Like many of Shostakovich's symphonies, this one is a long and winding journey through dissonance and stress, to moments of quiet beauty, to explosions of sound. It starts like the famous Fifth, with cellos versus violins, and if you missed the sense of foreboding in the opening of the first movement, you can't miss it in the ending: drum rolls, like distant thunder, warn us of the storm to come, and when it hits, we are swept into it.
When it comes to Shostakovich, the San Francisco Symphony has a secret weapon: Catherine Payne, the piccolo player. Just when you think the storm is in full fury, the piccolo enters, loud and very, very high, kicking it up a notch. When this movement ends, everyone, including the audience, is out of breath.
Not limited to special effects, Ms. Payne played a difficult but dazzling solo in the second movement. I'm sure it's a piccolo player's dream -- or nightmare -- but she played it perfectly, confidently. The other long solo was in the English horn, beautifully played by Russ deLuna. Pick your favorite depressing image: a cold, winter sunset; a lone, lost soldier; post-war grief. This is not tug-at-your-heartstrings sad, this is end-of-the-world sad.
For the music-theory fans, this piece has everything, including a passacaglia and a great fugue in the last movement. There were other solos, too: French horn (Nicole Cash), violin (concertmaster Alexander Barantshik), clarinet (Carey Bell), flute (Tim Day), and a spectacular moment -- and workout -- for the tympanist (David Herbert).
But the star of the performance was the conductor, who was in total control, yet let the players shine. He owns Shostakovich, in the same way that Michael Tilson Thomas owns Mahler, or Herbert Blomstedt owns Bruckner. Now, I've never seen this guy before, and for all I know, he actually prefers conducting Haydn, or Ravel. But from now on, when I think of Shostakovich, I will remember Vasily Petrenko and this night.
There's one more performance left. I might go back, if I can bear it.
The concert opened with the Grieg Piano Concerto in A minor, with Simon Trpčeski as the soloist. This piece is so familiar that no one ever listens to it. I wore out an LP with this and the Rachmaninoff Paganini Variations when I was in high school. (The pianist was the late, great Leonard Pennario.) It's been easily a decade since I heard it live. Too bad, because even though I thought I remembered every note from that recording, I'd apparently forgotten a few. This was a thoughtful performance, not flashy.
At many spots in this piece, Grieg writes giant, two-fisted chords that also include booming octaves in the bass, which you have to play a split second before the beat, ka-boom, ka-boom, ka-boom. The trouble is that you really want that bass note to be loud, since the whole chord is built on it, but playing those notes with the left hand and then zipping over to play the left fist of the two-fisted chord is hard if you want both power and accuracy. Trpčeski played with accuracy but with less power than I wanted. The performance was a crowd-pleaser, as expected.
The pianist took rather long bows, and for an encore, he played a short piece (also by Grieg, I think) that he said he learned when he was 7 years old. I suspect most piano students don't master this piece until they're, oh, 10 or 11. I thought it was inappropriate fluff.
I have to wonder how many people came to hear the short, "easy" Grieg and were not prepared for the long, "difficult" Shostakovich. (What the heck was that?) But maybe there were some converts who came for the appetizer but were very happy they stayed for the main course.
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