Over the course of the 19th century, composers and audiences became increasingly fascinated by the sheer volume of ruckus that a symphony orchestra could raise. Even today, the enthusiasm for setting 100 instruments at full blast shows no sign of abating.
The San Francisco Symphony’s current program, which opened Thursday, March 3, in Davies Symphony Hall under the baton of Music Director Esa-Pekka Salonen, seemed dedicated to demonstrating the point. It included a thrillingly robust and extroverted world premiere by the Chinese American composer Fang Man, and concluded after intermission with clangorous showpieces by Liszt and Scriabin.
The roof might take a little while to settle back into place.
公平地说,曾经有一个更具体e thematic profile to this program than “let’s get loud.” As originally announced, this was supposed to be part of the mini-festival Salonen had planned around the myth of Prometheus, beginning with last week’s account ofBeethoven’s ballet“The Creatures of Prometheus” and continuing with Promethean works by, again, Liszt and Scriabin.
But plans change, and instead of thematic consistency we got to savor the exuberant clamor of “Song of the Flaming Phoenix,” Fang’s concerto for orchestra and the ancient Chinese mouth organ known as the sheng. This also connected in a vague way with the Prometheus story, because of the fire, but it stood marvelously well on its own.
One of the signature moves of the sheng, which was deployed with manic skill by soloist Wu Wei, is to build densely packed harmonies that often expand from a base of one or two pitches. Fang begins her 26-minute tone poem by replicating that gesture for the orchestra, laying a sort of eerie mist of sound across the stage from which musical details soon emerge.
One which returns repeatedly is a steady, tromping rhythmic tread that gathers strength as it advances. Another is a range of full-orchestra attacks that land with a kind of repetitious delirium (more than one episode in the piece calls to mind Stravinsky’s “Rite of Spring”).
Throughout the score, Fang slathers on orchestral colors in bold, dynamic strokes. The sheng, whose sound is reedy but not especially muscular, doesn’t always find its way to the fore amid the onslaught, but when it does — as in an unaccompanied solo cadenza near the end, which Wu executed with fiendish virtuosity — the effect is splendid.
There are mysteries in this piece that weren’t easy to solve on first hearing — chiefly the formal plan, which is hard to make sense of. (The audience member who shouted “Bravo!” at an apparent conclusion about five minutes before the piece actually finished had my sympathies.) There’s a long episode of brassy, sassy jazz in a Henry Mancini vein that is both fun and incongruous. Fang says the piece is full of bird calls, modeled on the practice of Olivier Messiaen, yet the birds are often undercover.
But mysteries are a good thing, and “Song of the Flaming Phoenix,” in all its splashy splendor, landed like a brilliant, extravagantly inventive bombshell. It’s worth further exploration.
The pleasures on the second half were more familiar, but no less real as a result.Pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudetbrought his characteristic blend of athleticism and elegance to Liszt’s Piano Concerto No. 2, rattling his way through the solo part with steely conviction. Austin Huntington, principal cellist for the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra and the latest in a series of guests rotating through San Francisco’s principal cello seat, delivered a shapely, eloquent account of the brief but all-important cello solo.
Finally, Salonen and the orchestra joined forces to give Scriabin’s “Poem of Ecstasy” just the muscle and fervor it needs. This is a piece that is consistently trying to melt into a gooey mass onstage, but Salonen wasn’t having it. He gave the music all the billowy lyricism it needed and brought things to a potent, full-barreled close that left the audience poleaxed.
San Francisco Symphony:7:30 p.m. Friday-Saturday, March 4-5. $35-$125. Davies Symphony Hall, 201 Van Ness Ave., S.F. 415-864-6000.www.sfsymphony.org.