Friday, November 26, 1999
Bell Leads Rich Pas de Deux
Symphony an inspired partner on Saint-Saens Concerto
Ocatavio Roca
Joshua Bell was born in 1967 and is, by any reckoning, no longer a prodigy.
What he is, as his appearance Wednesday night with the San Francisco Symphony demonstrated before a cheering crowd, is one of the finest musicians before the public today: a supremely gifted violinist at the peak of his considerable powers.
With Paavo Berglund as his partner on the podium, Bell gave a ravishing performance of the Saint- Saens Violin Concerto No. 3 in B Minor. The program at Davies Hall also included Schubert's monumental Symphony in C Major, known as the ``Great,'' and was one of high points of the musical season.
From the opening bars, where Saint-Saens lets the violin shine through a cloud of dark orchestral murmurs, Bell's tone was almost insolently rich. The B minor Concerto over the last century has been likened to an opera, what with the composer's downright vocal demands on the soloist. In Bell, this romantic score has an interpreter who makes the violin sing: His varied tonal palette, exquisite dynamic control throughout the range and breathtaking virtuosity often made one hear the concerto as one long vocalise.
More than once in the first movement, as orchestral textures parted to reveal an oasis of gentleness for hushed strings, Bell's timbre was ineffably sweet, his vibrato natural and free. When the solo violin's long, irresistible melody in the Andantino ambled from instrument to instrument in the orchestra, the simple dance rhythm had the feel of a pas de deux between Bell and Berglund's ensemble. The parade of scales that closes the central section slowed down to a sigh just before the majestic final movement.
The orchestra, for its part, was particularly impressive in the brass and woodwind sections, the trombones in Saint-Saens' third movement taking highest honors.
In the Schubert that followed, too, woodwinds charmed the listener. And if the San Francisco violins could still use some beefing up, cellos and basses displayed admirably transparent sunset textures, and the overall effect under Berglund's direction was as elegant it was magisterial.
The Finnish conductor was especially persuasive in the opening movement of the Schubert symphony. His exposition repeats recalled Wilhelm Furtwaengler's insights into the music's intensification through repetition, with eloquence and patience adding weight to each of Schubert's musical ideas.
True, there was not enough differentiation between between Berglund's vision of the Andante and the following set of Allegros -- and the orchestral clip could have paused for air here and there. But there was no question that the conductor's engagement in the dialectic of classical restraint and unstoppable passion inspired the players to give their best. It was a touching, gorgeously sprung performance of an endlessly fascinating score.
