Music I'm Listening to: Daniil Trifonov with the San Francisco Symphony

Last night (February 21, 2025) I had the pleasure of attending the San Francisco Symphony concert at Davies Symphony Hall. On the program were a new piece, Strange Beasts (a San Francisco Symphony Commission and World Premiere) by the appropriately named composer Xavier Musik, Prokofiev's Piano Concerto No. 2 (with soloist Daniil Trifonov), and, after intermission, Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring. 

Strange Beasts was interesting for its wide range of aural textures and the sense of unease it created (in several places I was reminded of a Bernard Herrmann score), this heightened by angular photographs of Los Angeles projected above the orchestra, images taken by the composer. Muzik spoke before the performance, explaining that he suffers from anxiety, that, if left unchecked, tends toward catastrophic imaginings and that composing and photography help him to stay sane. He said he imagines the looming buildings in the slide show (many projected upside down) as being like monsters or the strange beasts of the title of his composition. While I thought the photographs mostly ordinary snapshots of no special interest in themselves, the way they were projected, rapidly changing, worked fairly well with the repeated crescendos of unsettling sound welling up in the music. I thought Strange Beasts was longer than it needed to be, but I'll be interested to watch this young man's career. I think in places it was very successful even if it seemed a bit rambling and without structure (at least without structure discernible to me). 

Prokofiev's Piano Concerto No. 2 followed with Trifonov at the keyboard. His manner on stage was serious but, at the same time, he gave the impression of being on the verge of spinning slowly out of control. He seemed nervous and awkward. At the piano, however, Trifonov was electric. I was very impressed by the clarity of his phrasing despite the very fast tempos in the concerto. He got an extended standing ovation and came back to play two encores, the first I think was from one of Prokofiev's piano sonatas, but it was not something familiar. The second I recognized immediately, a piece from Prokofiev's Cinderella, that seemed perfect to me. 

After intermission, Salonen conducted the orchestra members in a tight performance of The Rite of Spring. Overall, it was an excellent concert, but that second encore may have been the highlight of the evening. 

Art I'm Looking at: Dress Rehearsal: The Art of Theatrical Design at the Legion of Honor

The courtyard at The Legion of Honor

Yesterday, I attended a San Francisco symphony concert but arrived in the city much earlier than required, so I set off to The Legion of Honor to look at a little art and Amoeba Music to check to the used records before heading to Davies Symphony Hall for the concert. I arrived at the end of the day. There was no admission charge (although I am a member); I had forgotten that the last 45 minutes (4:30 to 5:15) is always free. 

There wasn't much going on at The Legion, but I had a stroll through the permanent collection and there was an attractive little show in the gallery on the ground floor that is always devoted to work from the collection of the Achenbach Foundation for Graphic Arts, this one called "Dress Rehearsal: The Art of Theatrical Design" featuring costume and set designs. There's always something interesting in that space. Here are some favorites. The show runs through May 11, 2025. 

On my way out, the sun was low and golden on the horizon, the upper sections of the white stone of the building were dyed a warmer hue by the light, and the lawn was a vibrant, rain-nourished green. In the distance, a container ship was passing under the Golden Gate Bridge, and on the lawn a photographer was posing a beautiful young Indian woman with raven-colored hair in a strapless gown the color of rubies for a photograph. One level down, a young man and his two children played in the sun on a chartreuse putting green striped with shadows from the surrounding trees, and, as I turned to leave, I saw the photographer helping his model into a sleek car as red as her gown. 

[Top to bottom: Léon Bakst, costume design for Potiphar's Wife in La légend de Joseph, 1914; Abraham Walkowitz, Study of Isadora Duncan, 1915. This one reminded me very much of Rodin's watercolors; Eugene Berman, Costume design for a young girl in Le bourgeois gentilhomme, New York, 1944.]

Serendipitous Art: Gallery shadows

Shadows on a gallery wall looked like art to me. Serendipitous art.

Art I'm Making: Untitled Collage No. 299 (Santa Rosa)

Here's a collage from last summer. This is Untitled Collage No. 299 (Santa Rosa), completed July 1, 2024. Image size 34.9cm x 24.8cm (13.7 x 9.8 inches). Signed on the mat. Signed and dated on the reverse.

Click on the image for a larger view. For more of my abstract monotype collage work, visit my website at http://ctalcroft.wix.com/collage-site/ or you can purchase my recently published book commemorating ten years of working in the collage medium – Colin Talcroft: Abstract Monotype Collage: 2103–2023 (ISBN 979-8-218-37717-5). Available on the website.

In person, my work can be seen at Calabi Gallery in Santa Rosa, Hammerfriar Gallery in Healdsburg, and at the Ren Brown Collection in Bodega Bay or by appointment.