ArtsSF

I’ll come clean and confess, having at last expected some mediocrity at the S.F. Symphony’s rare “one-of” “Fate” concert July 25, clearly a filler on the schedule featuring a couple of emerging solo artists. Wrong, wrong, wrong. Violinist Stella Chen, originally from the Bay Area, was cool and dazzling in Barber’s less-than-stellar “unplayable” concerto. And the Korean-Canadian guest conductor from the Boston Symphony staff Earl Lee brought hushed admiration in his leading that old “Fate” war-horse, Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 4….

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Few soloists of late have made an impact comparable to Pablo Sáinz-Villegas, who played Joaquín Rodrigo’s highly popular “Concierto de Aranjuez” with the SF Symphony at Davies Hall July 11. Much like Mozart in his piano concertos, he showed an inclination to adding ornamentation, taking the familiar Adagio to a new higher level. The all-Spanish program had its flaws, but the centerpiece was golden. The virtuoso master of the guitar brought the audience to its feet more than once in…

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