San Diego Symphony

Cellist Alisa Weilerstein

Saturday, September 28, was a monumental evening in the artistic history of San Diego. The Jacobs Music went out on its maiden voyage. 

The first piece of music, Welcome Home, was a fanfare for brass and percussion by Texu Kim. The piece was commissioned by The San Diego Symphony Orchestra for this concert. I found it to be neither inventive or clever. The first notes of the piece were awkward and unsuited to brass instruments. The piece also lacked beauty and cohesion.

The next piece was “Aria” from Hector Villa-Lobos’s Bachianas Brasileiras No. 5. The music was composed for cellos and female singer. Mezzo-soprano Hera Hyesang Park provided the vocals. She sang well and there was a nice moment when the acoustic of the hall made it sound as if she were singing behind me.

After the Villa-Lobos, Ms. Park sang “Una voce poco fa” from The Barber of Seville by Giacchino Rossini. Her singing here was exposed. The modest-sized orchestra covered her voice unless they were playing pizzicato. Her high notes were out of context with the rest of her singing. They exploded out of her voice instead of blooming in the fashion that the bel canto style requires. Contemporary opera singers appear to think that merely singing high notes is sufficient. It is not. High notes must also be beautiful and match the rest of the voice and the style of the music being sung.

Cellist Alisa Weilerstein then played *Variations on a Rococo Theme* by Pytor Tchaikovsky. Her performance was exquisite and beautiful. Weilerstein’s performance was all the more profound because the subtleties of her playing were not lost in the hall. The acoustic of The Jacobs Music Center was perfect for this piece.

San Diego Symphony Orchestra concertmaster Jeff Thayer played the next piece of music from the balcony. Thayer presented Niccolò Paganini’s Caprice No. 24 and held his own with this uber-demanding violin manifesto. The Paganini led right into Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Variations on a Theme of Paganini. The theme that inspired Rachmaninoff was from Caprice No. 24. I thought it was a nice touch to play the two pieces together.

Pianist Inon Barnatan played the Rachmaninoff. His playing was brilliant and profound. However, the acoustic of the hall gave the sound of the piano an aggressive edge that started to wear on my ears. 

All the percussion instruments were dominant in the hall’s configuration for the evening. At one point, a solo drum was drowning out the entire string section. In Maurice Ravel’s Daphnis et Chloe Suite No. 2, I heard orchestral details that I had never picked up on before when the sections were playing. However, when the entire orchestra was playing the transparency of the sound disappeared.

The concert did what it was designed to do. It highlighted the acoustical abilities of the Jacobs Music Center to good effect.