San Antonio Symphony, Dmitry Sitkovetsky
The charms of youth, the ruminations of age
March 19, 2011The conductor and violinist Dmitry Sitkovetsky returned to the San Antonio Symphony on March 18, after an absence of many years, to lead an altogether congenial program in an altogether congenial manner.
There were no clouds in the Majestic Theater sky, and few in the music -- in the latter case, the absence was not due to a malfunction. The concert opened with Mozart’s celebratory “Haffner” Serenade and closed with Georges Bizet’s carefree Symphony in C. The centerpiece was the delicate, iridescent Prelude to Richard Strauss’s final opera, “Capriccio,” arranged by Sitkovetsky for string orchestra from the original version for string sextet.
The “Haffner” Serenade is rather an odd duck, with something like a three-movement violin concerto embedded within the eight-movement frame. The logistics were a little awkward: After conducting the first movement, Sitkovetsky left the stage, a stagehand brought out a second music stand, and Sitkovetsky returned with his violin to play the solo part facing the audience in the next three movements. Then the process was reversed, and Sitkovetsky conducted the rest of the piece facing the orchestra. (Note to the architects of the future Tobin Center for the Performing Arts: A rotating podium might be a thoughtful, if rarely used, amenity.)
As violin soloist, Sitkovetsky displayed his gleaming high register and personal phrasing most effectively in the cadenza of the second movement. In all of his solo work, his minimal vibrato, snappy rhythms and messa di voce -- crescendo or decrescendo on a single sustained note -- seemed to have been influenced by historically informed performance practice. (Concertmaster Ertan Torgul continued the same stylistic approach in a brief but demanding solo in the fifth movement.) But there was nothing antiquarian about this performance. Sitkovetsky’s own playing and his leadership of the orchestra were red-blooded and energetic.
Sitovetsky launched Bizet’s youthful, tuneful symphony with an unusually quick tempo, and the orchestra responded with both infectious spirits and sper-clean ensemble. Most memorable, however, was principal oboist Mark Ackerman’s gorgeous tone in his sinuous solos in the slow movement.
Bizet was still in his teens when he wrote his symphony, and the "Haffner" Serenade dates from Mozart's mid-20s. Strauss was in his late 70s, and frantically trying to protect his Jewish daughter-in-law from the Nazis, when he composed "Capriccio." With its central character torn between two suitors -- one a poet, the other a composer -- it is, in essence, an opera about the art of opera and its mysterious fusion of music and words. The prelude is among Strauss's most subtle, philosophical and beautiful works.
In Sitkovetsky's arrangement of the prelude, the sound of 42 strings was both unavoidably and gratifyingly more lush than the version heard in the opera house, but it also maintained transparency. The players responded nimbly to Sitkovetsky’s carefully detailed reading, and even the faintest whispers were well supported. Here, and throughout the evening, the strings were at the top of their game, precise and silken.
Mike
Greenberg
