Saturday Matinee

An interesting quote from San Francisco Symphony conductor, Michael Tilson Thomas, about the symphony listening experience from the audience point of view (via the Wall Street Journal).

“In some places, there is a certain ritualistic aspect to it. The audience expects to have a certain kind of experience, which perhaps reaffirms certain nice and comfortable things from their life. The idea that you can shake it up a bit at the concert or experience something new is very particular to this area and this audience.”

I know that Thomas was trying to say that Bay area audiences are different, and perhaps the Bay area is better than most places, but I still see a lot of both groups of people at the symphony.

San Francisco Symphony’s summer season ends this weekend with a bang with a really fun program, starting with John Adams’ Short Ride in a Fast Machine, Chris Noth (“Mr. Big”) narrating Copland’s Lincoln Portrait, the original jazz band version of Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue (super cool), and a collaboration with the UC Berkeley Marching Band for the hit Broadway tune “Seventy-Six Trombones”. Come early for music and dancing with the Martini Brothers, plus desserts and specialty drinks in the lobby. For more information, click here.

It was a merging of two worlds at the San Francisco Symphony. In a daring program led by conductor Edwin Outwater, the headliner for the show was a suite from Duncan Sheik’s new musical Whisper House, arranged for orchestra by Simon Hale. Following the immense Tony award-winning success of Spring Awakening, this is Sheik’s second Broadway musical that recently played at the Old Globe in San Diego with lots of early buzz.

It’s easy to see how this suite could easily see the music backing a “a hybrid alt-rock concert-psychological ghost story” of ghosts telling a little boy about life and love through evocative stories both startling and touching. Atonal influences are sprinkled throughout, lending an eery tension and wavering longing. Duncan Sheik himself sang, as well as Holly Brook in ethereal tones.

As an element of a big picture, this score might work successfully in creating a compelling theatrical atmosphere. However in this setting, Sheik’s Whisper House was a bit of a fish out of water. Unfairly taken out of context, it was disorienting without a plotline as to what was going on and who the characters were as the audience was plunged into the songs with barely any warning.

It’s difficult to be scared of ghosts in bright house lights, which were on to allow for the audience to read the lyrics in the program, as the first song warns, “We’re here to tell you/ghosts are here for good/and if it doesn’t terrify you/it should!”. Also, without a sweeping storyline or characters you care about, lyrics such as “Steel your heart/Life is hard/Never easy/Believe me” fell a bit flat. Without the dramatic pull of a full production, it’s a bit inconclusive if the music is enough to stand on its own.

However, the orchestra provided a shroud of atmospheric sound that is never heard in a Broadway stage these days. The richness of Hale’s orchestration was easy to get lost in, and Sheik’s evocative melodies and themes are heart-tugging in a poignant deja vu sort of way. Sheik’s music encompasses a broad spectrum of influences that makes his vision for Broadway so visionary. Even though this might not have been the best setting for his music, it still made me curious about the musical itself.

Vivier’s Zipangu was the odd piece in the program, an experimental piece written in 1980 for a small string ensemble. Amidst the grating dissonance and unearthly harmonics, there is a hazy outline of variations on a theme and the semblance of a meandering development as Vivier explores the range of sounds that the strings have to offer, from string plucking to slides. An uneasy tension prevails, and is never quite resolved. It’s a piece that I’d picture in a smaller venue, played loudly and unapologetically, maybe at a smoky underground speakeasy or accompanying a Merce Cunningham dance performance.

Edwin Outwater led the San Francisco Symphony with admirable restraint. Gounod’s Ballet Music from Faust was refreshingly lacking in pretension, shaped with gentle dynamics in an interpretation that allowed the music to shine. Outwater coaxed a remarkable clarity and articulation from the orchestra. Even in the crowded stage that played Poulenc’s densely layered Suite from Les Biches, the orchestra played as one in a witty and exhilarating interpretation.

Even if the evening wasn’t to your taste, the spirit of adventure in the San Francisco Symphony is admirable and challenging. This new direction of welcoming artists outside the classical music world was also successful at recruiting a large percentage of younger people in the audience, the largest percentage of under 30’s that I’d seen in a long time.

San Francisco Symphony website

Don’t you hate it when real life gets in the way of what you really want to do? It’s been particularly difficult to tear myself away from work and a semblance of a personal life these days. Throw in a family visit last weekend and a bridal shower this coming weekend, and things get nearly impossible. Anyways, some really good things are going on this week. If you attend any of these, please report back to tell me what I missed!!

