United States Shostakovich, Brahms: Sayaka Shoji (violin), San Francisco Symphony / Esa-Pekka Salonen (conductor). Davies Symphony Hall, San Francisco, 4.10.2024. (HS)
Shostakovich – Violin Concerto No.1 in A minor
Brahms – Symphony No.4 in E minor
Conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen and the San Francisco Symphony delivered a performance of Brahms’s Symphony No.4 for the ages before a full house in Davies Symphony Hall on Friday. It was a taste of what audiences will miss when Salonen departs after his music director contract expires next June.
The disagreement with management may have involved projects and initiatives that were promised and withdrawn as the orchestra navigates financial shortfalls, but the rapport that Salonen has built with the SF Symphony musicians was front and center as they traversed this work with a sense of unanimity and purpose.
There was no sense of hesitation in the opening measures which often happens. As the theme ricocheted from section to section, the team was in sync and ready to let the music unfurl naturally. It gained momentum quickly. The density of the orchestration found a welcome transparency within minutes, and as the counterpoint wended through the whole orchestra, it felt like the players were discovering the composer’s gently surprising harmonies as they progressed. They relished the rhythmic pulse, gently in this movement but ever more present as the symphony went on with an uncanny naturalness.
The Andante that followed captured that balance between taking one’s time yet keeping the pace moving. They savored the way major and minor harmonies play off each other. Every phrase had presence, gathering a sense of urgency as it played out. Timpanist Edward Stephan worked some kind of magic underlining the harmonies with soft pulses and gently insistent pianissimo rolls as the movement came to rest. (His dexterity in the finale earned a solo bow and a roar from the audience.)
The third-movement scherzo brimmed with rhythmic vitality, a sonic version of an athletic dance troupe. Following the melancholy opening movements, it burst with joy, tightly wound, punchy and exhilarating.
All of that was a prelude to a majestic finale. Woodwinds and brass solemnly intoned the opening series of chords – inspired by the chaconne theme from a J.S. Bach cantata – that became the theme of a big passacaglia. The variations that followed seemed to emerge organically, each turn emphasizing a different facet of the theme in the way Salonen shaped it and the orchestra enunciated it. It was a drama playing out in real time.
As the urgency peaked in the coda, the chord sequence returned fortissimo in the brass, and everything finished with undeniable nobility.
The concert’s first half was devoted to the Shostakovich Violin Concerto No.1 and included a passacaglia of its own. With its subtle orchestration nicely paced by Salonen, it turned out to be the best element in a sincere but oddly rocky performance.
Making her San Francisco Symphony debut was soloist Sayaka Shoji. Her only previous appearance under the orchestra’s umbrella was with the visiting St. Petersburg Philharmonic in 2017, in which she played the Prokofiev Violin Concerto No.2. In the Shostakovich on Friday, all the notes were in place, and the tone from her Stradivarius was rich and resonant. But the complex music did not quite jell.
What was missing for me was the rhythmic punch in Shostakovich’s music, and the insistent expressiveness that arises from it. The winding melodic material that permeates the opening Allegro non troppo spun out with little shape. The rhythms of the scherzo clicked along but never quite bounced, thanks to different points of emphasis between the soloist and orchestra.
The third-movement Passacaglia benefited from Salonen’s ability to frame the orchestral development of the unfolding variations. Shoji’s decorations fit nicely, and it led to big cadenza that is among the most challenging to play of all Shostakovich’s violin music. The tightening intensity took a long time to build and the finale, with folklike dance permeating the music, never quite found its joyful bounce. The piece ended well when Salonen punched up the rhythm in the orchestra, and Shoji executed a final flourish with more zip than all that came before.
For an encore, she offered a deftly played final variation and coda from Paganini’s Introduction and Variations on ‘Nel cor più non mi sento’, done with virtuosic precision but, like the concerto, somehow missing a rhythmic lift.
Harvey Steiman