Arts & Events

Édouard Lalo’s Symphonie espagnole, which premiered in 1875, is not a symphony. Rather, it is for all intents and purposes a violin concerto, and a very French violin concerto at that. Although inspired by the rhythms and musical colors of Spain, Lalo’s Symphonie espagnole possesses all the essentials of French music: the clarity of expression, the richness of orchestral color, and the rhythmic vitality and melodic lyricism handed down through the centuries from Jean-Baptiste Lully and Jean-Philippe Rameau to Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel. 

In four concerts at Davies Hall June 15-18, San Francisco Symphony featured violinist Joshua Bell in Édouard Lalo’s sumptuous Symphonie espagnole. With Russian Guest Conductor Vasily Petrenko leading the orchestra, Joshua Bell offered a riveting performance of Lalo’s Symphonie espagnole. Playing a 1713 Huberman Stradivarius violin, Joshua Bell tore into Lalo’s Spanish inflected rhythms and delivered exquisite renditions of Lalo’s lyrical melodies. The richness of Bell’s tone, especially in the burnished low register, was sumptuous indeed. Lalo’s Symphonie espagnole opens with a deceptively grandiose introductory statement from the orchestra. When the solo violin enters, it too opens on a grand and serious note. Soon, however, the work’s lightness of spirit takes over, and for the rest of this five-movement work the mood is light and airy, though full of demanding technical passages for the violin soloist. As for these latter, Joshua Bell handled the technical challenges with awesome aplomb.  

The second movement, marked Scherzando, offers a seguidilla. (Think of Carmen singing “Près des ramparts de Sevilla” in Bizet’s opera.) Here the strings and harp offer pizzicato plucking to imitate the sounds of a guitar. The third movement, an Intermezzo, opens with the orchestra announcing a grand theme, but this soon gives way to a flamenco-style Habanera. Then comes an Andante, which opens with trumpet calls backed by low strings. This movement features some splendid passages for solo violin in the low register, and it was here that Joshua Bell’s resonant, almost cello-like tone made its full impact. The fifth and final movement opens with gentle notes from the triangle, then launches into a Rondo full of Iberian spirit and fiendishly difficult technical passages, which Joshua Bell handled almost perfectly, with here or there, however, a slight misstep in fingering. In spite of an occasional slurred note, Joshua Bell gave as deeply expressive and gratifying a performance of Lalo’s Symphonie espagnole as one could ever hope to hear. This was unquestionably the highlight of a program that also included Glinka’s Capriccio brillante on the Jota aragonesa and Rachmaninoff’s Symphony No. 1 in D minor.  

Glinka’s brief but extremely colorful Capriccio on the Jota aragonesa opened the program. This piece is considered a true fountainhead of Russian music, and in it Mikhail Glinka demonstrated his mastery of inventive orchestration. Indeed, his imaginative instrumental combinations in this work show Glinka’s debt to Berlioz. The Spanish colors include harp and pizzicato strings to suggest the plucking of a guitar. There are many contrapuntal lines heard against the main themes, all combining in a work of great verve, exuberantly conducted here by Vasily Petrenko.  

After intermission Vasily Petrenko returned to lead the orchestra in San Francisco Symphony’s first-ever performance of Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Symphony No. 1 in D minor. Written when Rachmaninoff was only 22 years old, this work was nearly the composer’s undoing. At its premiere in St. Petersburg in 1897, it was so poorly played by an indifferent orchestra conducted by a drunken Alexander Glazunov that Rachmaninoff himself heard nothing but the faults of this his first effort at writing a symphony. He fell into such despair over the failure of this work’s premiere that he suffered a complete nervous breakdown marked by chronic depression and an inability to compose. Cared for at first by his grandmother, then by noted Moscow physician Dr. Dahl, Rachmaninoff gradually returned to physical and mental health, and by 1901 he had composed his Piano Concerto No. 2 in C minor, a work that brought him everlasting fame. Meanwhile, the score of Rachmaninoff’s First Symphony was seemingly lost and unregretted. After the composer’s death, however, a score of this work for two pianos turned up and later a score with orchestral parts allowed this First Symphony to be revived, and it received its second performance in 1945, 48 years after its disastrous premiere. Since then it has gained a measure of respect and is often programmed, especially in Russia. 

Rachmaninoff’s First Symphony opens with a four-note motif that will continue to be heard throughout all four movements of this work. In fact, it is used to open not only each movement but also various sections of movements. It thus offers a unifying thread. The work begins with an orchestral outburst marked Grave. This is developed at some length before the opening four-note motif returns to signal a new section marked Allegro. The second movement offers, instead of the usual slow movement, another fast movement marked Allegro animato. In this symphony, the slow movement is the third, a Larghetto. To me, this lovely Larghetto is the only completely satisfying movement of this work. Early on there is a brooding theme heard in the cellos and basses. A few trumpet blasts offer punctuation, then a brief flute solo ensues, soon followed by an exquisite cello solo, beautifully played here by principal cellist Michael Grebanier. After the violins pick up the main melody, this lifting Larghetto comes to a close with gentle pizzicato from the violins. The rousing finale, marked Allegro con fuoco, is far too bombastic for my taste, though it offers impressive pyrotechnics from the percussion section. Throughout this Rachmaninoff First Symphony, conductor Vasily Petrenko led an energetic rendition of a youthful work that in spite of its flaws contains many hints, especially in the lilting Larghetto, of the great lyricist Rachmaninoff would become.