Perhaps you have read about or experienced pine nut syndrome, its main symptom being a bitter metallic taste lingering in the mouth for weeks after consuming pine nuts.

Julie Ann Smith

^{Courtesy photo}

After hearing the San Diego Symphony play Respighi at Copley Symphony Hall on Friday, I have a bitter, metallic, persistent ringing in my ears from a painful case of Pines of Rome syndrome.

Pines of Rome is an exercise in nationalist kitsch which culminates in a musical depiction of the Roman Legion crashing down the Appian Way. Just as the Roman army laid waste to all in its path, so too does Respighi’s pompous bluster obliterate all that precedes it.

The unfortunate victims of Respighi’s raucous humbuggery were San Diego Symphony concertmaster Jeff Thayer; harpist Julia Ann Smith; and composer Michael Torke, whose work Cactus—a concerto for Thayer and Smith—received its world premiere.

What chance did this quiet, contemplative work with a gentle harp solo and a caressing violin part have to linger in one’s mind against the horrific clangor of Pines of Rome which ended the concert? Respighi’s tone poem does contain moments of introspection, but those get swept away in the bombastic military procession that concludes the work. Timpani pound, the bass drum thumps, and the brass section blares out in atavistic triumph a paean to ancient Rome so exciting that Mussolini appropriated it as Fascist musical propaganda.

This was the first opportunity I’ve had this season to hear the Symphony; they’re playing just as well as they did at the end of last season, and that was as well as the San Diego Symphony performed at the zenith of the David Atherton years. The strings are cohesive and warm, the principal winds sound beautiful, and the brass section is uncommonly tight and disciplined. It’s a miracle that the Symphony has so many outstanding performers in this economic downturn—hear them while you can this season. Who knows how long they’ll be able to keep up the payroll for all of those star players?

In Pines of Rome, clarinetist Sheryl Renk excelled as a bird singing in the high branches, her clear, sweet tone providing a serene respite before Respighi’s musical depiction of the Roman legionnaires ruptured my tympanic membranes. Andrea Overturf’s English horn work was pungent but delicious in Pines of Rome, and radiantly warm in Rossini’s William Tell Overture. In William Tell, flautist Demarre McGill answered Overturf’s English horn with pure but expressive pastoral melody.

William Tell opens with an unaccompanied cello solo (unusual in its day), which was interpreted with clarity and emotion by principal cellist Yao Zhao; he was then joined by the next four chairs in his section for lush harmonizing and warm, vibrant sound. Ling directed the orchestra with panache. He lovingly sculpted the opening cello work; choreographed the thunderstorm with instrumental sections and solo passagework that poked through the musical downpour and then disappeared back into the fray; and he injected the concluding Allegro (familiar to most Americans as the theme of The Lone Ranger) with momentum that never skimped on detail, even in the most frenetic sections.

As if there wasn’t enough orchestral brilliance for the concert, Ling also programmed some lively dances from Smetana’s opera, The Bartered Bride. Here again the orchestra was a responsive, well-behaved group, generating excitement without ever becoming sloppy. Calvin Price’s clean trumpet work here deserves praise.

Smack in the middle of all this commotion was the world premiere of Michael Torke’s Cactus. Torke had an astounding career ascent in the 1980s; he wrote a series of brilliantly scored works (like this one) which combined the melodic patterns of Steve Reich with the harmonies and drive of rock and pop music in a way no one had done before, all while he was in his early and mid-twenties. He became a hero to many graduate student composers in the U.S. when he left the Masters program at Yale, in order, he announced, to be able to spend more time composing music. He soon wound up as the resident composer for New York City Ballet. That’s right—he had Igor Stravinsky’s job!

By the mid-90’s, however, tastes changed, favoring the aggression of the Bang on a Can triumvirate (David Lang, Michael Gordon, and Julia Wolfe), the fusion of East and West by Asian-American composers such as Tan Dun and Chinary Ung, and the musical chameleonism of Osvaldo Golijov. Some accused Torke of rewriting the same piece for a decade (an unfair charge when it came to melodies and harmonies, but true enough perhaps in describing his orchestrational preferences and his syncopated rhythms). Whatever happened, Torke was no longer the young champ of American concert music.

In the early 90s, Decca issued all-Torke CDs every year or two. Torke’s recent work is not as well known, suffering perhaps from the disinterest of the major labels in contemporary American music, a slew of younger composers who have their own takes on combining minimalism with pop styles, and what to my ears sounds like a decline in compositional quality. On a recent Naxos CD, though, with his work An American Abroad, Torke appears to be entering a new phase in which his compositions have more contrasting sections and a strong sense of organic growth. Cactus—his concerto for Jeff Thayer and Julie Ann Smith—makes those contrasts larger and more obvious in an overall rhapsodic form.

Cactus begins with the interval of a fourth in the harp rocking to and fro; the violin enters with the harp, and together, they tease out the material, expanding the range of the melody and the number of different pitches sounded. It’s always tonal, and at times verges on sounding like generic television music. But it’s a mistake to dismiss Torke’s music on the basis of superficial similarities. Even if a chord or texture sounds like something one might hear on a Lifetime Channel movie, Torke develops this material in an untraditional manner, and that organic development is what makes Cactus so special.

Most concertos are heroic works, a soloist or soloists struggling against the orchestra to prevail. The rhetoric of Cactus is more intimate. Torke employs a chamber orchestra, and his soloists are given lyrical melodies. The harp and violin often initiate a gesture which the orchestra picks up and takes off in its own direction. Arpeggiated chords turn into sonic pyramids in the orchestra, with each note in the violin or harp sustained by a different orchestral instrument. Ostinatos churn along, but never really continue for that long. There is an element of Sibelius here, where the music is continuously evolving, perhaps a trace of Debussy in the unusual diversions taken from the emotional milieus which had been developed, only to be left behind for something else.

Cactus is largely a gentle, subtly persuasive work, and if there are precedents for this kind of concerto, particularly in America, the beautiful gamelan concertos of Lou Harrison come to mind, works which exist for beauty’s sake, that don’t need to make a big artistic statement.

Jeff Thayer played his part gracefully. If his violin could sing, it would have performed an impressionistic chanson recital, not a Wagnerian opera. Thayer brings a sweet and lovely sonority from his instrument, the equivalent of many a big-name soloist.

In the past 3 years, since coming to San Diego, harpist Julie Ann Smith has established herself as something of a musical fixture in the community. She is actively involved in the Art of Elan series at the Museum of Art, and has a trio with flautist Demarre McGill and violist Brian Chen.

If a pixie could be demure, that might describe Smith. Her Art Deco harp, with its crisp square columns and trim, is as wonderful to look at as her Hollywood girlish looks, and the sounds produced from her instrument are just as impressive. The harp appears so big next to her that I sometimes fear she’ll be crushed beneath it, but once her fingers touch the strings such concerns vanish.

Ling conducted Torke’s score with attention to details, yet delineated the moods traversed and kept the music flowing. Although it didn’t bowl over the audience, the easy charms of Cactus made it one of the strongest world premieres the San Diego Symphony has done in years. If you can sweep aside the aural hyperbole of Pines of Rome, you might just be able to realize what a sonic gem the San Diego Symphony has brought into the world with Cactus.

For a copy of the program, click here.

The best way to appreciate Pines of Rome is as the soundtrack to this movie.