Saturday Matinee

San Francisco Symphony’s associate conductor James Gaffigan in action

I was listening to the radio last week when someone mentioned that the Bay Area always seems to be on the forefront of everything. I think they were talking about technology, with Silicon Valley right next door, but the arts have started to feel spine-tinglingly exciting these days. Not everything is a homerun crowdpleaser, after all what is risk without some failures? Despite this, glimpses of the future of the arts and its evolution is tantalizing. I was reminded of this when I made my way over to the Davies Symphony Hall last week to watch the San Francisco Symphony showcase three of its topnotch but very different conductors in a dazzlingly modern program.

Benjamin Shwartz

Benjamin Shwartz, SF Symphony’s resident conductor, led the riskiest piece of the evening, Mark-Anthony Turnage’s Three Asteroids, in its world premiere. It’s a piece inspired by asteroids and the Torino Scale, which quantifies the danger of celestial bodies that may hit the using probability statistics and kinetic energy release as a result of the impact. Intricately complex with a huge list of instruments required to play the piece (including four flutes including alto flute, soprano saxophone, klaxon, tuned gongs, police whistle), its aims were simultaneously lofty and austere- to portray the complexity of the science behind the Torino Scale and the cosmos, but ultimately resulting in, to put it simply, chaos. A person can look at the cosmos (or this piece) as a tangled gargantuan sound-and-fury and get a hint of the complicated logic behind it yet not see it at all. Despite my confusion, it wasn’t hard to lose myself in its bewildering alien beauty without understanding it completely. Shwartz tackled and led the somewhat hesitant orchestra through this intricately layered piece with confident determination.

Ragnar Bohlin

The San Francisco Symphony Chorus took the stage to sing Francis Poulenc’s Figure humaine (The Face of Man). Led by director Ragnar Bohlin, the chorus deftly emphasized Poulenc’s jazzy syncopated rhythms with lively precision and its dramatic elements with versatility and skill, from its darker undertones to its tenderly tragic soft unison soprano. The last song titled “Liberty” was hypnotically spellbinding in its repetition of both words and melody in which forward momentum was created in this monotony by its tripping five count time meter switched up with fast meter changes to add an element of unexpected surprise.

Concertmaster Alexander Barantschik

Associate conductor James Gaffigan opened the second half of the program with Prokofiev’s Violin Concerto No. 1, featuring concertmaster Alexander Barantschik. A stoically restrained performer, he dug in with fervor during the more aggressive and militaristic sections featuring the lower register, with some trouble singing in the higher notes. His lightning precise technique flashed brightly, showcasing his instrument which the program notes states was a favorite of the legendary violinist, Jascha Heifetz. Always conducting with equal enthusiasm and command, Gaffigan finished the program with Bartok’s The Miraculous Mandarin Suite, the piece where the orchestra seemed most at ease, in an exhilarating race to the finish line.

San Francisco Symphony