two and a half concerts
Jan. 25th, 2026 07:27 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
calimacSan Francisco Symphony, Thursday
What do you do if you're conducting Beethoven's Fifth, the best-known symphony ever written? John Storgårds' answer is, lead it as if it's never been played before. The crispness, the intensity, and the variations in tempo and flow made this an exciting, even riveting, performance of the old masterworks. It helps to remember that, familiar as it now is, it's the most startling and revolutionary symphony ever written, which is what made it so iconic in the first place.
Seong-Jin Cho was probably badly cast as soloist in Shostakovich's Piano Concerto No. 1. He's good with lyrical music, but this is a clangy and rigid concerto. Cho vamped ineffectively all over the keyboard while the string orchestra got to do the lyrical part. In the back, standing up whenever he was playing, was SFS principal trumpet Mark Inouye in the second soloist part. He was billed as a soloist and got to share an encore with Cho, but he came out with the orchestra as well as was seated with them.
And the US premiere of The Rapids of Life by 40-year-old Finnish composer Outi Tarkiainen. This is perhaps the first piece of music ever written depicting the experience of giving birth: cascading down rapids is what the composer describes her rather quick labor as resembling. The comparison was not obvious from the music, which was ten minutes of fast-moving soundscape.
Sarah Cahill, Friday
Brief (one set, 70 minutes) piano recital featuring elegies and homages. Designed by the performer to bring us together in a time of loss and oppression. (The news out of the occupied territory that was formerly the state of Minnesota keeps getting worse.) I didn't attend this concert up in the City in person, but bought a livestream ticket; Old First's technicians have improved greatly since I last tried this during the pandemic. Cahill specializes in newer music, and there were pieces by the likes of Maggi Payne (written mostly for the foot pedals) and Sam Adams; also a Fugue to David Tudor by Lou Harrison that was twelve-tone (why, Lou, why?). But the bulk of the program, with each movement outweighing any other piece on the program, was Ravel's Tombeau de Couperin, which besides evoking Couperin's baroque elegance is in memory of a series of Ravel's friends who were killed in WW1.
California Symphony, Saturday
This concert was about the winds. Began with excerpts from Mozart's Don Giovanni arranged for the standard wind ensemble of the time (2 each of oboe, clarinet, bassoon, and horn), which is what they did in those days instead of playing it on the radio. Concluded with Schubert's Great C Major Symphony. Conductor Donato Cabrera pointed out that, unusually for the time, nearly all the themes are introduced by the winds, so he had the woodwind section seated in front around him (though the horns, which are just as important, stayed in back with the brass). This both magnified the sound of the winds and emphasized the parts where only the strings were playing. Pretty lively but not revelatory performance.
And the Cello Concerto by Friedrich Gulda, best-known as a pianist (he was Martha Argerich's teacher), with Nathan Chan as soloist, written in 1980 and one of the strangest and goofiest pieces of music I've ever heard. The orchestra was winds and a few brass, plus a drum kit, a bass player, and a guitarist who was mostly on acoustic but switched to an electric guitar for one section where those three played jazz/rock to alternate with the more sedate winds while the solo cello tried to keep up. Other sections included a stately minuet where the drummer switched to tambourine, and a raucous marching-band finale. Amused the audience no end.
What do you do if you're conducting Beethoven's Fifth, the best-known symphony ever written? John Storgårds' answer is, lead it as if it's never been played before. The crispness, the intensity, and the variations in tempo and flow made this an exciting, even riveting, performance of the old masterworks. It helps to remember that, familiar as it now is, it's the most startling and revolutionary symphony ever written, which is what made it so iconic in the first place.
Seong-Jin Cho was probably badly cast as soloist in Shostakovich's Piano Concerto No. 1. He's good with lyrical music, but this is a clangy and rigid concerto. Cho vamped ineffectively all over the keyboard while the string orchestra got to do the lyrical part. In the back, standing up whenever he was playing, was SFS principal trumpet Mark Inouye in the second soloist part. He was billed as a soloist and got to share an encore with Cho, but he came out with the orchestra as well as was seated with them.
And the US premiere of The Rapids of Life by 40-year-old Finnish composer Outi Tarkiainen. This is perhaps the first piece of music ever written depicting the experience of giving birth: cascading down rapids is what the composer describes her rather quick labor as resembling. The comparison was not obvious from the music, which was ten minutes of fast-moving soundscape.
Sarah Cahill, Friday
Brief (one set, 70 minutes) piano recital featuring elegies and homages. Designed by the performer to bring us together in a time of loss and oppression. (The news out of the occupied territory that was formerly the state of Minnesota keeps getting worse.) I didn't attend this concert up in the City in person, but bought a livestream ticket; Old First's technicians have improved greatly since I last tried this during the pandemic. Cahill specializes in newer music, and there were pieces by the likes of Maggi Payne (written mostly for the foot pedals) and Sam Adams; also a Fugue to David Tudor by Lou Harrison that was twelve-tone (why, Lou, why?). But the bulk of the program, with each movement outweighing any other piece on the program, was Ravel's Tombeau de Couperin, which besides evoking Couperin's baroque elegance is in memory of a series of Ravel's friends who were killed in WW1.
California Symphony, Saturday
This concert was about the winds. Began with excerpts from Mozart's Don Giovanni arranged for the standard wind ensemble of the time (2 each of oboe, clarinet, bassoon, and horn), which is what they did in those days instead of playing it on the radio. Concluded with Schubert's Great C Major Symphony. Conductor Donato Cabrera pointed out that, unusually for the time, nearly all the themes are introduced by the winds, so he had the woodwind section seated in front around him (though the horns, which are just as important, stayed in back with the brass). This both magnified the sound of the winds and emphasized the parts where only the strings were playing. Pretty lively but not revelatory performance.
And the Cello Concerto by Friedrich Gulda, best-known as a pianist (he was Martha Argerich's teacher), with Nathan Chan as soloist, written in 1980 and one of the strangest and goofiest pieces of music I've ever heard. The orchestra was winds and a few brass, plus a drum kit, a bass player, and a guitarist who was mostly on acoustic but switched to an electric guitar for one section where those three played jazz/rock to alternate with the more sedate winds while the solo cello tried to keep up. Other sections included a stately minuet where the drummer switched to tambourine, and a raucous marching-band finale. Amused the audience no end.