1. San Francisco Symphony: MTT plays Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 23: Do you think he calls himself MTT? I really wanted to go see this. A marvelous program at the symphony, continues through Saturday. The program includes a Stravinsky Octet for Wind Instruments, Mozart Piano Concerto No. 23 with Michael Tilson Thomas as the piano soloist, and Stravinsky’s Pulcinella with a fantastic line up of singers including Eric Owens, an amazing artist that stood out even in the standout cast in SF Opera’s Porgy and Bess last summer. This program might be a fun one to watch from the cheap center terrace seats – piano performances are good for these because you get a great view of the keyboard and MTT’s expressive actions. It might not be fun for the singers though, as they face forward. Read sfmike’s take on it, here.
2. San Francisco Ballet’s Swan Lake closes at the end of this week. My review from last year is here. I will be watching Sarah Van Patten on Saturday afternoon – she hit it out of the park last year in Pointe Magazine’s top 12 favorite performances of the year.
3. Christopher Wheeldon’s company Morphoses completes their West Coast tour this week with their last show in Santa Barbara on January 29. I’ll be reviewing them soon (hopefully tonight). The company and their repertoire is amazing and challenging – if you want to see the future of ballet, go see it. And for goodness sakes, don’t leave before the last piece, Wheeldon’s Rhapsody Fantasie, as a friend of mine did – it was my favorite piece of the program. I couldn’t help myself, but I saw him strolling in the lobby where nobody recognized him. In a supremely fangirl-y moment, I introduced myself and got to ask him a few questions (one was, “What does Continuum mean?”). I hope I wasn’t rude because I didn’t mean it that way at all, but he was equally nice and charming and so so intelligent, and I was thrilled to meet a choreographer I so admire. SFB principal Pierre-Francois Vilanoba was also spotted in the house.
4. Fiddler on the Roof with Harvey Fierstein opened this week.

I’m sure I’m missing a million events, but as I’m up to my neck in graduate work, these are the things that have been on my radar recently. What else am I missing out on?

Pianist Lang Lang

Last night at the opening night gala for the San Francisco Symphony, the Davies Symphony Hall sparkled with the usual glamor and glitz of concertgoers dressed in their finest to celebrate the opening of the season. Despite the glittering decadence and the appropriate celebratory atmosphere, I sensed an undercurrent of respect acknowledging the current economic situation that has been especially hardhitting for the arts. This sensitivity seemed to be reflected in the programming as well, with a rather cautious program geared towards appealing to the familiar.

Led with stylish charm by Michael Tilson Thomas, the program opened with three waltzes – Liszt’s Mephisto Waltz No. 1, Ravel’s La Valse, and Richard Rodgers’ Carousel Waltz. These waltzes were not your mother’s normal antediluvian tame tunes. Playful rhythms and a pulsing momentum shaped the Mephisto Waltz, setting the stage with brisk anticipation. Ravel’s haunting La Valse built to a rollicking climax, fraught with suspense and regret the entire way. Rodgers’ Carousel Waltz opened with gentle, atonal chords that quickly morphed into a Broadway-esque chick flick of a high school romance blossoming on a hot summer night at the fairgrounds. The effect was lushly romantic.

Even though the three waltzes were different, nostalgia was the common thread. Waltzes conjure up images of tradition and days gone by, and there’s a comfort in experiencing up the good old days. Who doesn’t love a waltz? I grew up listening to Strauss waltzes and the Waltz of the Flowers in the Nutcracker, and my date and I spent intermission humming familiar waltzes that we knew.

Prokofiev’s Piano Concerto No. 3 yanked the audience to the 20th century featuring the celebrity pianist Lang Lang. Famous for performing at the opening ceremonies of the Beijing Olympics as well as making People Magazine’s 2008 Sexiest Men Alive list, he is well-known for his infamous ostentatious style. Technically beyond belief, Lang Lang perfectly captured the brashness of the Prokofiev concerto. There were moments of heartstopping beauty in the quieter sections, played with sensitivity and tenderness. But overall, I thought his playing lacked clarity and direction. His playing was very in-the-moment, with no sense of the overall structure of the piece. Each moment alone was beautiful, but I felt a bit like being jerked from one measure to the next. The second movement also began to sound tediously unvaried in volume and style, where I craved more contrast and character. But there’s no denying that Lang Lang has passion to spare spilling through every pore, and he’s really fun to watch. (I was admittedly disappointed he wasn’t wearing his self-designed gold-emblazoned Adidas kicks however.)

