Review: San Diego Symphony Perform Richard Strauss and Shostakovich at The Jacobs Music Center

This year’s final subscription concert at the new Jacobs Music Center began with Richard Strauss’s tone poem Don Juan and ended with his equally familiar Till Eulenspiegel’s Merry Pranks. In between, Inon Barnatan was featured in two 20th Century piano concertos by Dimitri Shostakovich.

The usual please-silence-the-phones admonition before the concert was more emphatic than usual. The audience was informed that this last of three performances would be recorded for possible commercial release. As you’ll see, that didn’t stop one competitive phone from auditioning.

The familiar Don Juan lives up to its name. It’s a tone poem for orchestra with a mix of romance, heroism and tragedy. San Diego Symphony Music Director and conductor Rafael Payare was at his enthusiasticly acrobatic best. The music’s many moods were reflected in his motions and facial expressions and then realized in the orchestra for an exciting performance.

Payare was a French horn player in Venezuela's El Sistema youth orchestra. Perhaps that’s why so many of the performances in the first season at the redesigned Jacobs Music Center have included spotlight opportunities for the instrument. The Don Juan theme, with its stirring octave-jump opening, is often used for orchestra auditions. Principal French horn Benjamin Jabar showed why he can win such auditions.

Not that Strauss neglects the orchestra’s other musicians. The piece is a near concerto for orchestra, and Payare was at his passionate, demanding best.

A couple of minor solo stumbles ignored or unnoticed in concert would be easy to “air brush” for a potentially often heard recording. But through no fault of the musicians, sound engineers will have a far greater challenge if a decision is made to release the recording of Shostakovich’s second piano concerto with soloist Inon Barnatan. This was the third concert in this season’s Jacob schedule that I’ve attended in which a phone was a decidedly unwelcome addition to the orchestration.

Unfortunately for the recording, this phone chose the second concerto’s first movement to make the loudest and most persistent distraction of the three.

I was a row back from the offending electronic imp. I watched the owner and the women next to him struggle together over the phone without success, and became increasingly tempted to hurdle a seat, seize the loathsome gadget and stomp it into submission.

It stopped before I took my chance to become a hero for the musicians and a shushing audience. But alas, the phone had merely paused for a no doubt timed interval before again squawking as the movement ended. Barnatan and Payare waited with saintly patience to begin the second movement until silence prevailed.  

The two Shostakovich piano concertos are among the best of the 20th Century, full of bravura playing and catchy melodies. The second was written for the composer’s son Maxim’s 19th birthday and conservatory graduation exam. It begins with a jaunty flair, tinged with the composer’s penchant for musical sarcasm. One of the themes is reminiscent of a souped up “What do you do with a drunken sailor.”

The second movement, in sharp contrast, features one of Shostakovich’s most alluring tunes, one of touching limpid beauty. The third and final movement returns to the mood of the first.

Barnatan, like Payare, gets visibly into the emotions of the music he performs. He had smiles, rhythmic body movements and approving head nods as he zipped at rapid tempos through the outer movements, and gave clear indications of how much he savored the beauty of the second.

As usual, Payare was an effective concerto partner, although the orchestra did hide the soloist for a few over-exuberant seconds at one point.

The post-intermission performances were full of the same mix of passionate gusto and lyricism. Sound engineering for a recording would be a snap, no minor air brushing needed, no telephonic competition.

Shostakovich’s second piano concerto is a fun piece, written to show off his son’s talent. The first is more typical of the composer. Its quick outer movements demonstrate the same sense of humor, but with more obvious sarcastic parody. Similarly, the slow middle movement has comparable beauty, but reflective melancholy isn’t far from the surface.

The work began as a concerto for strings and trumpet. Dissatisfied with a trumpet’s expressiveness and range, Shostakovich turned it into a concerto for piano and strings. The trumpet remains as an effective supporting actor, especially prominent with the horse-race-like feel of the third and final movement.

Trumpeter Paul Merkelo and pianist Barnatan were in frequent eye contact while they and the audience enjoyed their witty interplay. In most performances the trumpeter is stage front. I’m not sure why Merkelo was largely hidden behind the opened piano top for this one. Fortunately, his sound was unaffected in the hall’s excellent acoustics.

                            Trumpeter Paul Merkelo and Pianist Barnatan (Photo Ron Bierman)

Till Eulenspiegel’s Merry Pranks is Strauss’s most elaborately orchestrated tone poem. It depicts the mischievous actions of the German folk hero of the title. The composer wrote program notes in the score of a friend, a “wicked goblin up to new tricks. … Till hops on horseback and rides through the market, disguises himself as a minister mocking religion, flirts with women, poses as an academician engaging in scholarly double-talk, and by the end of the work finds himself on trial and sentenced to death by hanging.”

Payare pulled out all the stops. (A cliché, but maybe an organ metaphor is ok in a concert review?) Dynamics were appropriately wide as Till hopped from one prank to the next, the theme that represents him hopping with him.

Soloists and sections accompanied with a riotous mix of orchestral colors and emotions from satirically mocking to somber as Till is ultimately punished for his nose tweaking. Amidst a funerial orchestral accompaniment, a clarinet repeats Till’s theme, quietly at first, then in a shriek representing his end, and finally as a sad wistful memory.

The performances of each of the four pieces was worthy of a recording, although the two of the concert’s first half would need a bit of studio work.

The concert was additional evidence of the excellence of both the San Diego Symphony and its new concert hall.

Top photo compliments of San Diego Symphony

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