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Sebastian Lang-Lessing and the San Antonio Symphony take bows after Richard Strauss’ Don Juan.
November 18, 2017
Music critics tend to wax slightly
peevish when a symphony orchestra
plays an entire program of “greatest
hits.” Thus the complaint form was
more or less filled out in advance of
the San Antonio Symphony’s Nov. 17
concert, which comprised (in order)
Franz Liszt’s Mephisto Waltz No.1,
Richard Strauss’ tone poem Don Juan,
the Overture and “Venusberg” Music
from Richard Wagner’s Tannhäuser
and Maurice Ravel’s Bolero, hardy
perennials all.
But the proof of the musical pudding is
in the hearing, and what the audience
heard was most remarkable, especially
in Don Juan. Music director Sebastian
Lang-Lessing had led a superb account
of that lush, complex, brilliantly
colored score less than three years
earlier (Jan. 23, 2015), in the middle
of the symphony’s first season in the
Tobin Center’s H-E-B Performance
Hall. It seemed odd that he would
revisit the piece again so soon.
I don’t know his reasons for that choice, but I can say that the sound of the orchestra was markedly different in this performance – more elegant, more polished, more integrated. All the sections were more in balance, the brass in particular fitting more naturally into the overall texture. The dazzlement, propulsiveness and visceral excitement of the 2015 performance were back in full force, but we also heard a kind of subtlety that was new for this orchestra.
There’s a lot going on in this score – the densely textured orchestrations of Strauss and Wagner were precursors of Phil Spector’s “wall of sound” approach to pop record production. In this performance, all of the little details could be heard and made their points without having to be spotlighted by bringing out first one voice and then another in an obvious way. The result was a unity, a seamlessness of sound that one doesn’t expect to hear from any but the finest orchestras.
Indeed, this is a better orchestra than it was three years ago, but I would venture a guess that a big contributor to the astonishing sound in this concert was the orchestra’s (and Mr. Lang-Lessing’s) growing comfort with the hall’s superb acoustics.
When Mr. Lang-Lessing was appointed music director in 2010 he said he hoped to program more music by Liszt, who had been underrepresented in local concert programs. The Mephisto Waltz No. 1 was especially welcome on this program for reminding us that Liszt’s explorations served as a foundation for those of Wagner and Strauss. The performance was fleet and transparent, and the conductor’s splendid tempo relations were gauged to maximize the theatrical effect.
In the Tannhäuser music Mr. Lang-Lessing showed himself once again to be a first-class Wagnerian, drawing radiant balances from the orchestra. The strings produced a luxurious sheen.
And a wonderful surprise: While Wagner's “Venusberg” music was fading down to a ppp in the strings, principal percussion Riely Francis began tapping a barely audible snare-drum rhythm to launch Ravel’s Bolero, without pause. The beautifully paced performance was most notable for the individuality that each player brought to the repeating solo lines. After the brash, gloriously loud finale, the audience erupted into possibly the most enthusiastic ovation I’ve ever observed for this orchestra.
Mike Greenberg
Acoustical note: This was the first concert this season for which the orchestra used the shallower version of the shell, pushing the violin and viola players nearest the audience slightly ahead of the proscenium. Previous concerts this season used the full-depth shell, with the orchestra more spread out and the downstage desks slightly farther back; in that arrangement the strings had a little less presence, and the hall resonance was a little mushier. The 2015 concert at which Don Juan was played also used the short shell, but the orchestra sat several feet farther forward, producing the greatest presence of sound possible in this hall, and the best balance between resonane and direct sound. I’ve been told that the string players don’t like to sit so far forward, in part because of inadequate lighting on their music stands – a problem the Tobin Center might do well to address. Meanwhile, the arrangement for this concert might be the best compromise between the acoustical ideal and the comfort of the musicians. At any rate, the orchestra should never use the full-depth shell unless the extra space is really needed.
San Antonio Symphony, Sebastian Lang-Lessing