Put together a series of familiar (yet slightly edgy – it’s still San Francisco, after all) waltzes and a celebrity pianist that everyone knows, and you’re guaranteed an evening of content customers. It’s nothing revolutionary, yet a solid showcase for the San Francisco Symphony nonetheless. In this economic climate, people seem to prefer comfort over risky innovation. It’s also guaranteed to satisfy the audiences who rarely attend classical music performances, yet still continue to support the arts. And that alone is cause to celebrate.

Other links:

• sfmike’s take
• Kosman’s review
• Photos from the SF Chronicle’s take on the fashion. A brief note: dress was generally black tie, although despite what this article suggests, there was a broad range of dress. (Click on sfmike’s take to see more photos of attendees.) I witnessed everything from “church” casual formal (or even more casual) to formal ballgowns to the ever-popular Scottish kilt. My date didn’t even wear a suit, and I wore a $25 dress from a bargain store. I only say this because I feel like articles like this promote the inaccessibility of classical music to general audiences, yet it’s not a completely fair accusation especially during the year when there are great seats for $15. Maybe the Chronicle should run a fashion photo essay on what people normally wear during the SF Symphony season on a non-gala night. It wouldn’t make for awe-inspiring photos, but it would be more realistic.
• Serious Music, Played Seriously

Last week, the San Francisco Symphony took on an international flair with their all-Russian Summer & the City program, called “my classic Russian composers”. Conductor James Gaffigan led the symphony in an outpour of emotion from the hearts of Russian composers. The stage was filled with more of the familiar faces of the SF Symphony for the larger orchestra that this romantic program required. But as Mike astutely observed in a comment in my earlier entry, the one-rehearsal-per-performance format didn’t serve this program in its best light. Despite its visible cracks, it was a fun concert for both my symphony newbie friend and I.

The evening opened with Mussorgsky’s fiery A Night on Bald Mountain. This piece narrates a story of evil spirits and their festivities and ends with church bells that break up the madness and ends with hope and peace. Made famous by Disney’s Fantasia, the SF Symphony’s version was a welcome version vastly different from the ostentatious Disney version. This performance strayed more to the careful and muted spectrum especially in the beginning until the horns came blaring in an impressive climax of the evil spirited orgy. The effect was deliciously messy, yet never stridently so.

Rachmaninoff’s Second Piano Concerto followed, with soloist Orion Weiss. Weiss made a huge impression when I saw him last year with the Marin Symphony in the Beethoven concerto with a highly individual and daring performance. In this performance, Weiss started out well with a big, round sound. However, he lost his footing in a technical run early in the first movement that also briefly lost the orchestra, and the piece never recovered. Weiss seemed to lose his confidence, and the volume range remained limited for the rest of the performance, and at times it was difficult to hear. The hesitant pace lagged, momentum fizzled. Overall, I found it an uneven performance with unclear intent. I did find myself wishing though that the piano sounded more off-the-cuff intense and spontaneous rather than awash in quiet introspection that swallowed itself whole. Still, a thoughtful and sensitive performer, Weiss infused a refreshing lean and elegant air to the extravagantly romantic concerto, and there were flashes of pure beauty. Clearly this was an incident that’s chalked up to limited rehearsal time and youth, and not an accurate reflection of his obvious musical talent.

The night ended with Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scherazade loosely based on the story of the Arabian Nights, which was my favorite piece of the night. The orchestra seemed to let go and let fly with lush melodies and warmth. For a few blissful moments, the music depicted hot desert perfumed air under an expansive starry sky with a hint of magic.

Other reviews:

• SF Examiner

San Francisco Symphony

© www.saturdaymatineeblog.com

When I see something on stage that I’m familiar with, I always have an idea of how it should look or sound in my head. Do they do it like the original Broadway cast, or do they dance it like how Balanchine “intended” (another argument all in itself), or does it sound appropriately Liszt-y enough? It’s always satisfying to see or hear something like how I want it to sound like.

But it’s still my favorite when I see a performance that is different from what I expect, yet it convinces me that this is how it should sound like. It’s that lightbulb moment of something learned anew from a persuasive performance, a challenge for the audience viewer. It’s a peek into a performer’s heart, an individual stamp, an unexpected twist, and a fleeting work of art.

