TWO FORMIDABLE SYMPHONIES AND PURPLE MOUNTAINS AT SRS CONCERT

The Santa Rosa Symphony's February 23 concert included works from three distinct periods.

Chinese American composer Shuyung Li’s Purple Mountains, premiered in 2023, while Brahms’ E Minor Symphony was first heard in 1885. Fitting between them was Leonard Bernstein's second, titled Age of Anxiety, inspired by W. H. Auden’s 1947 poem of the same name.

Regarding Purple Mountains, the composer explained from the stage before the performance that she used musical ideas from her opera When Purple Mountains Burn, describing events in the Sino-Japanese War in 1937. It's hardly a subject for easy listening, beginning with a militaristic march, followed by eerie chimes and high harmonics in the strings. The piece alternates between ominous brassy military bombast (not unlike John Williams's Imperial March from “Star Wars”) and quiet mournful passages with flutes and vibraphone. A lyrical trumpet solo led once again toward an evocation of chaos and destruction followed by a moment of silence before the piece ended with restrained bassoons, strings, and again the vibraphone. Ms. Li was brought to the stage to acknowledge applause.

Brahms's fourth is perhaps darker and more introspective than his cheerful second and third symphonies, its opening seemingly more lyrical than foreboding. Conductor Francesco Lecce-Chong brought out the counterpoint around the repeated four-note motif that begins the movement, with lush strings and the typical Brahms woodwind voicing between flutes, oboes, and bassoons. The second movement emphasized the contrast between its opening, in keeping with its Andante Moderato marking, a “strolling” feeling that could sometimes feel almost march-like despite its 3/4 meter, and a lyrical second theme introduced by the cellos. It's been said that every Brahms slow movement, whether orchestral or chamber music, incorporates at some point a love note to his muse, Clara Schumann, and this one, before a transition to a sometimes turbulent development, might certainly fit that description.

The boisterous third movement, despite being in 2/4 time rather than the traditional 3/4, is probably as close as Brahms ever came to an actual scherzo in any of his symphonies, with quieter sections analogous to the trios of the form, and this was emphasized by the interplay and balance between the Orchestra’s brass, woodwinds, and strings.

The composer had a lifelong fascination with baroque musical forms, and chose to make the finale a chaconne, a series of variations on a repeated harmonic progression, often in minor and in 3/4 time. Here it's first stated in a mere eight bars, by the horns, then developed with ever more contrapuntal mastery over no fewer than thirty successive variations. In the final Piu' Allegro coda the theme is deconstructed into four-bar segments leading to the triumphant closing chords, bringing the audience to its feet in loud applause.

Bernstein departed from both the usual four movement format of a symphony and the basic concept of a piano concerto for The Age of Anxiety. The work's two parts correspond to the major divisions of Auden's poem, while each of the first part is further subdivided, as in the poem, into smaller sections: the Prologue and fourteen variations, further subdivided into Seven Ages and Seven Stages. The second, which follows without pause, comprises a Dirge, Masque, and Epilogue.

And while the idea of a concerto suggests a solo instrument and orchestra playing together, the relationship in The Age of Anxiety is more that of a dialogue, with the piano part representing the composer’s own and highly personal interpretation of the poem and its four protagonists.

Joining the Symphony was pianist Joyce Yang, and after the Prologue theme, beautifully stated by two clarinets with a final flute descending chromatic scale, her delicate interpretation of the first of the Seven Ages variations echoed the Prologue, leading to urgent strings and horns in the second. The third Age was based in part on a string quartet, while the fourth, in 5/8 time, recaptured a more urgent feeling, becoming even more so in the fifth variation. The sixth was once again for piano alone (marked Quasi Cadenza in the score) with the seventh providing orchestral closure to the section.

The Seven Stages, the second group of variations, is based on a journey undertaken by the poem's
protagonists, and as such begins with a moving line, perhaps suggesting walking, while the ninth
variation is a waltz, and the tenth has a somewhat humorous feeling. The urgency increases through the
remaining short variations, culminating in sudden ending chords.

The three sections of the second part of the symphony begin with a Dirge introduced by muted horns and woodwinds, developing into full orchestra and ultimately dying away only to segue into the Masque, beginning with a ragtime-like piano theme and becoming more and more unabashedly jazzy, a premonition of Bernstein's West Side Story composition of 12 years later, that was inescapable. The Epilogue begins, after a brief orchestral flourish, quietly and introspectively in 5/4 time, but leads to a Coplandesque finale, with a piano cadenza interjected, before a calm resolution and triumphant finale.

Once again the Green Music Center audience was brought to its feet and was rewarded with Ms. Yang’s encore of the beautiful rolling arpeggios of Gershwin’s 1924 song The Man I Love, in Earl Wild’s transcription.