ArtsSF

ROHNERT PARK, CA—A composer can still strike gold. Yet today. I had Michael Daugherty, 68, pegged for a 21st-century Ferde Grofé—-a skilled tone painter in music for our times. Until, that is, we got to the finale of his new suite for and about Sonoma County, “Valley of the Moon.” That finale segment, “Call of the Wild,” was immensely engrossing. Instead of the expected happy music, Daugherty here turned troubled, unsettled and enigmatic, much like the adventurous author of said…

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Guest conductor Gustavo Dudamel was back with gusto, leading “this foaming, roaring, raging sea of sound,” as Mahler once described his own raging Symphony No. 5. The Venezuelan led with fire—and no printed score—through this 71-minute masterpiece that Mahler’s compatriots in Vienna would call “gefühlsmȁssig”—surfeited with emotion. The crowd at Davies Hall stayed hushed in awe, without fidget or distraction, in hearing a master at work with the virtuoso San Francisco Symphony. Until the patrons’ jubilant ovations at the end….

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WALNUT CREEK, CA—The California Symphony served up a twin-barreled surprise March 27 that went well beyond expectations. No sooner had they served up the amazing world premiere by Katherine Balch two years in the waiting than, before the applause had even died down, a fire alarm was set off, forcing every one out in the street cooling heels figuratively and literally. We should make clear that the fire alarm, which arriving firemen proved false, was not a part of Balch’s…

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Pairing a most introspective work with a most extroverted one was yet another instance showing Michael Tilson Thomas still on top of his game in programming. And his program of Shostakovich and Prokofiev was winning wide admiration from the patrons, despite the works coming out of Russia, not exactly our closest neighbors these days, and out of old Soviet Russia at that. As if to attest to his on-going recovery from the brain surgery of last summer, Music Director Laureate…

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ROHNERT PARK, CA—The Santa Rosa Symphony’s brave 2022 resumption of concerts (with VAXXes and masks everywhere) continued with a tumultuous world premiere, a major artist, a Beethoven concerto and a choice memorial. Most distinctive is the premiere of a ground-shaking symphony by Gabriella Smith of Berkeley, “One,” which Music Director Francesco Lecce-Chong called the hardest work he has ever conducted. The musicians might be in broad agreement. Without question “One” opened our ears, with some applauding vigorously, others ready to bolt from…

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WALNUT CREEK, CA—-The Diablo Symphony has gone through its ups and downs over the years more often than the shifting tides. This process can strengthen a group long term. In its heyday of the late 20thcentury, it hosted prominent composers like Lou Harrison and unveiled new works. Understandably the recent year and a half long pandemic has hurt. The long-awaited resumption at the Lesher Center Nov. 20-21 showed initiative in the Diablo repertory as guest conductor Emily Senturia took to…

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You were sure that you hit the wrong concert on the wrong night, unless you caught the fine-print program insert. Neither the conductor nor the opening symphonic work matched the earlier billing, which had featured the recuperating Michael Tilson Thomas on the podium of the S.F. Symphony. But MTT, still curtailing commitments, had given way to emergency fill-in Ludovic Morlot, most recently music director of the Seattle Symphony. And as you learned in the late-hour fine-print, the French-born Morlot had…

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With a resplendent silvery half-moon radiating over the City, you knew this would be a very special concert. Apprehension had been palpable as the recently retired music director Michael Tilson Thomas, turning 77 next month, underwent brain surgery to remove a tumor. Forced to cancel guest engagements with four orchestras, he made it back despite all adversity—a mite shaky, a mite cautious, but as confident and verbose as ever conducting the San Francisco Symphony. The instant he came on stage…

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The Spanish touch emanated at the S.F. Symphony this week, without a note of Spanish music played. The highly polished program spotlighting works both old and new emanated from conductor Gustavo Gimeno and pianist Javier Perianes. Gimeno deftly walked a tightrope contrasting two short modern pieces with standards by Mozart and Mendelssohn. The SFS trend of including a living composer nearly every time brought on the Korean-German composer Unsuk Chin, 60, in her brief but tumultuous “subito con forza” composition….

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If Paganini were a contemporary composer, he might be writing a rocket-powered violin concerto similar to Bryce Dessner’s, heard at the S.F. Symphony. The great violin star Paganini once famously said to Berlioz, if I perform a new concerto, I have to be playing all the time. Dessner’s new opus has the soloist playing frantically at breath-taking tempo, nearly nonstop, through 26 minutes in a whirlwind part of as many as 9,000 notes. The orchestra’s string players venture a similar…

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