A Night at the San Diego Symphony

So I finally got connected with the music world here in San Diego. I was pretty excited all week for this - Shostakovich's 1st violin concerto on the program, one of my favourite (if not, my favourite) violin concertos ever written... the melodies and harmonies give me chills up the spine, and of course, it's historical relevance to Stalin's reign in Russia. It was somewhat questionable though whether the soloist, Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg would serve it justice. I've never heard of this violinist before, but I assumed that since she's released a handful of albums with EMI classics, I thought to myself, it should be pretty good.

I was pretty shocked when I arrived at the front door of the symphony hall... it was a high rise building? I never knew concert halls could look like that on the outside. It turns out that the old concert hall (it was absolutely beautiful) was preserved and a hotel was built around and above it - interesting concept. Perhaps the coolest thing that happened Friday night was that I got a free ticket to hear the concert!!! I was standing in line, waiting to get my cheap $10 rush ticket or $45 regular priced ticket if there weren't decent rush ticket seats, but out of the blue, some random elderly lady just came up to me and asked me if I was buying a single ticket and then proceeded to hand over one of her tickets to me. So good! =D and throughout the concert and stuff, we got to chat for a bit and would've offered a ride back home too, but I lived in the opposite direction from her, but wow, never thought something like this would happen. I mean, she didn't want money for her ticket. I think if I was her, I would've at least ask for a little money (sigh, I'm so cheap lol).

Anyways, back to the concert itself. I typically don't like reviewing concerts, but I felt the urge to this time around. The concert started off with a contemporary piece called the Shanghai Overture, by a composer of the name of Bright Shen. This piece was pretty neat - a fusion of east meeting west, nothing spectacular and didn't really show off the capability of the orchestra. This followed by the Shostakovich concerto... Oh my.... I was ready to get up and leave the hall several minutes into the performance. Salerno-Sonnenberg's playing and stage presence was... ummm.... horrible.

The darkness of the concerto was completely lost in her inability to sustain notes and phrases to bring out the tension in the harmonies in the slow movements (1st and 3rd). What really bothered me in the 1st movement was that she was playing dotted halves as though they were half + a quarter. The climax of this movement was lost in her scratchy violin playing and poor intonation. The 2nd movement (Scherzo) was literally butchered... it's like she wanted to kill her poor violin - scratchy, inaccurate and didn't care whatsoever about the orchestra that was alsmot consistently a third of a measure behind her. The 3rd movement is probably my favourite movement of the concerto... and what do you know, butchered again. Pretty much the same comments apply from the 1st movement here - and then comes the monumental cadenza - this thing is a beast - last almost as long as the beginning of the 3rd movement... more chicken scratch and unbearable and unnecessary pauses in between phrases - repetitive too I might add. The cadenza ended off in a hurry of out of tune 16ths and parallel 5th/octave gliss'es. At this point, I just wanted her to play as fast as possible so I don't need to see her on stage anymore.

Some people may know that I don't like obscure movement in a performance... she totally summarized what I do not want to see - weird facial expressions, stomping of the feet, dancing (?!) on stage during tutti sections (she was blinding in that sense *shivers*). I think what really set my impression on her though was when she walked onto stage.. with what she was wearing... looked like sweat pants to me. I really wonder why people like her get standing ovations...maybe because she puts on a show on stage and putting in all she's got. I didn't and will likely never buy that.

With this half of the concert over, I almost wanted to leave and head home, but seeing that I had a nice seat (for free =) ), I stuck around for selections from the Swan Lake ballet by Tchaikovsky. It was a very good choice. Here, I finally got to hear how good this orchestra was under the baton of Jahja Lin. This symphony is very capable and I was very impressed by the concertmaster solos in this ballet suite - clean, articulate and evident that he had a very good sense of musicality.

Phew..... I think I could've go on about this concert even more, but I think I'll end here - just had to get rid of the feelings I had about the concert - especially the soloist.