In with a bit of a swagger and out in a blaze of glory

Published on Friday 31 August 2007 12:24

San Franciso Symphony Orchestra *****

Usher Hall

THE San Francisco players signed in - very appropriately - on Wednesday with a swaggering account of the well-known Fanfare for the Common Man by fellow American Aaron Copland. What followed for the rest of the evening hardly showed them to best advantage. Thursday's pairing of Strauss and Mahler offered greater promise.

Tongue in cheek, Strauss used to say that his Salome scoring should sound like Mendelssohn, and he promised at least one singer that he would keep the orchestra well in check so that she might be heard. In accompanying the final scene, the San Franciscaners showed no particular inclination to hold back. Nor did they have to, for Deborah Voigt's immaculately enunciated Salome was never in the slightest danger of being swamped.

Whatever one may think of Mahler as a symphonist, he certainly did much to increase the scope of the form. He conceived No.7 on a vast scale. It lasts for nearly an hour-and-a-half. Like its two predecessors, with which it has obvious links, it does not include music for voices, but some of its melodies are reminiscent of the Wunderhorn songs.

As in the fifth symphony, a funeral march sets things in motion. The first movement's unrelenting energy derives from the kind of jerky thematic material that can readily be associated with nervous agitation. Conductor Michael Tilson Thomas and his musicians consistently sought to maintain its clarity and forcefulness from start to finish.

Opening with a well-executed duet for two horns, the second movement is entitled Nachtmusik, but it treads along for much of the way as an unhurried military march. The Scherzo and its waltz-like Trio were treated with appropriate lightness of expression. A second Nachtmusik, marked Andante Amoroso, established a different mood. The Rondo-Finale triumphed, ending in a great blaze of glory.