ArtsSF

The new percussion concerto “Losing Earth” lays out before our ears our bigger-than-life environmental predicaments here and now. Composer Adam Schoenberg, 38, spotlighted the diversity of percussion textures—gentle, ferocious, ear-tingling—far beyond the rambunctious noises mostly relegated to the outer fringes at symphony concerts. His world premiere at the San Francisco Symphony was created with the collaboration of concerto soloist Jacob Nissly, who is not only an old friend but also a year-round principal with the ensemble. If the instant standing…

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“Hats off, gentlemen—a genius.” The deathless words spoken by Schumann on hearing the music of teenager Chopin could have been echoed in a later century on audition of Igor Stravinsky, surely the most versatile composer of modern times. Stravinsky, the ultimate chameleon of musical inventiveness, launched and triumphed in so many distinct styles, to find a comparison you’d have to turn to Picasso in visual art—and, in earlier eras, polymath geniuses like Hildegard von Bingen and Leonardo da Vinci. The…

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Of course John Adams comes forth with a winner of a premiere as curtain-raiser. Of course he’s at his most ebullient, pairing up with Music Director Michael Tilson Thomas. Of course, at a youthful 72, he remains the Bay Area’s reigning composer star. His joyous world premiere “I Still Dance” unveiled Sept. 19 showed him at his most ebullient and harmonious, this time colorful and jazz-inflected, with fast triadic runs on woodwinds. It’s a sparkling, syncopated river of ideas at…

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Never in the past century did the San Francisco Symphony pull off a greater celebration for its maestro than this week for Michael Tilson Thomas. Fanfares, a Standing O., countless rainbow lights, a video from Yo-Yo Ma, bouquets. It was a mass laudatory love-in for the guy on the podium these 25 seasons, ending with flowers offered by the mayor of the city, Governor Newsom, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other luminaries. He even got “25” jerseys matching every professional…

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SANTA CRUZ, CA—“Astonish us!” That was the clarion call from Serge Diaghilev, the great impresario of a century ago, to his creative team of composers, choreographers and designers. It could also be the motto of the Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music and its fans, focusing on assimilating new music for its long-established orchestral concerts on this bucolic seaside site some 75 miles south of San Francisco. The astonishing piece Aug. 10 was the overachieving Tan Dun’s Chinese opus. His commission…

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SANTA CRUZ, CA—Nowhere in my (seems-like) centuries of reviewing is there closer bonding between audience, orchestra, conductor and live composer than at this Cabrillo Festival, now 56 years old. Despite playing in a scruffy former boxing palace with steep stairways, and with musicians thrown together from all over the map, the fest is a feel-good love-in night after night, year after year. Virtually all the composers performed appear in person to introduce their music, take a bow and hug everybody…

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Mahler’s rarely heard Seventh is for many an ugly duckling, but for others a connoisseur’s delight. For 84 minutes his giant forces hammer away, reflecting I believe the foment of the times (1905) and the breakdown of the old world order. Here Mahler puts aside his elegant opera-night chapeau and gets into the sonic nitty-gritty, bristling with abrasive exuberance while falling in love with dissonance and inner-orchestral conflicts. The Viennese composer is troubled, he is pessimistic, he unreels those dour…

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If you always yearned to know composers from A to Z, tune in on Alexander Zemlinsky, who spans the extremes. The long-forgotten Austrian composer Zemlinsky was finally given his due with the S.F. Symphony’s first performance of his tone poem “The Mermaid,” 116 years after its premiere. The Viennese composer had the double misfortune of losing out to Gustav Mahler: musically, standing in his instrumental shadow, and romantically, yielding up the elusive Alma, who married Gustav and left A.Z. in…

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LOS ANGELES—Yet another grand Salonen love-in, with his third orchestra on the West Coast this year. Is there no end? This time, it was Esa-Pekka leading his former crack ensemble, the L.A. Philharmonic, in his long meandering farewell tour before taking the reins at the S.F. Symphony next year. You hope that your maestro-to-be will be an outstanding musician. What you never expect is the bonus of exuberant affection around several concert halls with totally different audiences and musicians. Little…

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