concert review: Symphony Silicon Valley

And the question at hand was, which SSV was going to show up this week? The sizzlingly good one, or the damp squib? A more urgent question given that conductor Boughton + composer Sibelius had = damp squib before.

Answer: It was the good one. The really good one. Although they fell into the pit of the symphony's structural traps, they just danced their way right out of it again.

(Another lesson in identifying encores: The pianist just said it was by Rachmaninoff, and it sounded vaguely familiar but I didn't know what it was. So when I got home I pawed through the online scores of Rachmaninoff solo piano music until I found something that looked like it, and then listened to that particular piece on YouTube to confirm I was correct. The Mercury News reviewer got the number wrong.)

Culinary prelude: Strangely, nobody has yet told this restaurant's website that they've opened a branch on North Market where the weird cajun fusion place used to be, but vgqn knew better, and thither we went for jerk-spiced chicken, quel tasty.