John Adams’ Fast-Stepping Premiere
Of course John Adams comes forth with a winner of a premiere as curtain-raiser.
Of course he’s at his most ebullient, pairing up with Music Director Michael Tilson Thomas.
Of course, at a youthful 72, he remains the Bay Area’s reigning composer star.
His joyous world premiere “I Still Dance” unveiled Sept. 19 showed him at his most ebullient and harmonious, this time colorful and jazz-inflected, with fast triadic runs on woodwinds. It’s a sparkling, syncopated river of ideas at flood stage, rushing by in just eight whirlwind minutes. It represents Adams’ response to “the youthful energy” brought onto the S.F. Symphony by Tilson Thomas despite his age (74) and his finale year here (his 25th), as well as by the latter’s husband and behind-the-scenes collaborator Joshua Robison.
The program also spotlighted another music star, the 28-year-old Russian pianist Daniil Trifonov. Trifonov has already garnered major international music prizes, and yet he slinks onto stage so reluctantly, it’s as if he’s dying to get back to the practice room and slam the door. He was unable to throw new light on the least popular of Rachmaninoff’s concertos, the drab Fourth. Rachmaninoff’s style is immediately discernible here, but not his inventive genius. The themes border on the pedestrian—one of them is simply an ascending major-scale fragment. The next (Largo) movement offers one theme much like “Three Blind Mice.” But maybe I’m the blind one here.
Rachmaninoff offers his usual wealth of 1930s-style “movie music,” then a wealth of virtuosic runs enabling Trifonov to echo Rachmaninoff’s own keyboard aptitude in the fast-flying finale, where the long-haired pianist from Novgorod Russia was in his element. While his technical prowess at pianism is superb, Trifonov’s stage manner leaves something to be desired.
He added a very subdued encore, like a languid chanson in pianissimo: Scriabin’s Etude, Op. 42 No. 4.
I’m not the best one to ask about Schumann symphonies, because I’ve never found them producing nearly as much expressiveness and human emotion as his solo piano works. He never was a great orchestrator, musically preferring black-and-white images instead of coloration, and he avoided giving his musicians solo segments.
But in the “Rhenish” Symphony (No. 3) of 1850, MTT much to his credit battled the stiff-Prussian plodding tendency to emphasize a definite buoyancy right from the work’s opening march, constantly wanting to make it sing. Vivid contrasts in dynamics also helped this go-around. For me the best part is the penultimate movement, a musical portrayal of the great, indestructible Cologne Gothic cathedral (which, despite intense carpet bombing in World War two demolishing all in the vicinity, had only one bomb fall into the church, with much lesser damage). The finale was downright resplendent via the mighty SFS brass section. The only jarring note is the overachieving timpani heard week after week.
S.F. Symphony under MTT, with pianist Daniil Trifonov, heard Sept. 20, including world premiere of John Adams’ “I Still Dance.” Davies Hall, S.F. For SFS info: (415) 864-6000 or go online.
