All That’s Missing Is the Magic

It’s been some 15 years since Los Angeles has been able to take Michael Tilson Thomas for granted. And in that time, since his days in the 1980s as principal guest conductor of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, there has been the miracle of MTT. Now Angelenos watch from afar as their native son, the musician who far more than any other is the proud sum of Los Angeles’ diverse musical culture--of Stravinsky, Schoenberg, Gershwin, Cage, Heifetz, Piatigorsky, Rubinstein and Wolfman Jack--invigorates Bay Area culture as music director of the San Francisco Symphony. There hasn’t been such a synergy between city, symphony and conductor like this since Leonard Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic.

Finally the MTT San Francisco Symphony has come south. In its first stops in Southern California, the program was Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto and Shostakovich’s 11th Symphony in San Diego on Saturday night and at the Orange County Performing Arts Center the following afternoon. Wednesday night: a more characteristic outing with Copland, Beethoven and John Adams at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion.

Shostakovich is a new interest for Tilson Thomas, and it might seem peculiar that the 11th would be the first of the Russian composer’s 15 symphonies he would turn to. Subtitled “The Year 1905,” it has only recently had its stock upgraded from junk bond to something slightly more respectable. Written in 1957 for the 40th anniversary of the October Revolution, it paints a cinematically vivid picture of Bloody Sunday, when the police opened fire on peaceful peasants protesting at the Winter Palace of Czar Nicholas II in St. Petersburg.

The frighteningly powerful Union of Composers hailed the hourlong symphony “a work of enormous realistic power,” which it certainly is. It won the Lenin Prize in 1958. Soviet dissidents, such as Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, and sophisticated Westerners were dumbfounded. New readings on the symphony have politically corrected it, excusing its garish militaristic music as symbolic of the Soviets’ brutal suppression of the Hungarian uprising in 1957. But the real reason why performances are no longer rare--the Los Angeles Philharmonic programmed it two years ago; the Pasadena Symphony, last month--is more likely that the music has such a strong narrative pull. And stories in music are in fashion.

That story is easy to follow, from the almost visceral sensation of the icy, wind-swept spaces of the Winter Palace, in hushed open harmonies on the strings, to the violent marches of the second movement, the hauntingly mournful requiem music of the third and the huge unleashing of triumphant power in the Finale. The symphony is played without a break, and at Sunday’s matinee Tilson Thomas was in impressive control from first note to last, conducting as if guiding the eye through one very long survey of a vast canvas. Never has the score seemed less unwieldy.

But more interesting, and undoubtedly what drew Tilson Thomas to this epic of realistic art in the first place, were the details, the little things. The symphony is constructed of Russian folk, political and prison songs, and Tilson Thomas turned our attention to the “singers.” The players were encouraged to exaggerate little quirks in melody and rhythm as if they were quirks in a character’s walk or accent. Indeed, Tilson Thomas went one better than Shostakovich here, moving the focus slightly away from the realism of historical event to real people. At last, there was no need for apologies to make this score palatable.

Still, Shostakovich’s symphony hardly has the profundity of great music, and it did not give the orchestra the chance to reveal the interpretive depth it has reached in its truly outstanding performances of Mahler, Tchaikovsky, Ives and Stravinsky during its five years under Tilson Thomas. Rather, the 11th was an opportunity for show. A few unimportant uncertainties aside, this was highly disciplined yet highly individual playing.

On the New York leg of its tour, the San Francisco Symphony paired Shostakovich with Bernstein’s “Age of Anxiety” Symphony, contrasting it with a narrative American work with popular culture roots from roughly the same time. In California, the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto, with Chee-Yun as soloist, offered no such frisson--instead, it seemed popular Sunday afternoon music, respectfully played.

After a nervous opening, the young Korean violinist settled down into perfectly pleasant, sweetly phrased, if unexceptional, playing, and Tilson Thomas offered comfortable support. Serving a famous repertory work well is always admirable and impressive, but here it disappointed simply because MTT and his orchestra now stand for something more.

* Michael Tilson Thomas conducts the San Francisco Symphony Wednesday night at 8, Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, 135 N. Grand Ave. (213) 365-3500. $18-$70. He will speak during the Upbeat Live preconcert presentation at 7.