. It opens with dramatic chords in the orchestra, followed by the oboe playing a lilting melody, which then undergoes modulations in the winds and strings. According to Edward J. Dent, the oboe’s nasal tone is associated with the cynical realism of Don Alfonso, who sets the opera in motion with a bet he can prove to the young gentlemen Ferrando and Guglielmo that their fiancées, like all women, are fickle. The first theme then leads into the second theme, the very motto of the opera, which states in orchestral terms that “Così fan tutte,” or “All women are like that.” This is followed by lively chattering music, as if the opera’s characters were delivering their vain protestations of eternal love seconded by syncopated chords. At the end of this brief, concise overture, the “Così fan tutte” theme returns for a final, emphatic reiteration. 

Next, San Francisco Chamber Orchestra played Sergei Prokofiev’s First Sym-phony in D major, nicknamed by Prokofiev “The Classical.” In this symphony, Prokofiev eschewed the huge, bloated orchestrations of the Romantic and Post-Romantic composers and limited himself to an orchestra such as Haydn used. Further, Prokofiev composed this symphony as if Haydn were writing symphonies in the 20^th century, retaining his style but also absorbing something of the new. Prokofiev wrote this work in 1917, demonstrating remarkable immersion in the past glories of the classical age just as he was also embracing the overthrow of the Czar and the onset of the Bolshevik Revolution. 

Prokofiev experienced numerous twists and turns in his relation to the Bolshevik Revolution. Initially, he welcomed it. Then, disturbed by the war between Reds and Whites, he decided to leave for a concert tour in the USA in 1918. Next he settled in Paris. By 1933, Prokofiev was ready to return to the Soviet Union and embrace its ideology. Back in the USSR, he composed works glorifying the Soviet system, including a wonderful score for Sergei Eisenstein’s noteworthy film Alexander Nevsky. Later, in 1947, he was denounced by Stalin’s cultural watchdogs for “decadent modernism.” Subsequently he was rehabilitated and celebrated in the USSR prior to his death in Moscow in 1953. 

Conductor Ben Simon preceded this work by leading the orchestra in several different measures of this symphony to point out just what Prokofiev was doing, thus giving the audience a heads up on some of the details of Prokofiev’s artistry. For example, Prokofiev’s First Symphony begins with an explosive blast known as a Mannheim rocket, a term derived from the famed 18^th century Mannheim court orchestra. Ben Simon not only led SFCO in this example of a fast, arpeggiated rising on the tonic chord; he also played a similar example from Mozart’s “Paris” Symphony.  

When the demonstrations were over, San Francisco Chamber Orchestra launched into a full reading of Prokofiev’s First Symphony. After the explosive opening blast, the strings introduce a vivacious first theme that undergoes various dynamic changes. Then a second theme is introduced in the strings, a subject with two-octave leaps against a bassoon accompaniment. The second movement opens with a tender melody in the violins, followed by woodwinds offering a subsidiary idea until the main theme returns and undergoes an unusual and noteworthy mod-ulation. The third movement is a gavotte rather than the menuet that normally followed in classical symphonies; and Prokofiev’s gavotte is an outstanding, memorable dance movement full of athletic grace. The final movement features the first violinist, here Robin Sharp, playing at the highest register of her instrument in a series of quicksilver passages, interspersed with ideas coming from the woodwinds and a solo flute. Rushing headlong to a climax of final chords, Prokofiev’s First Symphony comes to a joyous end. 

After intermission, SFCO returned with soloist Stephen Waart to perform Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto in E-minor. This enormously popular work was given a virtuoso reading by Waart, whose technical skills and intellectual grasp of this work are astounding for his age. (Having earlier performed with SFCO as a promising youth, Waart is now 18 years old, a multiple prize-winner, and a student at the Curtis Institute.) The shimmering quality of Mendelssohn’s writing for violin was beautifully rendered by Waart, who consummately handled the written-out cadenza in this concerto’s first movement. The lilting second movement was also beautifully performed by soloist Waart, as he took the lead in unraveling Mendelssohn’s lyricically melodious second movement. The third and final movement followed with ebullient material brilliantly played by both soloist and orchestra, as this New Year’s Eve concert came to a resounding close. What a delightful way to ring in the New Year!