calimac

Friday was fortunately devoid for me of the nastier sort of April Fools jokes (aside from walking into a public library bathroom to find that a teenaged boy had thought it amusing to douse the lights to discomfit his friend in a stall, forgetting that other people might need to use the bathroom too), and even the huge clot of bike-riders I saw on Grove Street in the City at about 8:30 pm must have been a special April 1st celebration because they obeyed the traffic signals, which last I heard the Critical Massholes did not (and I'll call them that until they do).

I didn't ride my bike, but the day was filled with exercise: rushing for trains, buses, BART, and concert starting times, as well as a planned exercise walk following my practice of visiting unfamiliar parks and trails when I happen to find myself nearby. (Today: the Millbrae foothills. Wildflowers, bumblebees, and a cat.)

And the day was also filled with music, to wit:

1. Finish up and submit this review of the chamber music concert I'd gone to on Wednesday. Few were there; maybe they were scared off by the repertoire. Christopher Rouse's quartet would be enough to scare anybody - I don't recall his orchestral music being nearly this hideous - but if I survived Leon Kirchner, I can survive this, and as for the darkest, starkest works of Shostakovich and Schnittke, I thrive on them.

2. Free noon concert at Stanford by the Arneis Quartet, featuring an uncompromisingly modernist rendition of the Ravel Quartet.

3. San Francisco Symphony, the second week of Blomstedt's annual visit. Tchaikovsky's First Piano Concerto, one of the most gaseous concertos in the repertoire (outdone only by Tchaikovsky's Second Piano Concerto). Gas plentifully supplied by the lid-banging soloist, who is called Yundi, just Yundi.

But if that's how I feel about it, why was I there? To wait through it so that I could hear Sibelius's Second Symphony, that's why. Blomstedt didn't solve the difficult structural problems of this work so much as side-step them; it wasn't a structure as much as a series of episodes (rather as a Tchaikovsky piano concerto is), some of them annoyingly short-winded. The ending, the toughest part, came out OK though.

On the other hand, I have never heard this orchestra - or any orchestra, for that matter - in better sonic form. Every note was crisp, articulate, distinctive, and vividly intense. My ears have never felt so well-fed. It was particularly striking in the brass - I hadn't realized what a brassy symphony this actually is - but it applied to everybody. At the beginning of the slow movement, the cellos and basses trade off sequences of pizzicato notes, and even that low and subdued sound showed strong and distinct flavors. At the ovation, Blomstedt stepped deep into the orchestra to shake hands with Bill Bennett and Tim Day in the winds section. They and their colleagues deserved every accolade they could get.