Fully Realized `Dream' Requires Leap of Faith
   By Joshua Kosman, Chronicle Music Critic
   Saturday, January 29, 2000

   Elgar's 1900 oratorio "The Dream of Gerontius," which the San Francisco
   Symphony played for the first time Thursday night in Davies Symphony
   Hall, is a work for true believers of two varieties: believers in
   the composer's enormous powers of artistic creation, and adherents
   to Catholic dogma.

   For listeners like myself, who belong to the former camp only,
   Thursday's performance under San Francisco Opera music director Donald
   Runnicles was a powerful, dramatically arresting affair.  Yet I
   suspect this score may reveal its full majesty only to those with
   double membership in the target audience.

   It isn't enough to admire and be swept along by Elgar's inspired
   melodic gift, his mastery of thematic transformation or the pungency
   and resourcefulness of his choral and orchestral writing -- although
   those are certainly key.

   But "Gerontius," which sets sections of a long poem by Cardinal John
   Henry Newman, also asks listeners to follow its protagonist on a tour
   of the afterlife, attended by angels and demons and culminating in
   a blazing momentary glimpse of God.  And a convic tion that this is
   literally what awaits us after death seems essential to a full
   appreciation of the work.

   The two sections of the piece trace the journey of Gerontius (the
   name denotes a generic oldster) through his final earthly moments
   and across the great divide of death.  One moment he is making his
   final professions of Christian faith, with priest and loved ones in
   attendance; the next he is on his way to be gathered to the bosom of
   the Lord.

   It's a compelling enough conception, but both Newman and Elgar address
   it so completely from within a context of faith that it can be hard
   for the nonbeliever to find a way in.

   And of the two, only Elgar is an artist.  Although the composer
   evidently found spiritual sustenance in Newman's poem, it is full of
   stretches like this: "Simply to His grace and wholly/ Light and life
   and strength belong,/ And I love, supremely, solely,/ Him the holy,
   Him the strong."

   As an expression of faith, that does the job with admirable efficacy.
   But as poetry, it is surely doggerel.

   Elgar's score is on another plane entirely.  In two unbroken stretches
   of music (done by the Symphony in 100 intermissionless minutes), he
   traces the soul's odyssey with all the dramatic intensity of a chaste
   opera composer.

   A few distinctive themes, laid out in the spacious orchestral prelude,
   recur in different guises at key points in the journey.  The alternation
   of solo vocal writing and choral interludes shows a masterful sense
   of pacing.  The long and demanding title role moves grippingly from
   the agonies of the death spasm to an increasingly deep feeling of
   ecstasy and finally peace.

   Then there is the glory of the work's individual moments -- the
   hieratic intoning of the chorus as Gerontius dies, the exquisitely
   intertwined duet for Gerontius and the Angel who conducts him toward
   the Heavenly Throne, the female choir of angels and espe cially the
   full-bore depiction of the Divine Presence.  In sheer musical impact,
   all these strokes transcend their doctrinal specifics.

   Still, there is something awfully sugary about Elgar's vision of
   the afterlife, with its radiant harmonies and its transcendent glow.
   Other composers, including Schutz, Bach and especially Messiaen, have
   managed to convey a taste of religious consolation without the patina
   of sentimentality that overlays "Gerontius." It's a brilliantly
   crafted confection, but a confection for all that.

   At any rate, whatever doubts the concert inspired could not be
   attributed to the performance itself.  Runnicles has become Davies'
   most reliable purveyor of large religious works, and this performance
   was at the magisterial level of his 1995 debut with Britten's "War
   Requiem" and the 1997 Verdi Requiem.

Dear Josh: Your fine review of "Gerontius" made me think -- how can we
really *get into* the Shostakovich opera if our nasal affiliation falls
short of real fusion? How do we really relate Bottom in "Midsummer
Night's Dream" lest we make asses of ourselves?

Does the appreciation of art really require jettes of beliefs? May we
not make a point of the opposite -- that great art obviates the need
for a particular belief system? Else how could a total infidel of my
ilk worship at the altar of Bach, etc.? What I hear you say is that "you
don't have to be Catholic to get Elgar...  but it helps," and I suggest
that there may be a *different* appreciation of the music by affiliation,
but not necessarily a *better* one.  Yours faithfully, Janos.

Janos Gereben/SF
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