82: Ghost Writer

The San Francisco Symphony Board should wage a populist battle for my personal entertainment

Name That Tune

This week’s Name That Tune is a Maestro Will Special. Here’s your hint: someone recently tried to pitch me on programming this piece — which goes on like this for 35 minutes — by reminding me that we are currently in the the composer’s 150th anniversary year.

As always, your goal is to provide as much accurate analysis as possible. First try to get the nationality, year, and genre, then make educated guesses about the composer and — if possible— the piece. If you know the piece immediately, send us an email at toneprose@substack.com instead of commenting so the rest of us can have fun guessing. 

Last Week’s Results
Tone Prose 81
Easley Blackwood, Sonatina for Piccolo Clarinet, op. 38

Listener Jeremy gave me (Will) this one as a layup, but it was not a very social pick for the broader Tone Prose readership. Most people reading this publication will be aware that Easley Blackwood was my composition teacher and I have written various encomia (complete with expositions on his problematicity!) in this publication and others.

I guess I count this as a continuation of the NTT “winning streak” but it probably deserves an asterisk, and I don’t blame anyone else for not trying (although it would have been interesting to see the guesses.)

Think you can stump your fellow Listeners? Go ahead and try!

Head to our Google Form to upload a 30-second clip of an unidentified piece of classical music for us to try to identify.

Maurizio Pollini in Memoriam

The piano world lost one of its living legends on Saturday, March 23, as the Italian pianist Maurizio Pollini passed away at the age of 82. Known for his impeccable technique and an intellectual approach to interpreting standard repertoire, Pollini was a meticulous character who played everything from Bach to Stockhausen, with his modernist streak a little bit exaggerated in my (Joey’s) opinion. 

As a great recording artist, dozens of his recordings can be found on YouTube today, all worthwhile documents of a particular pianistic mind. Rest in peace!

Board Report

In last week’s Tone Prose, I (Will) reported on the news that Esa-Pekka Salonen would not be renewing his contract with the San Francisco Symphony at the end of the upcoming season, a non-renewal that he made very public by announcing that he and the SFS board no longer “shared a vision” for the orchestra. That was news; now, opinion.

If I were a resident of San Francisco, I would not be mourning the loss of Esa-Pekka Salonen as the Symphony’s music director, because I do not share his aesthetic outlook or his vision for what an orchestra can/should be. I would be hoping for a new conductor who wanted to support a much more interesting set of collaborative composers and artists, who did better programming, and who had a more localized connection to the community. And maybe someone who smiled occasionally.

Salonen’s big complaint seems to be that the SFS board would not fund the orchestra’s trip to Lucerne to give the world premiere of his horn concerto. That’s a bummer for him, but it just shows how out of touch the stars of classical music are with reality. The fact that the board didn’t fire back shows that they are either really bad at PR or really good at showing restraint or they just don’t like to have fun.

Luckily I’m not bound by any of those constraints, so if I had written the press release for the SFS board in the wake of Salonen’s announcement, it would have gone something like this: 

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

While Maestro Salonen is free to express any view he wishes about the direction of the San Francisco Symphony, but as a board, we feel that his vision for the orchestra is wholly out of step with the climate and social justice goals of the Symphony, one of San Francisco’s great civic institutions.

The board remains firm in its view that taking an orchestra on tour to another continent is tantamount to climate arson. Transporting a 100-person orchestra (plus administrators, crew, and family members) and the necessary instruments and gear across an ocean is a carbon-intensive endeavor whose dubious “benefits” to the orchestra’s reputation can hardly be said to offset its deficits in terms of carbon expenditure.

We find it interesting that Maestro Salonen has focussed his ire on the loss of this particular tour performance, given that the main point of the tour would have been for Mr. Salonen to give the premiere of his own Horn Concerto in the city of Lucerne, Switzerland. 

Of what possible benefit could a Salonen premiere be to the music lovers of San Francisco? Shouldn’t our orchestra perform major world premieres at its home in Davies Hall so that residents of our region can be part of the excitement?

San Francisco deserves a musician at the helm of its orchestra who will prioritize our own city and its hometown artists, many of whose lives would be transformed by a partnership with our city’s leading musical institution. Instead, Maestro Salonen has chosen as his collaborative partners the multi-millionaires Nicholas Britell (a Los Angeles film composer) and Carol Reiley (a brand ambassador for Guerlain Cosmetics), as well as Bryce Dessner, Nico Muhly, and Esperanza Spalding, all well-to-do residents of New York City.

In choosing Esa-Pekka Salonen as the music director of the San Francisco Symphony in 2019, we thought that he would transform our orchestra in exciting ways and create a link to the future. Sadly, Mr. Salonen’s vision did not extend beyond his personal ambitions as an international star performer, and he has failed to embrace the thriving arts scene that has made San Francisco a beacon to so many creative people for over a century.

We wish Mr. Salonen the best in his future endeavors.

I actually have lots more to say about this, so in subsequent weeks, maybe I’ll do a version of what Esa-Pekka should have said if he had actually wanted the best possible spin for leaving in a spat over the loss of his exorbitant pet project. Then maybe I’ll do a take on the *real* problem faced by the San Francisco Symphony (hint: it has to do with urbanism.)

Tone Praise

Buxtehude, Trio Sonata No. 4 in B-flat Major

This week’s Tone Praise is a suggestion from Listener Ellen that I (Will) am most happy to endorse. I’m a sucker for a boppin ground bass, and Ellen knows it!

Tone Prose is a co-production of William White, Joseph Vaz, and the Listeners (i.e. you.)