Addendum (Feb. 3):
A Symphony musician wrote in praise of Seaman's ability to elicit "truly soft" playing. I'll second that comment. My notes from the concert twice mentioned a delicate "halo" of strings around a solo or small-ensemble passage in the woodwinds. And while I'm up, I should mention principal violist Allyson Dawkins' lovely solo work in the Elgar.
SA Symphony with Seaman, Yang:
Deep pleasure in fastidious focus
Underneath its seeming gentility, the concert hall is a volatile front in a long-running culture war between modernism and its discontents.
The modernists, heirs of Toscanini and ultimately of the Enlightenment, advocate fastidious adherence to the composer's intentions as the necessary basis for expressive communication. The postmodernists and neoromantics, rightly observing that the score is only a roadmap and not the road, argue for greater interpretive freedom and individuality. Both positions (with their many variants and degrees) are respectable, and both entail risks: The fastidious can be dull, the individual can be superficial or narcissistic.
In a remarkable concert with the San Antonio Symphony on Friday night, guest conductor Christopher Seaman and pianist Joyce Yang staked out a unified, fairly extreme position on the side of rigor and made a strong case for its deep values and enduring pleasures. Overtly exciting? Not always. Dull? Never.
Throughout this program of Mendelssohn, Mozart, Schubert and Elgar, the perfomances were sharply focused and faithful both to the scores and to the aesthetics and world views of the composers.
Yang's vehicle was Mozart's Concerto No. 24 in C Minor, a key that the composer seldom used, and only for works of high seriousness. Yang approached her task with equal seriousness, as did Seaman. On all sides this was a cogently argued performance, admirably clear and balanced.
In exposed solos Yang took her opportunities to subtly and effectively tease a phrase, but on the whole she wisely let Mozart speak for himself. When Mozart asked for a legato run, she delivered with astonishing evenness and fluidity. The theme of the slow movement is childlike and direct, and that is how she played it. She was meticulously faithful to the score in matters of rhythm and articulation. But this performance was never merely correct. Because it was Mozartean in its bones, it was meaningful, musical and fully alive.
Seaman situated Mendelssohn's "Hebrides" Overture and Schubert's "Unfinished" Symphony in exactly the right places. The Mendelssohn tilted more toward classical restraint than to Romantic extravagance; this was an elegant, measured account, but all the necessary punctuation was there. Schubert was given more fire and impetuosity. In both pieces, as in the Mozart, Seaman got very precise ensemble from the orchestra, and beautifully gauged balances. Every line was given its due.
The program closed in splashier territory with a brilliant and exuberant performance of Edward Elgar's "In the South." It's a piece that has too many ideas, all of them engaging -- rather like a dinner guest who talks so interestingly on so many topics that one (almost) doesn't mind that he's gone on too long.
Seaman, recently appointed this orchestra's artistic adviser for 2008-09, will be back for three concerts next season. To judge from Friday night's performance, we'll have much to look forward to.
Mike
Greenberg
