Melvyn Krauss is a professional economist who often writes about music. He has published on music in the Wall Street Journal, Harper's, and Opera News. In his early years, he mostly spent his time in opera houses. But with the decline of great singers and production values, Mr. Krauss abandoned the opera house in favor of the concert hall where he found the standard of performing to be on a much higher level. He resides in Portola Valley, California with his wife Irene, two Irish setters, and two cats. He considers himself to be a New Yorker-in-exile.  
Roll Over Beethoven...and Make Room for Brahms

Roll Over Beethoven...and Make Room for Brahms

Melvyn Krauss
Johannes Brahms

Johannes Brahms

San Francisco is not a Brahms town. Michael Tilson Thomas (MTT), the retiring Music Director of the San Francisco Symphony (SFS)--and the most influential classical music person in the Bay Area-- does not conduct much Brahms, relegating the works of the great master to guest conductors. 

By chance Herbert Blomstedt, the former SFS Music Director and someone who does know what a great Brahms symphony should sound like, happened to be in town the past two weeks to guest conduct the SFS in Brahms’ Third and Fourth Symphonies.  

In between the two Blomstedt SFS concert programs, Garrick Ohlsson was continuing his retrospective of all the Brahms piano works at the Herbst Theatre under the sponsorship of the San Francisco Performances (SFP), an invaluable arts institution in the Bay Area.

Garrick Ohlsson

Garrick Ohlsson

So for a few weeks at least in this Beethoven celebratory year, it has been ‘Roll over Beethoven and Make Room for Brahms’ for Bay Area classical music fans, a break that is welcomed if only to insure against Beethoven saturation during his 250th birthday year.  

Garrick Ohlsson has had an unusual career. Even though he is a world-class, top virtuoso with an extremely broad repertoire, he is essentially a North American artist with a big following in both the New York City area where he was brought up and lived for decades and in the Bay Area where he currently resides.  

This season Mr. Ohlsson is playing two programs of Brahms piano music for SFP to complete his two-year retrospective of the great composer that began last season. 

The first program consisted of Two Rhapsodies, Opus 79; Seven Fantasies, Opus 116; Variations on a Theme of Paganini, Opus 35 and the Piano Sonata No. 3 in F minor, Opus 5.

It was a superb performance. Often artists need time to warm up in recitals before they hit their stride. Not Mr. Ohlsson who with the very first notes swept us up into another world—Brahms’ music world--with a moving account of the two Rhapsodies. What a marvelous way to begin! 

Next came the Brahms’ Fantasies, labeled as such because they have a freedom from strict form; the Fantasies are made up of more dramatic pieces (capriccios) and quieter, more introspective ones (intermezzi). 

Though Ohlsson’s technical ability is formidable—there are so many technical wizards these days--what makes his playing really special is his ability to recreate the Brahms’ musical landscape and transport the listener there.  

I may have been sitting in Herbst Theatre listening to Mr. Ohlsson play, but I felt as if I was ‘long ago and far away’ to borrow the title of the 1944 hit song by Jerome Kern and Ira Gershwin. 

That’s what a real artist should do for the sensitive listener! 

The first half of the program concluded with the Variations on a Theme of Paganini, Opus 36 (Book II). Technically, this piece is daunting. Yet the Variations are much more than a technical challenge for the pianist—they are an artistic challenge to present the Variations as a coherent and poetic piece of music.  

There is something about hearing the haunting and beautiful main theme played 14 times in different forms over the span of some 12 minutes that stirs the soul and captures the imagination. 

At the work’s conclusion, Mr. Ohlsson rose from the stool, smiling as if to say ‘that wasn’t easy’ and the audience responded with vigorous applause. It was a triumph for the local favorite and a deserved one.

Readers should note that the final program of Mr. Ohlsson’s Brahms retrospective will take place at Herbst on March 31 @ 7:30. My advice: Be There or Be Square!

Herbert Blomstedt

Herbert Blomstedt

The same week that Mr. Ohlsson was doing the Brahms’ piano works at Herbst down the street in Davies Hall the spry and quite wonderful 92-year old Herbert Blomstedt was conducting the SFS in a program of Beethoven’s Second Symphony and Brahms’ Fourth. 

The San Francisco players are wonderful musicians and can play almost anything well. But they don’t play much Brahms and need to be reminded how his symphonies should sound. That’s why Herbert Blomstedt is an invaluable resource for this world-class orchestra.

It is simply amazing how different the SFS sounds when Blomstedt conducts it!

Herbert Blomstedt

Herbert Blomstedt

It was leaked to me that at the final rehearsal on the day of the first performance, the Brahms Fourth had sounded awful—“loud, cold and without poetry”. It was so bad in fact that it caused Blomstedt to stop and give the orchestra a 10-minute lecture on what they were doing wrong and how to correct it. 

Whatever he told them it certainly worked—at the performance I attended the Brahms was everything a Brahms should be—warm, filled with passion and poetry, dramatic and moving beyond belief. 

The SFS players were inspired and the audience caught on; they sat quiet and enraptured no applause between movements and then a virtual explosion of approval and thanks at the work’s conclusion. 

Time after time, they brought the adored maestro back for yet another round of frenzied applause, and so it went on--a real happening.

If they had known how bad the Brahms had sounded at the final rehearsal before the Blomstedt lecture, they still would be applauding the 92-year old maestro.

Conductors count—and Herbert Blomstedt proved that once again on his latest visit to San Francisco. 




Strapless Gowns Make Great Sounds

Strapless Gowns Make Great Sounds