Last Saturday I was at the second of three performances of Alban Berg's Seven Early Songs & the Mahler 1, with Donald Runnicles leading the San Francisco Symphony. It was a magnificent performance of an excellent program (such are starting to stand out on the Symphony schedule, crowded as it is with attempts to turn these superb musicians into a back-up band for pop groups or soundtrack-suppliers for recent movie hits that already come with perfectly fine soundtracks), & a welcome return to this area for Runnicles, fondly remembered by many (including me) for his work across the street at the Opera House.
The program opened, as you might expect, with the Berg songs, with mezzo-soprano Irene Roberts as soloist. She swept out looking exceedingly glam in her broad-hemmed pink gown. I don't know why the pink surprised me (pleasantly), but it did. Perhaps at some level I was expecting something more somber, for no particular reason. Roberts was in splendid voice, rich & intimate in these crepuscular & shifting songs. As anyone who has been in Davies knows, it is what is kindly called a barn: a vast, not very attractive space with notoriously iffy acoustics. The miracle of this performance was the intimacy Roberts & Runnicles with the orchestra created, the almost hushed immediacy of a direct, heart-to-heart communication, drawing in even those rows back from the stage. I always love the works of the Second Viennese School, but this was really a performance to cherish.
After the intermission we had the Mahler 1, sometimes still known as the Titan, though it's a nickname the composer jettisoned. The familiar music unfolded magnificently, implanting itself newly into my memory (I've been replaying parts of it in my mind for days). What struck me most about the whole thing was the flow & the timing: it never seemed too fast, too slow, too hurried, stretched out, but all perfectly balanced. I loved it, but I have to say, I preferred the Berg. Perhaps the triumphant overcoming of obstacles at the symphony's end, however inspiring to listen to & even theatrically thrilling to see (when the horn players stand), – the "Titan"-esque romantic heroness of it – that doesn't quite resonate with me, especially in this moment, so grim politically as well as in other ways. It is the questing, inclusive, neurotic Mahler that I respond to more, at least these days, & these are qualities found with greater strength, I think, in Mahler's other works.
My anxieties aside, I was deeply grateful to have heard this performance. And of course the subtext here is "the San Francisco Symphony is not doomed" (or maybe, "the San Francisco Symphony is not doomed – yet"); its current administration will forever be branded as the ones who didn't bother to keep Esa-Pekka Salonen, & it remains to be seen where they'll steer this ship, but in the meantime, we are given this generous & triumphant performance.
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