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.

Doesn’t the orchestra ever run off some truly mediocre concert? In this era of budget cuts, and the musicians outdoors leafleting the cutbacks and the $$ crisis every time, it’s quite amazing that the quality never flags to any extent worth mentioning—This, at a time when all the five string principals were all away on leave or holiday, and subs stepped in throughout. It’s all about depth, my dear.

However severe the budget crunch, so far it has yet to show up acoustically. Whew!

In the Barber Violin Concerto, Chen played the essential pacifist, spinning out the lyrical lines breathtakingly, even in the opening movement with the “Scotch Snap” rhythms, surprising coming from this very American composer. Barber is duly recognized for his ubiquitous Adagio (from the String Quartet) , as well as his many tuneful operas, ranging from the grand problem spectacle “Antony and Cleopatra” to perhaps the smallest of operas, ”A Hand of Bridge.”

Chen rewarded her accolades with a soulful encore reading of J.S. Bach’s A Minor (solo ) Sonata movement, rich in feeling, though not as restrained as Bach’s circle would have heard it three centuries ago. This was a welcome homecoming for Ms. Chen as she powered through the allegedly “unplayable” finale with aplomb.

The concert opened with more ”fate” yet: the Atlantan Carlos Simon’s “Fate Now Conquers” (2019). Inspired obliquely by Beethoven’s 7^th Symphony. This five-minute opus is restless and dramatic, ranging from chattering unsettled violins to the brass-and-timpani finale, and various staccato outbursts in between, with a serene cello solo rendered by Sébastien Gingras. It is well crafted and almost  rambunctious, leaving listeners wanting to hear more music from this 38-year-old composer.

We see two Tchaikovskys in the 4^th Symphony: The bombast of the oft-repeated brass fanfares was contrasted against the balletic refinement of the two middle movements, in which Russ LaLuna played the oboe solo with practiced sonic allure, and Stephen Paulson, the “veteran veteran,” did the handsome bassoon work. Enough to make one a believer.

Here conductor Lee came into his own with his sensitive-as-crystalware baton work leaving one gasping. With the SFS podium vacant starting in fall, 2025, leaders like Lee should take a few more flights to SFO and let us all enjoy it—not just this brave ”one-of” crowd.

MUSIC NOTES—The violin concerto had joined other notable pieces (like the Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto No.1) in the allegedly “unplayable” drawer because of its fiendishly fast and difficult finale. Most such works were soon picked up by other soloists and played without flinching….A staunch East Coast resident throughout, Barber had made a rare West Coast appearance not long before his death in 1981 to oversee “A Hand of Bridge” at a noteworthy Carmel Valley music fest….Never sure if handbill hawkers are paid or not. So we asked one defending the SFS Chorus outside to sing an A, performed convincingly. Yes, she was convincingly a soprano in the SFS Chorus doing volunteer work for her cause, refuting the doubting Thomases…When an insecure Tchaikovsky sought some approval, he once showed the veteran Brahms his orchestral score. Brahms leafed through it to the end, then handed it back—-without a word. ’Nuff said.

S.F. SYMPHONY at Davies Hall, San Francisco, July 25 playing Simon, Barber, Tchaikovsky. For SFS info: (415) 864-6000, or online, www.sfsymphony.org.

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