ArtsSF

At its best, a symphony concert is transformative, sharpening senses, raising one’s spirits, stimulating the mind and body. That was the reaction here on attending the San Francisco Symphony’s latest live-and-vibrant venture despite some repertory I’m rarely wild about. The brass section, dormant for some 15 months of pandemic, was resplendent in playing Giovanni Gabrieli’s brass chorales as adapted from his four-century-old “Sacrae Symphoniae.” Playing antiphonally from the Davies Hall terrace seats, the octet simulated the origins in San Marco…

Read More Read More

Euphoria reigned Thursday with the first of substantial massed ensembles performing in more than 15 months. To say that the audience was euphoric is an understatement. It was like raising the curtain after a long and painful closure. For the first time, Davies Hall had opened to a full symphony orchestra, including both brass and woodwinds, heretofore banned by the pandemic. The performance of Brahms’ Violin Concerto marked the downbeat on a very promising resumption and new era for all…

Read More Read More

LATE NEWS—The logjam in the performing arts caused by the pandemic is loosening up as the S.F. Symphony is putting a full complement live on stage, complete with brass and woodwinds, starting with the June 17-18 concerts, after a much regrettable, unavoidable interruption of 15 months. – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – REVIEW—Agony and ecstasy were the implicit emotions of the…

Read More Read More

A minority conductor on the way up and a provocative modern program of novelties were the hallmarks of this week’s bracing San Francisco Symphony concerts. I’m happy to look past their bizarre whack-a-mole adaptation of “Carmen” music, as the night’s positives outweighed that musical aberration. The musical gem of the night was Carlos Simon’s six-minute “An Elegy: A Cry from the Grave” (2015). This is a thoroughly moving, aphoristic and harmonious statement emphasizing the low strings. Simon had been motivated…

Read More Read More

During this hopscotch through Covid regulations, the San Francisco Symphony is producing an engrossing off-season of invention. It has not only presented live mini-concerts with new composers to watch, but also served up a smorgasbord of impressive visiting conductors on the way up. In the process of these scaled-down, in-person, string-orchestra evenings, it has broken the lamentable logjam of pandemic lockdowns reigning since March, 2020—far too long for comfort. Latest of these podium visitors is Ken-David Masur—part German, part Japanese,…

Read More Read More

Come, leave stark reality behind and enter the ethereal, a fantasy world of caves, shadowy figures, dreams, apparitions, spooky forests, plus clouds floating over you making you lose your bearings. Such is the world that the San Francisco Symphony guest conductor James Gaffigan calls “the journey….from magic to human magic and emotions.” His program for this nebulous world, all music unveiled since 1900, was exemplary, and he managed it without playing a note of Claude Debussy. It was followed by…

Read More Read More

It was like returning to Earth, after 14 months in viral space, floating isolated in great voids between Mars and Jupiter. The reentry into a real concert hall, in person, with live musicians on stage—-Bliss!! The reduced Davies Hall crowd applauded enthusiastically for 20 seconds at the start, so moved by a cautious return to real musical life. It was far from normal. Some two dozen San Francisco Symphony string players were on stage, all masked and separated, devoid of…

Read More Read More

It’s hard to top the yen for adventure in Esa-Pekka Salonen. His latest effort for the San Francisco Symphony’s SoundBox digressions-in-streaming is part concert, part music education, part alluring visuals, part dance, in part also recalling the famous Leonard Bernstein music lectures on TV of the 1960s, back when major commercial channels still had such cultural programs. This latest effort entitled, “Patterns,” is an imaginative foray into roots of minimalism spanning some 800 years of creativity, at times more an…

Read More Read More

In this pandemic era, it’s still feasible to produce ensemble music with eloquent messages, up to a point. For the S.F. Symphony’s latest aphoristic SoundBox set “Lineage” curated by mezzo Julia Bullock, a nonet performs under a conductor on a sound stage, assisted by a far-off chorus, with some musicians entering remotely via modern technology. With most of them well-spaced and masked. Welcome to the unique era of Covid and formats which will challenge many fans attempting to explain these…

Read More Read More