Two Englishmen and a Russian walk into a bar — they followed responsible drinking practices and made it home safely to their families at the end of the night.
Much like the anticlimactic nature of the above scene, the San Francisco Symphony (SFS) program of Thomas Adés, Tchaikovsky and Elgar on Nov. 9 was on the tamer side, though hardly uneventful. The symphony invited English conductor Nicholas Collon and long-time SFS soloist Conrad Tao in performances of Adés’s “Three-piece Suite,” Elgar’s “Enigma Variations” and Tchaikovsky’s immortal Piano Concerto No. 1. Though not thrilling, the concert was inspiring and satisfying, hitting all of the right marks.
Thrilling for me, however, was the attendance of many old Stanford Symphony Orchestra (SSO) colleagues of mine. Throughout the night, they weighed in with their own orchestral expertise, some of which was too insightful to leave out of this review.
The Tchaikovsky was the clear draw for most; it lies in the perfect Venn-diagram overlap of technically impressive, soaringly beautiful and melodically catchy. Tao is a local favorite of mine and has toured internationally in recent years on his own piano compositions and the works of the great masters. Though he looks like a madman — his Saturday attire included white socks and a t-shirt — he plays very much like a good conservatory student. With relatively little indulgence, Tao crafted a compelling rendition with both dynamism and precision, earning him the largest ovation of the night.
“Conrad Tao played the opening much more sensitively [than Van Cliburn], contrasting that sensitivity with lots of militarism,” said Michelle Fu ’24 M.S. ’24, former concertmaster of the SSO and former graphics editor for The Daily. “The third movement was great, except for the transition back to the second theme. I feel like they took a little bit too much time there, so the payoff wasn’t as heart-wrenching. But I thought Tao was brilliant!”
Despite the concerto’s monumental gravity, the program’s main design seemed to lie in its bookends. Collon opened the concert with a small discussion of the two English pieces, each a collection of caricatures tied loosely together with some tonal thematic material.
Adés’s “Three-piece Suite” comes from his 1995 opera “Powder Her Face,” featuring a twisted film-noir sonority and highly programmatic motives. With only briefly explained context from Collon and the program notes, the collection was quite baffling at times. Still, its charm and execution by SFS make it a clear popular choice among contemporary English symphonic music.
Jenny Xiong ’24, former SSO flutist and Stanford music composition undergraduate, criticized Adés’s use of tonality — the primary paradigm of Western music being centered around key signatures — as parochial.
“I thought the Adés was a very humorous piece. You can tell that the composer has never experienced a day of institutional hardship in his life,” Xiong said. “His relationship with tonality seems characterized not by a lot of thought, but more so a sense of obstinate nostalgia.”
Xiong is a Ph.D. student in music composition at U.C. Berkeley. She argued that, unlike many non-white composers, Adés doesn’t have to reckon with tonality as a colonial construct, imposed on non-Western traditions by colonizers and the predominance of the Western canon in music education.
“As a British man, tonality has always been part of his heritage. As an Asian-American composer, I have to grapple with tonality in the sense that it has been imposed upon my musical upbringing,” Xiong said. “It’s something I have to think about critically when I compose because it is not part of my culture. It represents what has been taken as well.”
To Elgar’s relief, I presume, the “Enigma Variations” received no such disdain. Collon’s interpretation was effective and well-detailed, evoking nice, potent emotion from the ensemble. It takes a great orchestra to show great orchestration, and Collon plays it like a fiddle.
Highlights included the effortless “R.B.T.” variation (the work’s masterclass on theme and variation writing in the symphonic context) and the laborious “Nimrod” (my mom’s favorite, and yours too). Shining through the texture were principal violist Jonathan Vinocour, principal cellist Anne Richardson and clarinetists Carey Bell and Matthew Griffith.
“The viola section was incredible as usual — although I may be a little biased,” said Julia Hernandez ’24 M.A. ’24, former principal violist of the SSO. “Jonathan [Vinocour]’s solos in the Elgar were incredibly evocative of the characters. It’s a little annoying how good he is.”
Still, the theme of the night for me was “nothing too bold.” As someone with admittedly lofty expectations for these performances, I was delighted to see those expectations met. But as someone steeped in this musical world for more than a decade, I will continue to look for performances that exceed those expectations.
Wherever they go, SSO’s alumni continue to develop their musical taste through local performances and reflection on their time at Stanford. While the SFS is by no means beholden to the predilections of twenty-something amateurs, it is reassuring to me that there is a cohort of musical minutemen attempting to keep the SFS’s artistry — and programming — honest.
Editor’s Note: This article is a review and includes subjective thoughts, opinions and critiques.