ArtsSF

Eureka, an orchestra changing its spots, reverting to earlier ones traced back to the 1880s! Symphony Silicon Valley is renaming itself the Symphony San Jose, just inches short of that oldest West Coast orchestra known as the San Jose Symphony. Loyalty to this orchestra is formidable. Today you still see many principals playing who were in the earlier SJS incarnation in the 1990s, among them concertmaster Robin Mayforth, percussionist Galen Lemmon, trumpeter James Dooley, clarinetist Michael Corner, bassoonist Deborah Kramer,…

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The San Francisco Symphony opener under new maestro Esa-Pekka Salonen was novel, modern, and unique, certainly unlike any in over half a century of this writer’s memory and attendance. He featured rousing and in part explosive music, none of it familiar, all from 1939 or later. And the performance earned several standing ovations. The patrons’ enthusiasm over the unencumbered reopening of Louise Davies Hall after a year and a half was palpable. Some spoil-sports will grouse about the lack of…

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One of Esa-Pekka Salonen’s boldest new additions to the S.F. Symphony has been the eight “collaborative partners,” a variety of contemporary solo musicians adding new musical dimensions in more intimate ensembles to the SFS palette. Among the most virtuosic of these is flutist Claire Chase, heard in a vibrant currently streaming audio-visual program “Sound Box: Metamorphoses.” These curiously magnetic adventures in sound and sight go miles beyond your standard symphonic fare of Haydn, Handel and the 3 B’s. Chase plays…

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It was a 1976 young conductors competition of the Baltimore Symphony, with a predictable array of well-scrubbed young men in their early- to mid-20s competing. And in this group appeared a striking youth, barely 17, seemingly from another world, wearing the casual togs he’d used for any day at his public high school. For the finals he conducted a movement from a Brahms symphony that propelled me to my feet to watch intently. He evoked ear-caressing sounds of ethereal beauty,…

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It was a grand night to remember. An unprecedented new breeze blew into Davies Hall and inspired an audience moved to its feet, clapping with vigor. The salient firsts for the S.F. Symphony were the jovial conductor Michael Morgan on the podium and music by the greatly underrated composer Louise Dumont Farrenc. By the time it was over, folks virtually forgot just which brilliant Rossini overture had opened the program. The debut of Morgan resulted in far greater audience representation…

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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…

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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…

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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…

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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…

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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,…

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