PERLMAN AND HIS SIX VIOLINISTS AT SYMPHONY OPENER
The San Francisco Symphony’s two favorite 73-year-olds made music in what the audience regarded more as entertainment than concert.
The stars were in conjunction when violinist Itzhak Perlman and his friend, Music Director Michael Tilson Thomas, collaborated on several works, both classical and movie, in the SFS season-opener gala Sept. 5. Of special interest were a sextet of former Perlman violin students shouldering some of the performance burden alongside the master, all seven joining in a wild and woolly fiddle-faddle mass encore via Bartok’s “Ruthenian Dance” (1931), originally a two-violin duo. Without exception, the six were outstanding, robust musicians.
Perlman’s performance style today is valiant but quite subdued, better by far in some intimate chamber-music site than our immense Davies Hall. He repeated some of the film solos he’d been featured in, the best one being the soulful, sweet and sentimental “Theme from ‘Schindler’s List,’” which injected much-needed heart and feeling in a program more geared to popularity and impact.
Any one present not yet a fan of Perlman likely was converted by his easy-going personal manner and his humor. No sooner had he sat down on stage, one of his acolytes brought out not only his own, but also the priceless Perlman violin, and offered the wrong one. Perlman made a quick switch, setting people howling with laughter.
The miracle of the superstar Israeli-American Perlman, ever since his stunning debut in 1963, is that after his laborious entry on stage because of his childhood polio, he sits down and plays; and all the handicap is instantly forgotten. While today he no longer manifests the same vigor and dynamics of yore, he remains beautifully expressive on an intimate scale.
Earlier he paired with a rotating lineup of acolytes at second violin for the D Minor Double Violin Concerto by Bach in a tidy but wispy rendition.
The remainder of the SFS program ran from the hellish melodrama of the “Mephisto Waltz” (No. 1)—actually, one of Liszt’s most effective works—to Gershwin pieces. In the latter’s repertory, if some of the brass were off-pitch in the “Cuban Overture,” they returned to form in the “American in Paris.” Here they used the true bulb horns emulating hustling and persistent 1930s Paris taxis rather than brass substitutions often made in concert today. Trumpet principal Mark Inouye added some deft solos, including an unusual cloth-mute bluesy-jazz touch.
It was all a class act led by Tilson Thomas. He had crafted a canny program to entertain the stylish crowd that could hardly wait to pour out into the street and start the dancing party going into the late hours. Grove Street never had it so good.
MUSIC NOTES—Among the notables at the opener were George Shultz, former secretary of state, and his wife Charlotte….A welcome facet of the after-parties is running into SFS players after work—a rare privilege. Among them was musician Polina Sedukh, with violin case slung over the shoulder casually wandering near the dance floor in the middle of Grove Street, trying to chat over the 110-DB sound of the band performing…Gone this fall into retirement is the articulate SFS pianist Robin Sutherland, after four decades of service.
San Francisco Symphony, with Music Director Michael Tilson Thomas and violinist Itzhak Perlman. Davies Hall, S.F. For SFS info: (415) 864-6000, or go online.