At the San Francisco Symphony, the all-Mozart program was one such performance, with new revelations uncovered around every corner in pieces I thought I already knew. Last night’s performance of the all-Russian program was a little unclear in its intent and statement despite the sold out house, yet not without its romantic passionate outpourings. More to come on this later.

The San Francisco Symphony’s Summer & the City season has been a really fun one. I find it easier to bring people that have never attended the symphony before, and although many usual symphony members are missing, I found it really fun to sit back and revel in the music. Many are familiar pieces from my childhood that I played in various youth orchestras, and my musical memories are strongly tied to growing up with them.

San Francisco Symphony’s Summer & the City ends tonight with a fun program of Americana classics, including James Earl Jones narrating Copland’s Lincoln Portrait.

After tonight’s performance of San Francisco Symphony playing Nobuo Uematsu’s “Distant Worlds: music from Final Fantasy” – sure to attract technophiles everywhere in the Bay Area – a master class of the iPhone musical instrument, the ocarina, will be held. Led by creating company Smule’s Turner Kirk, the class will culminate in a group ocarina symphony performance, made up of symphony ticket holders (and iPhone and iTouch owners, presumably) of music from Final Fantasy. This would be really fun to see, and I wish I could be there. If anyone went, please report in the comments!

The ocarina reminds me of a flute, but perfectly in tune. You blow into it, and change the keys with different fingering. I wonder if you can create vibrato, or if it does it for you? Pretty cool!

Last Friday night, I finally got a chance to attend my first San Francisco Symphony’s Summer & the Symphony series this year for an all-Mozart program conducted by James Gaffigan. The sunflowers were in full bloom in the lobby, and the gentle stylings of a lobby piano player added to the festive atmosphere. When I picked up my tickets at the box office, a really nice ticket office guy gave me a sponataneous serenade of Dolly Parton’s “Jolene”. Who knew that a serenade was included in the price of a ticket?

Look, Mozart came! We couldn't decide if he was hired by the symphony or if he dressed up by his own free will.

It was an artful experience to watch conductor James Gaffigan lead an all-Mozart program. Gentility and delight abounds in Mozart’s music, where even in its maelstrom, stormy moments, you always know that the sun will shine again very soon. Gaffigan was the night’s master sculptor, lovingly shaping every lilting phrase with care and consideration. Unexpected charm lurked around every corner, giving Mozart’s overplayed music new life and a current freshness.

The opening overture to The Magic Flute had a cultivated yet buttery suaveness, interspersed with reverent, hymnic overtones. Mozart’s Elvira Madigan Concerto No. 21 followed, with pianist Jeremy Denk as Gaffigan’s perfect partner-in-crime. Every mindful detail in this concerto took off in meticulous flights of fancy in Denk’s thoughtful hands. I admit this has never been my favorite piano concerto, especially the second movement which I usually find painfully static. This performance miraculously made it my favorite for the night – Gaffigan coaxed a gently propelling bass line which gave movement to the impossibly slow melody. Denk made the piano sing like a wind instrument, with never ending phrases and notes that seemed to hang in mid air, and the melody weaved a slow yet mesmerizing spell.

Being the summer however, lots of familiar faces in the symphony were missing especially amongst the principals. The tightness of the group suffered a little bit, especially in the beginning moments of the final selection for the night, Mozart’s Symphony No. 40 in g minor. However the evening ended on a high note, with a spontaneous encore with Mozart’s Eine Kleine Nachtmusik, as Gaffigan introduced, to end the evening not in a minor key but with “musical champagne”. This surprise encore seemed to disarm the audience of their “good concert behavior”, as people behind me hummed to the familiar melody and the audience clapped along. Rather than being annoyed as I usually might, I found myself wanting to sing along as well. To everyone’s delight, Gaffigan walked off the podium in the middle of the piece and let the orchestra play by themselves, as he sat behind the orchestra on the floor to enjoy the music. This move even had the fidgeting children in the center terrace to sit up and pay attention, and Gaffigan even gave them an affable wave. It was a fun moment that had everyone smiling as they left the auditorium, and a perfect end to a warm San Francisco summer evening.

San Francisco Symphony

There’s a new principal dancer in town at the San Francisco Ballet!

