Underwater and backwards

It is hard to justify paying the premium for a Celebrity Series of Boston ticket when it comes to visiting orchestras. Boston already has a top-level orchestra that you can see perform most weeks of the year either at Symphony Hall or Tanglewood. The appeal would have to be for the infrequent concertgoer who is drawn by name power. Case in point, on Sunday evening American conductor Michael Tilson Thomas brought the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra to Symphony Hall with guest violinist Gil Shaham. Fine musicians all, but it would have been more of a treat if the Celebrity Series flew the ticket holders out to San Francisco to see them perform.

The first half of the program had a diabolical theme, starting with Franz Liszt's Mephisto Waltz. Gil Shaham then joined the orchestra in Sergei Prokofiev's Violin Concerto No 2 in G minor. The first two movements contain some of Prokofiev's most lyrical writing, but the third movement bears the composer's devilish grin. Shaham played with animation, but his sound didn't carry well to the back of the hall and was sometimes covered by the orchestra.

The second half of the program had a water theme, starting with a new commission by young American composer Samuel Adams. Drift and Providence uses fragmentary motifs and soft attacks to paint a liquid mood. I can't say that it blurs the melodic line, because there isn't any line of melody to blur. The work sounds like it is being played underwater and backwards.

The SFSO closed the evening with Daphnis and Chloé, Suite No 2 by Maurice Ravel. This is an apt companion piece to Adams's new work; the rise and fall of the opening measures suggests a seascape, and when Daphnis and Chloé premiered a hundred years ago audiences didn't quite know what to make of it. The second suite has since become a rhapsodic staple of the orchestral repertoire. It will be interesting to see which of the new works emerging in the 21st century will gain foothold twenty-five, fifty or a hundred years from now.