concert review: San Francisco Symphony
Jun. 17th, 2022 05:59 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
calimacIt was not possible to walk around in the City last night without hearing - on the streets and even over the transit system loudspeakers - frequent bellows of "WORRR-YERRRS!" I believe this is a reference to some basketball team, which must have just won a game in whatever tournament they're playing in. See, I'm not completely ignorant of matters of popular culture.
I needed that comfort, because I was carrying with me to read the latest issue of The New Yorker, which was filled with an article about some apparently famous TV show called "Evil" that I'd never heard of, and an article about a famous author named James Patterson whom I'd never heard of. So when reading an article about Yoko Ono's pre-Beatles career in performance art, which is full of references to supposedly obscure people like LaMonte Young whom I'm quite familiar with, I was disinclined to share the writer's skepticism over Ono's claim that she had never heard of John Lennon when they first met in 1966.
All this walking and reading were pursuant to passing the time and covering the space to get to my last SFS concert of the season, and after numerous guest-conductor stints the first one in my series with Music Director Esa-Pekka Salonen since, oh, February.
EPS led a program of consistently fast, cheerful, and bustling performances. Bartok's heavily modernist First Piano Concerto, with buzzing soloist Pierre-Laurent Aimard, was fast, cheerful, and bustling. What I hadn't noticed about this work was how little the tiny string section plays, and that mostly in supporting harmonies: the orchestral part is all winds and percussion. Jessie Montgomery's Strum, the revenge of the string section, crisp and sonorous, was also fast, cheerful, and bustling. So was Respighi's Pines of Rome. Even the dark and gloomy catacombs movement was a cheerful and bustling kind of dark and gloomy.
During the stomping marching Roman army finale, EPS frequently turned around to conduct a supplementary brass section of half a dozen players stationed in the first balcony behind him. My position was so that they were just as far to my left as the orchestra was to my right, for a nice antiphonal effect, though the sheer size of the orchestra was capable of drowning out the supplement.
What this piece connected with was the fourth work on the program, in which Luciano Berio indulged his penchant for scribbling graffiti over older music by taking Boccherini's Ritirata notturna di Madrid, a little military march, and arranging it for large orchestra in a gigantic crescendo and decrescendo. At last it fades away, the conductor lowers his arms and looks quizzical, and you applaud.
I needed that comfort, because I was carrying with me to read the latest issue of The New Yorker, which was filled with an article about some apparently famous TV show called "Evil" that I'd never heard of, and an article about a famous author named James Patterson whom I'd never heard of. So when reading an article about Yoko Ono's pre-Beatles career in performance art, which is full of references to supposedly obscure people like LaMonte Young whom I'm quite familiar with, I was disinclined to share the writer's skepticism over Ono's claim that she had never heard of John Lennon when they first met in 1966.
All this walking and reading were pursuant to passing the time and covering the space to get to my last SFS concert of the season, and after numerous guest-conductor stints the first one in my series with Music Director Esa-Pekka Salonen since, oh, February.
EPS led a program of consistently fast, cheerful, and bustling performances. Bartok's heavily modernist First Piano Concerto, with buzzing soloist Pierre-Laurent Aimard, was fast, cheerful, and bustling. What I hadn't noticed about this work was how little the tiny string section plays, and that mostly in supporting harmonies: the orchestral part is all winds and percussion. Jessie Montgomery's Strum, the revenge of the string section, crisp and sonorous, was also fast, cheerful, and bustling. So was Respighi's Pines of Rome. Even the dark and gloomy catacombs movement was a cheerful and bustling kind of dark and gloomy.
During the stomping marching Roman army finale, EPS frequently turned around to conduct a supplementary brass section of half a dozen players stationed in the first balcony behind him. My position was so that they were just as far to my left as the orchestra was to my right, for a nice antiphonal effect, though the sheer size of the orchestra was capable of drowning out the supplement.
What this piece connected with was the fourth work on the program, in which Luciano Berio indulged his penchant for scribbling graffiti over older music by taking Boccherini's Ritirata notturna di Madrid, a little military march, and arranging it for large orchestra in a gigantic crescendo and decrescendo. At last it fades away, the conductor lowers his arms and looks quizzical, and you applaud.
no subject
Date: 2022-06-17 03:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-06-17 07:11 pm (UTC)I watched the first season of Evil when it was on network TV. They moved it to a pay-station after that so I have not seen past the first season.
I saw that article on Patterson in the New Yorker and had to laugh. Doesn't it say he's the current best-selling author in the US? A few days earlier, I had seen on Twitter that this guy was moaning and groaning about how white male authors can't get published nowadays.
no subject
Date: 2022-06-17 10:37 pm (UTC)In his favor, I'll note that he famously supports independent bookstores in various ways, with prommotion and grants. Including Room of One's Own, here in Madison.