Music I'm listening to: James Gaffigan and Ray Chen with the San Francisco Symphony

I attended the January 10 San Francisco Symphony concert, which featured soloist Ray Chen doing the Samuel Barber Violin Concerto and Prokofiev's Symphony No. 5. The concert opened with a piece by Missy Mazzoli called Sinfonia (for Orbiting Spheres). James Gaffigan, formerly an assistant conductor in San Francisco but now active mostly in Europe, was the guest conductor. In retrospect, I think I was coming down with Covid or the flu as I began to feel quite sick the following morning. That had nothing to do with the concert, but last week I didn't have the energy to record any immediate impressions of the concert, which, nevertheless, was quite enjoyable. 

Chen gave a fine performance of the Barber, I thought, despite a little dramatic flourishing of his bow at the end of particularly challenging passages, which seemed unnecessary. I liked Gaffigan's reading of the Prokofiev. That second movement gets me every time.... A real pleasure to hear it live. Chen gave an encore in the form of a portion of one of the Bach solo partitas. 

Dinner afterward was at Brazen Head, a place that I had heard good things about, but the food was disappointing. It's an interesting hole in the wall at the corner of Buchanan and Greenwich streets that is probably better for cocktails and the atmosphere than it is for its rather pedestrian steak-and-potato menu. It was fun to try something different, but I don't imagine I'll be going back soon. I really miss Monsieur Benjamin for after-concert meals.   

Music I'm Listening to: The San Francisco Symphony, with Pekka Kuusisto

I attended a live San Francisco Symphony concert Friday night (October 22)—the first live performance I've been to since February of 2020. Vaccination card and ID checked at the entrance. I was happy to comply. It was good to know that everyone in the building was vaccinated. Generally, the orchestra members did not wear masks (there were one or two exceptions), neither did conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen or the soloist in the US premiere of Bryce Dressner's Violin Concerto, Pekka Kuusisto, a Finn like Salonen. 

The concert opened with Beethoven's Second Leonore overture, which was both familiar and unfamiliar. It's not the one (of the four, I think) that we most commonly hear.

According to the program notes, the Dressner Violin Concerto got its world premiere on October 1 this year, in Frankfurt. The performances in San Francisco this weekend have been the first in the United States. It's hard to put into words the feelings that music evokes—which is why writers of notes to recordings and concerts frequently resort to descriptions relying heavily on music theory that I suspect goes over the heads of most readers, including me. Suffice it to say that it was a gripping performance. The Dressner concerto grabs you by the throat and rarely loosens its grip until the very end. The soloist gets a real workout. The score involves a lot of extended technique such as bowing very close to the bridge or rubbing the bow along the strings the long way to produces novel sounds (which is not to say the piece is gimmicky). Despite a few lyrical passages and an extended cadenza toward the end (that appeared to be improvised; Kuusisto played from the score on a tablet with a foot switch to turn the pages and during the cadenza he was no longer looking at the screen), the general impression was one of driving forward movement based on extended near-repetitions that evolve through continuous small variations. Percussion plays a large role. At the pre-concert talk, the composer said "You could almost call it a concerto for violin and percussion." He also said that he thought the San Francisco Symphony percussion section "the best in the world." He seemed to mean it, saying that he'd worked with orchestras all over the world and that the SF section was the best he'd ever worked with. Very enjoyable. I hope Kuusisto records this soon. It's music that will bear repeat listening. 

As an encore, Kuusisto played a sarabande from one of the Bach solo partitas/sonatas—very familiar, but out of context I can't say which one it was from. Kuusisto played it in a rather tender, fluid way that was a sharp contrast to what preceded it. He relied heavily on rubato, which some people think has no place in the music of Bach, but it was a persuasive interpretation. About a third of the way through, someone's phone rang. He took it in stride. He stopped playing momentarily and said "That's the wrong key", laughed (and the audience laughed with him), and went back to playing. 

After intermission, the orchestra gave us Schubert's Symphony No. 5, my favorite (everyone's favorite?) of the Schubert Symphonies. After the concert, finding good food was a challenge. Because of pandemic restrictions, our go-to place, Absinthe, is now closing its kitchen at 9:00PM, even on Friday and Saturday. Ended up at a Mexican–French place that sounded much better than it tasted. Some research will be required ahead of the next SF Symphony concert—to which I'm looking forward. It was a real pleasure to hear live music again.

