What do we gain, any of us, from the presence of children and teenagers on professional concert stages?
It’s not a rhetorical question, or at least not entirely. When a very young musician steps into the spotlight — as the 16-year-old Spanish violinist María Dueñas did on Thursday, Oct. 3, to solo with the San Francisco Symphony in Davies Symphony Hall — who actually benefits?
的answer to this question has little to do with Dueñas herself, who on the evidence of Thursday’s appearance seems to be a perfectly capable but still developing artist. There wasn’t anything egregiously wrong with her rendition of Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto, and there wasn’t anything very successful or interesting about it, either.
Her technique is solid and her intonation strong, even if her string tone can often be a little pinched and sour. But she seemed to have nothing particularly pressing to say about Mendelssohn’s music; this was an interpretation that hadn’t been thought through or lived in for any length of time.
And who can blame her? Sixteen years isn’t enough for anyone, no matter how gifted, to figure out how to put their own stamp on this music. That’s what experience is for.
So Dueñas was in an untenable situation — and she wasn’t the one who put herself there. Let’s turn an accusatory gaze instead on whatever combination of teachers, mentors, family and backers — not to mention the Symphony’s artistic staff, who are generally far cannier about such matters — made this debut happen.
让我们问他们,“为什么这么迫切to hear this young violinistnow, rather than giving her the chance to grow and develop into a mature musician? Whose interests are really being served?”
If there’s any answer at all to this, it has to do with our abiding fascination with prodigies and wunderkinder — a fascination that, in the end, does none of us much credit. Better, I’d argue, to do without the whole child-performer thing entirely.
Give them time, give them freedom, let their imaginations flourish far from the spotlight until they’re some kind of adults. Sure, we might miss out on the occasional pint-size marvel — little Yehudi Menuhin, young Sarah Chang — but those artists and others like them ultimately found a path to real artistic careers anyway. I hope and expect that Dueñas will do likewise, if the grown-ups leave her be.
的rest of the program, led with characteristic clarity and assurance by guest conductor Marek Janowski, combined music of greater and less familiarity. Hindemith’s “Concert Music for String Orchestra and Brass,” an odd instrumental showpiece written in 1930 for Serge Koussevitzky and the Boston Symphony, got the concert off to a crisp, poker-faced start — this is music that plays its expressive cards close to the vest, and Janowski and the orchestra delivered it sleekly.
Even more arresting was Mozart’s “Jupiter” Symphony, which occupied the second half in a brisk and tautly shaped account.Janowski’s great party trickis his ability to wring all sorts of grandeur out of even the most overplayed repertoire, and he did it again here. That ability is one of those things that come with age.
San Francisco Symphony:8 p.m. Friday-Saturday, Oct. 4-5. $35-$160. Davies Symphony Hall, 201 Van Ness Ave., S.F. 415-864-6000.www.sfsymphony.org