SF Symphony's Erwartung

* Notes *
San Francisco Symphony performed Schoenberg's Erwartung (1909) for the first time on Friday. Conducted by outgoing music director Esa-Pekka Salonen, the orchestra sounded splendid at the Saturday performance I attended. The musicians were very clear and together, while soprano Mary Elizabeth Williams (pictured as the Woman, photograph by Kristen Loken) sounded hearty, always able to cut through the lush orchestration.

This opera is part of director Peter Sellars and Salonen's collaboration  at San Francisco Symphony to put on large-scale works over four years. Sellars reframes this piece as an "Accidental Death in Custody" and begins with a body bag on stage. Two guards come out and Williams signs some papers on a clipboard. This new setting did not always work with the text, as it is very specific, and the opera is more ambiguous, the Woman gradually realizes her lover is dead, which is at odds with a corpse at her feet. The imagery of walking through the forest at night is lost, but the Woman's journey does retain a nightmarish quality, a very contemporary horror.

Maestro Salonen got his ideas across,  the orchestra has a fine clarity and everything felt laden with intent.  The piece can be quite loud, but I could always pick out the fluid soli. Concertmaster Alexander Barantschik played particularly well, though all the strings were shimmering. The woodwinds sounded lovely, especially the flute. The brass fanfares were clear and in tune.

The one vocal soloist, soprano Mary Elizabeth Williams, was utterly focused and very strong. Her voice is well-supported from top to bottom and her high notes are crystalline without being the least bit shrill. She sounded robust no matter how she was positioned, whether she was standing or lying down, it did not seem to matter. Her German diction was clear as were the emotions of the text. It was an intense 33 minutes.

The evening began with Ravel's Ma Mère l’Oye (Mother Goose) with choreography from Alonzo King performed by his LINES Ballet. King chose not to literally tell these stories, but there were characters within each of the dances. The dancers (pictured, photograph by Kristen Loken) were dressed in muted autumnal colors and were a joy to watch, lots of impressive extension, and coordinated movement. I love to hear live music with dancers, especially at this high level, though there were moments when I might have been more focused on the playing than the dancing.

* Tattling *
The dancing kept the audience rapt, they hardly made a peep during the Ravel. The Schoenberg is more challenging, and there was some light talking and looking at cell phones to check the time.

Surprisingly, many people I know attended this performance, as it was not the prima.

I was startled to see that SF Symphony had not performed the Schoenberg before, it's a bit funny to think a Saariaho was here first. I heard this at Seattle Opera where it was presented with Bluebeard's Castle in 2009. When I saw in the program that Mary Elizabeth Williams was in the young artist program at Seattle Opera before I had my first child, I thought I must have heard her before. Sure enough, she was Serena in Porgy and Bess back in 2011, and it was nice to see that I was consistent about really liking her voice. Apparently I found Erwartung "interminable."