Music I'm Listening To: Leila Josefowicz and Esa-Pekka Salonen with the San Francisco Symphony

Last night (February 28) I attended the San Francisco Symphony concert at Davies Symphony Hall in San Francisco. On the program were a Beethoven overture (King Stephen), Esa-Pekka Salonen's Violin Concerto, and, after intermission, Nielsen's Symphony No. 5. Salonen conducted. Leila Josefowicz was the soloist in the violin concerto.

I first heard Josefowicz at a concert in 2011, likewise at Davies Symphony Hall, likewise with Salonen conducting his own violin concerto. It was impressive then. It was even more impressive last night, with all my impressions of the first performance magnified. Everything I said about the piece then, going on nine years ago, remains true, but Josefowicz seemed even more deeply engaged with the piece, her longer experience with it now evident. In 2011, the work was only two years old. In 2011, I said the following (and virtually all of it still applies--but, as I say, somehow magnified):

"It would be difficult to try to describe something so complex as Salonen's Violin Concerto in detail, but I can start by saying how impressed I was that Josefowicz played it from memory. The more abstract music becomes and the less dependent on devices such as themes and variations and development of themes, the more difficult it must be to remember. They say muscle memory takes over, but the feat of recall involved here was nearly as impressive as Josefowicz's playing, which was impressive indeed.

"The Violin Concerto opens with the soloist unaccompanied and it starts as if already in progress. The intensity is high from the get-go and the music feels relentless until the more pensive middle sections. Josefowicz played the early portions with a look of fierce determination on her face, at times seeming possessed, at other times looking somewhat more relaxed--even smiling--but there was a palpable tension even in the quietest passages. Particularly interesting was the use of a very rich percussion session that included numerous gongs and much else that was hard to see seated in the concert hall. 

"The music seemed highly original—modern without being modern in the sense of being stylistically linked to what we think of as modern music when the word "modern" brings the early 20th century to mind. Surely this music has antecedents. Some sections reminded me of Khatchaturian's violin concerto. Some sections had the portentous feel of a dramatic film score. Some sections put me in mind of Shostakovich. In the later movements, there are passages that introduce the feel of pop music. Yet, the overall impression was of music new and different.When I hear stories about Mahler conducting early performances of his own symphonies or of Beethoven premiering a new piano concerto, I wish I could have been present. What's more exciting than the thought of being in the presence of genius as it presents new ideas to the world? I had the feeling that I witnessed a bit of history on Thursday--that I was present at the sort of performance that will be talked about in the future by people looking back, wishing they'd been able to see Salonen himself at the podium conducting his own compositions. The music seemed like a cantilevered beam reaching into the future, even if it's too soon to know exactly what might lie beyond the reach of that beam--what it might be creating a bridge to. This was one of the best concerts I've attended in a long time."

Muscular is the right word. Her arms look powerful and Josefowicz projects strength; she is an athletic performer. As before, I was astounded by the prodigious feat of memory playing a piece like Salonen's Violin Concerto involves. I was astounded by the speed, precision, and sheer energy of Josefowicz's playing. It was an exciting performance. At one point, Salonen got so carried away that his baton flew out of his hand and landed in front of the first row of seats. At the first break between movements, an audience member handed it back to him; he received it with a nod of gratitude and a slightly sheepish smile. The audience had a laugh.

It was a privilege to have heard the concerto a second time played by the man who wrote it and by the woman he wrote it for (and wrote it with; Josefowicz, like Joachim working with Brahms on that composer's only violin concerto, apparently provided a lot of input). After the concerto, she played an encore piece, also by Salonen, but she failed to identify it and none of the ushers knew exactly what it was.

The Beethoven overture is one I'd never heard before, or at least I don't remember hearing it. It was much as you might expect from Beethoven, along the lines of his other overtures. It was interesting for a pronounced back and forth between light dance-like sections and some dark and stormy passages with much sawing of the cellos and the double basses. The energy so notable in the concerto was there from the start of the concert. Salonen looked involved, in charge, happy to be on the podium, and the musicians seemed equally happy to be working with him. I'm so glad he'll be replacing MTT.

Speaking of energy, the Nielsen symphony is a somewhat sprawling, complex piece of music with some very energetic sections indeed. It's not a piece I know well and I felt there were extended sections that were rather amorphous and congested, but I enjoyed it nevertheless. I think I have at least one recording of it somewhere. I'll have to give it another listen.