Recently I ran into two eye-catching ads at a local Bart station, one for the Smuin Ballet and another for Company C Contemporary Ballet. Company C Contemporary Ballet’s season seems to be over, but the Smuin Ballet’s spring season recently started up so be sure to check them out and report back! (Yes, that’s an order.)

Other upcoming events – San Francisco Symphony’s last Davies After Hours for the year is on May 22, with DJ/composer Mason Bates and SFS resident conductor Benjamin Schwartz team up to present Mercury Lounge: Mercury Soul comes to Davies. Click here to find out more about it. I can’t make it this time, but I’ll be catching the concert on Thursday. Mason Bates first caught my attention with his work played by the Youtube Symphony, where they previewed an excerpt of The B-Sides. I always cringe a bit when I hear about electronica merging with classical music (it’s done so poorly way too often), but his piece really surprised me, and I’m looking forward to hearing more. Bates’ The B-Sides will premiere at the SF Symphony preceding Davies After Hours, conducted by Michael Tilson Thomas. 

Also remember to check out their amazing summer schedule, titled Summer & the Symphony. It’s always a little more casual, breezier, and a great opportunity to try something new. My picks are James Gaffigan’s “my classic Mozart” program and “my classic Russian composers” with the amazing Orion Weiss, who was one of the best things I heard last year. And he’s playing the Rach 2, which I prefer over the serious suicide-by-drowning Rach 3. Rach 2 is the still serious yet discretely sensitive and passionate younger brother (sister? Not sure why I picked the male gender over female, but Rachmaninoff is so masculine) of Rach 3. Anyways. Look out for Jeremy Denk and Chris Botti as well.

Check out the video below for a preview of Mason Bates’ The B-Sides, performing with the Youtube Symphony, with the earnestly charming composer himself in the midst of the action.

Picking a program to attend can be a tricky thing. It’s usually a balance of who’s performing as well as what’s being performed (what other factors are there in a concert?). The San Francisco Symphony’s program on Friday night wasn’t particularly screaming my name, yet it proved to be a night of new revelations.

The evening was under the tight direction of Yan Pascal Tortelier, and his collaboration with the symphony proved to be a luminous one. In the opening selection of George Bizet’s Music from L’Arlesienne, the symphony almost sounded like a completely different orchestra. Tortelier took a rather cliched piece and brought out a range of ravishing colors. From its confident start to a transparent sound brimming with crisp, articulated details, the orchestra came alive under his direction. The result was captivating, with Tortelier visibly encouraging the orchestra and seemed to have music spilling out of his very being that he had memorized, directing without a score. 

Organ soloist Paul Jacobs

The Poulenc Organ Concerto in g minor followed, a piece unabashed in its innovation and dense ideas. The Poulenc showcases different facets of the instrument, including sounds that I’ve never thought the organ could do in my limited experience with this instrument. Poulenc seemed to play into the organ’s stereotypical sound of blaring dissonance sounding like the awesome angry voice of God, as well as openly flaunting its reputation by sounding like the flute or a stringed instrument in witty conversation with the orchestra. Soloist Paul Jacobs played with admirable authority, expertly commanding the complicated instrument. It was intriguing watching him at work, pulling out stops and watching his feet at work. I felt like I was discovering a completely new instrument, and a unique and even a little offbeat one at that. 

The second half of the concert featured works by British composer, Ralph Vaughan Williams, a composer not often featured other than his ubiquitous rendition of “Greensleeves”. The Lark Ascending is a beautiful yet simple symphonic poem, reminiscent of a leaf blowing with the wind over stark moors in its plaintive melodies. Violin soloist Nadya Tichman’s gently musical style was a lovely and perfect fit for this piece. Vaughan Williams’ Symphony No. 4 in f minor was an elegant mess of a piece. Even in its most chaotic moments that maneuvered deftly over different keys and offbeats, there was a sense of dignity. Maybe this is a stereotypical British quality, but it was a complicated, intriguing mess that begs for a second experience.

This concert reminded me that the San Francisco Symphony is one of the city’s most precious treasures. It brings in interesting soloists and interesting works and creates masterpieces out of them, even in the most overplayed pieces. And, most of all, I forgot at how fun a concert can be. This was definitely one of the most fun I’d had at the symphony in a while.

San Francisco Symphony’s website

Other links:

• sfmike’s amusing take
• SF Chronicle review
• Paul Jacobs trumpets passion for organ music