Music I'm Listening to: Grams Conducts the Santa Rosa Symphony, Stewart Goodyear Piano

Conductor candidate Andrew Grams, before going onstage

I attended the Sunday, December 3 performance of the Santa Rosa Symphony at the Green Music Center. Conductor candidate Andrew Grams led the Symphony in a program of Overture to King Lear by Berlioz, Ravel's Piano Concerto in G Major, Rachmaninoff's Symphonic Dances, and Debussy's Clair de Lune. Stewart Goodyear was the piano soloist. I didn't get to hear that much of the concert as I was backstage the whole time and the soundproofing is surprisingly good, but it's interesting to watch the backstage goings on with musicians arriving and warming up, with the administrative and other staff handling announcements, lighting, and changes in stage configuration, and watching the conductor and soloist going on stage and coming off again and their rituals before stepping into the lights and applause. Grams is the third of the five conductor candidates being considered to become the new music director of the Santa Rosa Symphony when Bruno Ferrandis leaves the post.

Conductor Grams and soloist Stewart Goodyear backstage

Music I'm Listening To: Charles Dutoit Conducting the San Francisco Symphony, Nikolai Lugansky Soloist

Renowned Swiss conductor Charles Dutoit is serious and precise on the podium (I'm sure he accepts no nonsense) but behind the seriousness, he seems to have a healthy sense of humor. He usually has an impish half-smile on his face and an air of amiable unflappability before and after he works. He almost dances when he conducts, seeming not so much to coax as to command music from the performers, and, apparently, they can't help playing at their best when he's in charge. At Friday night's concert (March 11, 2016), he drew forth some of the best music I've heard in a long time anywhere. Dutoit is something of a magician. On the program were Ravel's Mother Goose, Rachmaninoff's Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini and, after intermission, Fauré's Pelléas et Mélisande Suite, and Stravinsky's Firebird Suite—a longer program than usual.

Mother Goose is rather amorphous, but it has a lot of color and interesting detail. It was well played and a good warm-up for the Rachmaninoff.

The  Rhapsody must be challenging. It frequently alternates long passages of notes that seem impossibly fast with strings of widely spaced single notes that mostly accent the orchestral part yet have to remain melodically coherent. Timing is critical to keep things together. Lugansky was nothing short of phenomenal, the orchestra behind him, equally superb. I can't imagine a better performance of this piece and have never heard a better one. Despite an enthusiastic standing ovation of several minutes, Lugansky declined to play an encore, suggesting with a gesture that his fingers weren't up to it. It was easy to forgive him. He had already done more than his duty.

Dutoit and the Symphony gave us more magic in the second half of the concert. I thought the Fauré particularly well done—lush and intense, but not overdone. Dutoit seems especially good at pushing boundaries of tempo and dynamics just enough to make familiar music exciting and fresh without going too far.

Photograph of Nikolai Lugansky by Marco Borggreve, courtesy of the San Francisco Symphony website. Photograph of Charles Dutoit, courtesy of the San Francisco Symphony Website.

Music I'm Listening To: Jean Ferrandis Joins the Santa Rosa Symphony (May 13, 2012)

I attended the Sunday, May 13 performance of a series of three concerts by the Santa Rosa Symphony conducted by Bruno Ferrandis, featuring the conductor's brother, Jean Ferrandis, on Flute. The program opened with Debussy's Jeux (poeme danse-ballet) for Orchestra. Ferrandis played the Mozart Flute Concerto No. 2 before intermission and Ibert's Concerto for Flute and Orchestra afterwards. The program ended with Ravel's La Valse (poeme choréographique) for Orchestra.

I had not heard Debussy's Jeux [meaning "games" or "play"] before. I can't say I much cared for it--or this performance of it, anyway. Debussy wrote the piece for a ballet conceived and choreographed by Nijinsky (now lost, apparently). The dance involved play--both literal (tennis) and figurative (flirting, erotic pursuit)--among three dancers, two women and a man, although Nijinsky's original idea was to use three men. According to the program notes, Debussy (once he agreed to take the commission) became interested in "the rapid moments of tennis and in erotic games of flirtation, pursuit, resistance, and yielding" and he is said to have tried to capture some of the feelings of change and discontinuity that characterize both types of play. Not having the dancing to turn to, however, the music seemed to me merely fretful and disjointed.

The Mozart concerto was something of a disappointment as well. It was competently played, I suppose, but lacked any real sparkle. Ferrandis (the soloist) seemed not fully engaged. The flute sounded thin and distant. The whole came across as rather bland, despite Ferrandis's exaggeration of the dynamics (Ferrandis, the conductor, that is). The Ibert, however,was nicely done--played with verve and enthusiasm. I got the feeling that Jean Ferrandis was much more in his element playing a modern French piece than playing the Mozart. Following the Ibert concerto, which the audience received with rather more enthusiasm than it did the first half of the program, Jean played an encore, which sounded like something from Debusy's Prelude to The Afternoon of  a Faun.

The Ravel was enjoyable but not wholly satisfying either. Ferrandis, the conductor, failed (in my opinion) to fully exploit the internal contrasts of the piece and he took the ending at what seemed an unnecessarily rapid and accelerating tempo.

Yesterday will have been my last concert in the Luther Burbank Center (or the Wells Fargo Center for the Arts as they insist on calling it). The Santa Rosa Symphony will start next season as the resident orchestra at the new Green Music Center. I very much look forward to hearing the new hall.

Photo of Jean Ferrandis (uncredited), from the Santa Rosa Symphony website.