Symphonic Euphoria

Friday night I went to hear the San Francisco Symphony, under the baton of visiting conductor, Kurt Masur, perform Schnittke's First Cello Concerto and Brahms's Second Symphony. The Schnittke was amazing, with thorny melodies on the cello underscored with a shifting focus between quietly dischordant shimmering and glorious thirds from various parts of the orchestra. The soloist was Natalia Gutman, for whom the concerto was written, and who played at its premiere nearly twenty years ago. She performed with command and sensitivity, with total control but still with a sense of spontaneity, as if the music were being created as she played. Sometimes I worry that our audience will embarrass itself by showing undue enthusiasm for a performance; in this case, I think the crowd should have been more effusive in its applause. God, am I sounding like Thaddeus Bristol, here?

The Brahms. What can I say? I first heard the Brahms, without knowing it, on a cassette tape of Mic & Suz's Le Petit Mauvais Chose (er, Michael, how do you spell that?), a radio show on KZSC in Santa Cruz. That was probably only a couple of years after Gutman premiered the Schnittke concerto. Anyway, Mic & Suz played for at least forty-five minutes a tape loop of a five-second snippet from the first movement of the Brahms Second. Only they didn't identify the source. I was intrigued, but didn't know how to figure out where the loop came from.

One day years later, when I was downstairs at Rasputin's in Berkeley, they were playing the first movement over the loudspeakers, and when I heard the familiar rising strains of that theme, I got very excited. I asked an employee what it was that was playing. He said I'd have to ask upstairs, because that's where the cd's are played from. I ran upstairs and finally found out where that tape loop had been drawn from: the Brahms Symphony #2. Not wanting to buy a mediocre or idiosyncratic version of the symphony, I didn't plunk down ten bucks on the first used version I saw. I had to consult the Penguin Guide, of course. Eventually I decided on the Mackerras/Scottish Chamber Orchestra version (the box set with all four symphonies and a few extra things).

And boy, do I love that Second Symphony. By the final fanfare of Friday night's performance, I felt almost levitated. I'm sure that piece of music is too fucking cheery for some folks, but I think it has just enough darkness to keep it from being the symphonic equivalent of a '70's Coca-Cola commercial. And the melodies and harmonies and rhythmic tricks are glorious. It's probably not the best piece of music to listen to when you're depressed, but when you're happy, it can leave you floating two feet off the ground.