SA Symphony, Scott Yoo:
Beethoven, Mozart (and Copland, too)
speak with an American accent
November 8, 2008Sauntering offstage after his joyously received debut with the San Antonio Symphony on Nov. 7, guest conductor-violinist Scott Yoo smiled broadly to the audience and ripped open his necktie in a gesture that suggested he was about to knock down a few cold ones over a game of pool.
That gesture was emblematic of the whole concert. It had begun in the archetypal American terrain of Aaron Copland’s “Appalachian Spring,” but there was a peculiarly American attitude, too, in Yoo’s accounts of Beethoven’s “Pastoral” Symphony and Mozart’s Violin Concerto No. 3. Even music born in Europe two centuries ago, Yoo seemed to say, can take root on our shores, speak our language, dance to our beat, absorb our energy, dream our dreams.
Copland’s landmark ballet score, heard of course in its full orchestral version, set the tone for the concert and revealed much about Yoo’s musical personality and technique. There is much in this music that recalls the lean, sinewy figures, swirling movement and big-sky perspective of Thomas Hart Benton’s regionalist paintings of the same period.
And that is how Yoo conducted it -- lean, crisply defined, rhythmically emphatic, robust. In the misty opening and the “Simple Gifts” variations at the end, Yoo had the orchestra speak directly and with feeling, but without excessive sentiment or gloss. In the exuberant middle, his clear stick and generous, well-placed cues kept the difficult cross-rhythms in order and got very precise playing from the orchestra. The trumpets and trombones once again gave a stellar performance, as did the woodwind principals.
As soloist in the Mozart concerto, Yoo projected a bright, assertive, richly textured tone. The slow movement revealed sustained high notes that were pure and sweet, but not treacly. As both soloist and conductor, he brought huge punch and verve to the rhythms.
Yoo’s Beethoven sounded remarkably fresh and exuberant. The lyrical line and general feeling of warmth recalled Bruno Walter, and there was more than a hint of Bernsteinian fun in the high-voltage storm, but the rich detailing, the canny ear for voicings. and the billowing dynamics seemed entirely Yoo’s own.
Though Yoo violated no stylistic norms in Mozart and Beethoven, he seemed to liberate both pieces from the shackles of reverential tradition, and to make them sound as democratic and free-spirited as they were at birth. I had the sense that only an American -- perhaps only an American of the 37-year-old Yoo’s generation -- would interpret these works in that way.
Like this season’s other guest conductors, Yoo is a candidate for the vacant post of music director. He made a fine case for himself.
Mike
Greenberg
