SA Symphony with Seaman, Shaham
Unfailingly musical Brahms, organic Mozart
October 4, 2008The San Antonio Symphony opened a new season Oct. 3 with another deeply satisfying but unshowy performance led by artistic advisor Christopher Seaman, abetted by the thoughtful, fine-grained musicianship of pianist Orli Shaham.
Her vehicle was Mozart’s noble Piano Concerto No. 21 in C, in a performance that was fully Mozartean both stylistically and technically.
On the stylistic end, Shaham’s interpretive gestures were modest in scale but large in import. Small variations in tempo, slight adjustments in phrasing produced big results because they all seemed organic and carefully considered.
Technically, Shaham commanded a fine gradation of articulation, an important way of conveying emotional weight. Her roller-coaster runs in the outer allegros were effortlessly lithe and even, recalling the sound of Mozart’s 18th-century piano, whose action was lighter than that of the modern Steinway Shaham was playing.
Seaman’s main event was Johannes Brahms’s Symphony No. 2, which he’d led 16 years earlier in his first appearance with this orchestra. I’d found that performance “granitic,” but Friday’s revisit was wonderfully supple. The lines were lively, the tempo relations were ideally gauged to propel the music forward, the balances were transparent and beautiful. As in Shaham’s Mozart (and Seaman’s), there was a clearly expressed structural arch.
Seaman has become the best sort of composer’s advocate -- faithful to the composer’s intentions, but not slavish or dry. His Brahms set no fires-- though the final stretch was mighty exhilarating -- but it was warm, affectionate and unfailingly musical.
Seaman opened with a spirited account of Benjamin Britten’s “The Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra,” a good measure of how the orchestra fared over the summer hiatus. Verdict: It fared well indeed, apart from some slight instances of harshness and imprecision in the violins. Excellent solo and section work came from every quarter, most especially from principal clarinetist Ilya Shterenberg.
The audience was distressingly attenuated in number -- about half the seats in the Majestic Theater went begging. The no-shows missed more than an excellent concert. As patrons filed into the outer lobby, they were enticed by an assortment of lovely amuses-bouche from Restaurant Biga, and string ensembles and soloists from the Youth Orchestras of San Antonio were holding forth in every nook and cranny in the inner lobbies.
Perhaps more such enhancements to the concert experience can help reverse the decline in attendance. The clouds in the Majestic sky did their part, homeopathically, by reversing their normal course and scudding northward.
Mike Greenberg
