Arts & Events

In this, her third stint as Guest Conductor at San Francisco Symphony, Karina Canellakis clearly affirmed her mastery of the symphonic music of Richard Strauss, whose tone poems Don Juan and Tod und Verklärung (Death and Transfiguration) are featured in a three-day appearance that opened at Davies Hall on Thursday, April 18 at a 2:00 PM matinee, which I attended. Canellakis, an American conductor born in New York of Greek and Russian parents, had previously shown her affinity for Strauss’s orchestral works in an inspiring performance in May 2022 of Don Quixote, with Alise Weilierstein on cello. 

Canellakis manages to bring out all of Richard Strauss’s remarkable orchestral colors in these tone poems. Her conducting style is very physical. She throws her whole body into transmitting to the orchestra all the nuances she seeks to feature. Using a baton, she thrusts it forward in a pointedly dramatic gesture when she wants the orchestra to play fortissimo. But in more lyrical passages she uses her left arm to suggest the sweeping quality she wants the orchestra to convey. Occasionally, in the loudest and most dramatic passages, Canellakis nearly goes airborne, almost leaping off her feet to inspire the orchestra to express itself in ultra dramatic fashion. Yet she demonstrates a fine appreciation of alternatiing dynamics. For example, after a loud crash in the orchestra represents a sword thrust that kills Don Juan, Canellakis deftly allows the orchestra to suggest the slow dying away of Don Juan, whose final moments are represented in a discordant and forlorn trumpet note and two pizzicato notes played pianissimo by the first violin. Likewise, in Strauss’s Death and Transfiguration, Canellakis allows this tone poem to open slowly in the violas and low strings, accompanied by two harps. Then a loud timpani note dramatically alters the dynamics, and there ensue alternating passages of loud and soft orchestral music right to the very end. 

Even in her 2019 debut at San Francisco Symphony, Karina Cenellakis demonstrated a penchant for big orchestral works such as Dmitri Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 7,”Leningrad,” and Prokofiev’s Piano Concerto No. 1 with Alexamder Gavrylyuk as soloist. That Canellakis was able to make the sprawling Shostakovich 7th somewhat inspiring was quite an achievement, though her conducting of the Prokofiev Piano Concerto No. 1 was somewhat sabotaged by the meandering piano soloist. Nonetheless, I believe Canellakis has more than demonstrated her ability to conduct thrilling performances of big orchestral works. Now I’d like to hear her conduct a symphony or two by Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, or Brahms, or a work by Lalo or Saint Saëns. 

Speaking of repertory choices, before the Thursday matinee performance began, various members of the Symphony Orchestra were in the lobby handing out statements expressing their dismay over the Symphony’s Board of Governors decision to allow Music Director Essa-Pekka Salonen to end his contract here at the end of the 2024-25 season. Salonen’s decision, and that of the Board, seems to hinge on financial issues, and at least some of the Symphony’s musicians want to encourage audiences to protest the Board of Governors budgetary restraints that effectively resulted in Essa-Pekka Salonen’s departure. The fact that Salonen assumed the reins here in 2020 just as the Covid pandemic hit caused live concerts to temporarily halt. Then, when they resumed, audiences were slow and irregular in returning to Davies Hall. So the money lost when live performances were halted continued to be lost, though in lesser degree, when audiences returned to Davies Hall for standard repertory but were reluctant to do so for Salonen’s innovative programming of new and/or relatively unusual works. 

My own take on this issue is that while I greatly admire Salonen as a conductor, I’m not nearly so supportive of his programming choices. Nor do I support his enthusiasm for adding visuals to classical music. There is a hit or miss quality about his innovative programming that can be disconcerting or downright disappointing. So I for one do not decry the fact that Salonen and the Board of Governors will part ways at the end of the 2024-25 season. I welcome the opportunity to infuse new, younger blood as our future Music Director here, and I support women conductors Susanna Malkki and Karina Canellakis as my preferences. Yet when some disgruntled Symphony musicians are actively campaigning to get audiences to petition the Board of Governors to reverse their decision, restore the budget cuts, and retain Essa-Pekka Salonen, it is questionable how willing the recalcitrant musicians may or may not be to help guest conductors put their best foot forward in appearances the Board of Governors may treat as auditions to succeed Salonen. This is not an auspicious situation for the San Francisco Symphony. 

At the Thursday, April 18 matinee, Karina Canellakis also conducted two works by Maurice Ravel, his Piano Concerto in D Major for the Left Hand,, featuring Cédric Tiberghien as piano soloist, and La Valse. Ravel composedthis piano concerto for Paul Wittgenstein (older brother to Ludwig Wittgenstein the philosopher), a concert pianist who had lost his right hand in World War I. This work is assuredly a virtuoso showcase for a pianist willing to take it on, and Cédric Tiberghien brought it off splendidly with help from conductor Karina Canellakis and the orchestra. It opens with low woodwinds and low strings, then a section for the tutti before the piano is heard, breaking in with a long solo. Later there is a lengthy stride section that suggests someone walking with regular rhythm heard in the strings, 

As for La Valse, this work was composed by Ravel in1919-20 and marks a change from the composer’s earlier impressionism to the expressionist modernism of the Second Viennese School. 

Indeed, there are echoes of Arnold Schoenberg throughout Ravel’s La Valse, including considerable use of the diabolical tritone, which here suggests that the familiar waltz is oddly out of focus. Ravel wrote that he intended this piece to be the ”apotheosis of the Viennese waltz.” Indeed, the closing moments of Ravel’s La Valse are, in his words, “a fantastiic, fatal whirling.” 

Conductor Karina Canellakis brought out the many facets of this 13-minute piece, from the opening low rumble and the waltz with strings and two harps, to a fine passage for two clarinets over strings, and to a lovely waltz melody heard in the strings. Then, late in this work, all hell breaks loose and La Valse is brought to a violent conclusion, splendidly conducted by Karina Canellakis.