Arts & Events

Like a good French wine that gets better with age, French-born pianist Héiène Grimaud seems to get better and better as time passes. Now approaching age fifty, Héiène Grimaud has outgrown her early reputation as a strong-willed, sometimes quirky interpreter of the standard piano repertoire. These days, she is simply hailed as an outstanding pianist, much loved by audiences here and around the world. Over the weekend of April 25-27, Ms. Grimaud joined the San Francisco Symphony in performances of Ludwig van Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 4 in G Major, Op. 58. The orchestra was led by conductor James Gaffigan, who is familiar to local audiences from his tenure as associate conductor of the San Francisco Symphony from 2006 to 2009.  

To open the concert, Gaffigan led the orchestra in a performance of Richard Wagner’s Good Friday Spell from Parsifal. As an opener, this was a real snoozer! Both the music and the religious sentiments behind Parsifal have always seemed to me saccharine, and never more so than in Friday evening’s soporific rendition of the Good Friday Spell. Far from opening the concert with a wake-up call, this music almost put the audience to sleep! Oh well, Wagner can do many different things to audiences, and one thing he can do, and often does, is put them to sleep. So much for the Good Friday Spell from Parsifal. 

The real wake-up call came in the first moments of Beethoven’s Fourth Piano Concerto, where the composer flouted tradition and opened not as is customary with the orchestra but instead with the solo piano. Here Héiène Grimaud gave a softly voiced opening chord, and followed it with a tender rendition of the brief 3-note upbeat phrase that is immediately taken up by the orchestra. There is throughout this movement, and indeed throughout this entire concerto, a sense of inner repose. Here Beethoven eschews the turbulence that marked his early breakthrough works such as the Eroica Symphony, and a new lyricism comes to the fore. Commentators have noted here an almost mystic joy and exultation.  

The second movement, an Andante con moto, offers a very concise dialogue between solo piano and orchestra. Though the orchestra offers brusque, staccato phrases, the piano counters with gentle melodies that are plaintive in mood. Each time the orchestra tries to reassert its strident theme, Héiène Grimaud’s piano gracefully calms the orchestra down, until, finally, even the orchestra acquiesces in the piano’s heart-rending assertion of a mood of sorrowful lamentation. Here Héiène Grimaud was at her best, gracefully yet insistently bringing the orchestra around till it ends up joining the piano in what must be understood as acceptance of a cruel fate. (Was Beethoven here struggling, in composing and premiering this concerto between 1805 and 1808, with his own onset of deafness? Scholars believe this is so.) 

The third and final movement is a rondo. The first theme is stated in the orchestra, while the second theme, a pastoral idea, appears in the solo piano. With its strongly marked syncopations, and its lively contrasts, this rondo has its roots in Hungarian folk music, especially rich in Gypsy rhythms. Together, conductor James Gaffigan and soloist Héiène Grimaud brought this Fourth Piano Concerto of Beethoven’s to a lively, almost lush finish. 

After intermission, James Gaffigan returned to the podium to conduct Mozart’s Symphony No. 31 in D Major, K. 297(300a), known as the “Paris:” Symphony. Written during Mozart’s stay in Paris in 1778, this symphony bears the imprint of his prior sojourn in Mannheio. Indeed, the whole first movement of Mozart’s 31^st Symphony begins, explores and ends with a musical structure known as the “Mannheimer Rocket,” an arpeggiated ascent, that was introduced and popularized by the famed Mannheim Orchestra, one of Europe’s foremost orchestras during Mozart’s time. Here, in this opening movement, Mozart makes frequent use of the Mannheimer Rocket, but he does so in ways that are often harmonically surprising. (Incidentally, Sergei Prokofiev, in his first, “Classical,” Symphony, paid tribute both to Mozart and the 18^th century Mannheim Orchestra by prominently featuring a Mannheimer Rocket.) 

Mozart’s second movement, a slow Andantino, has become over the years a source of controversy. When Mozart gave this symphony a performance at Paris’s leading concert series, the famed Concert Spirituel, he reportedly acquiesced to Jean LeGros, director of the Concert Spirituel, and penned a second Andante to replace the original one. Less than a month later, when this symphony was given another hearing in Paris, it was with the second Andante. Though it was long thought that the 6/8 time Andante we heard here in Friday’s performance with the San Francisco Symphony was the original one, recent scholarship maintains, quite persuasively, that this is the replacement version, while the original, still available in manuscript, is in ¾ time. In any case, as Mozart himself said, in a letter to his father, both Andantes are good. They just proceed by different means. As for the final movement, here Mozart shows off his superb mastery of counterpoint while also exploring new harmonic patterns. In this endeavor, conductor James Gaffigan proved himself a most capable interpreter Mozart’s musical magic. 

The final work on the program was Samuel Barber’s Symphony No. 1 (in One Movement), Opus 9. I had never heard this work before, and though I found it chock full of interesting effects, I can’t say that I found it altogether enjoyable. There were moments, to be sure, especially towards the end of this single movement symphony, when cellos and basses combined for a lovely passage of melodic lyricism. But the frequent outbursts of brass (trumpets, trombones, and a tuba), plus frequent interventions of two bassoons and a contrabassoon, plus two clarinets and a bass clarinet, often created a shrieking cacophony that was not altogether pleasant. Nonetheless, James Gaffigan led as persuasive an account of this Barber Symphony No. 1 as we are likely to hear. I’m just not sure how ready I am to hear this work again anytime soon.