Looking back at my concert notes here, I see that this was the fourth time I've seen Josefowicz in concert—on: December 8, 2011 (playing the Salonen concerto with Salonen conducting); on October 4, 2013 (Stravinsky's violin concerto with Pablo Heras-Casado conducting), on February 24, 2017 (Scheherazade.2, by Adams); and then last night' all in San Francisco.

Music I'm Listening to: The San Francisco Symphony with Leonidas Kavakos

I attended the September 28 performance of the San Francisco Symphony, at Davies Symphony Hall, part of an ongoing Stravinsky Festival. MTT conducted Petruschka, The Rite of Spring, and the Violin Concerto. Leonidas Kavakos was the soloist in the concerto.

It was fun to hear Petruschka live for the first time, but I was more  interested in the rest of the program as this was my second time hearing the San Francisco Symphony doing each of the other two pieces. Back in 2013, I heard Leila Josefowicz play the Stravinsky concerto (my comments on that concert here) and heard The Rite of Spring just last summer, with Susanna Mälkki conducting (comments here). I was curious to hear these two pieces again and with MTT conducting.

I don't know what it is about MTT. I know he's popular. He's won multiple Grammy Awards. I just don't get the way he conducts. I thought The Rite of Spring oddly static in the first half. It's a piece that should be marching forward, relentlessly, and he managed to make it seem like it was standing still at times. I always feel a disconnect between him and the orchestra (with one notable exception, his brilliant reading of the Mahler Fifth Symphony I heard back in March this year). In the second half of The Rite of Spring, things finally seemed to be in gear and the audience was very appreciative, but this performance, while enjoyable, didn't leave me with anything of the excitement I felt hearing virtually the same musicians under Mälkki's baton back in June of 2017.

I felt kind of the same way about the concerto. The opening chord—the chord that opens each of the concerto's movements—seemed weak. It should come as a shock. I had never heard Kavakos play before or even heard his name, so I went into the concert with an open mind. After the initial chord, I was prepared to be disappointed, but, it got better. Again it took some time for the players and the conductor to convincingly join forces, or so it seemed to me. In the end, I liked Kavakos. That said, this performance didn't have the fire of the 2013 performance I attended with Josefowicz on the violin. 

Music I'm Listening To: The San Francisco Symphony with Soloist Augustin Hadelich (April 21, 2013)

On Friday night (April 19) I had the pleasure of attending a San Francisco Symphony performance. Conductor laureate Herbert Blomstedt led the orchestra in Beethoven's Violin Concerto and the Nielsen Symphony No. 5. German violinist Augustin Hadelich was soloist in the Beethoven concerto.

I suspect Mr. Hadelich made quite a few new fans on Friday night. His articulation was remarkable. The performance had a wonderful clarity. I heard notes in the concerto that I wasn't even aware were there--perhaps because many violinists slur them most of the time. I don't know, but the overall impression was one of breathtaking precision--which is not to say that the playing lacked lyrical qualities where lyrical qualities were required. Hadelich had a way of slightly cheating the duration of certain notes at the end of phrases that created an interesting tension.

Mr. Hadelich, according to the program notes, plays the 1723 Ex-Kiesewetter Stradivarius, on loan from Clement and Karen Arrison through the Stradivari Society. I'm not aware of having heard this instrument before, but it had a kind of middle-of-the-road clarity that seemed well suited to Mr. Hadelich's controlled, no-nonsense style. I think this is a fairly late Strad. Stradivarius's extant violins range from 1666 (the Ex-Beck) to 1737 (the Lord Norton and the Comte d'Amaille). Some of the earlier ones seem to have rather stronger characteristics. The 1716 Booth, played now by Arabella Steinbacher, for example, has a certain gritty throatiness in the low register but sounds sweet at the high end. The 1715 Ex-Marsick that James Ehnes plays is rather sweet sounding throughout the range. Joshua Bell's 1713 Gibson Strad is especially lush sounding, which seems appropriate given Bell's fondness for rather romantic works.

Overall, very impressive. This was among the best performances of the Beethoven Violin Concerto I've ever heard. The audience seems to have agreed with me. The members of the Symphony onstage seemed mesmerized listening to the cadenzas in the solo part and the hall burst into spontaneous applause at the end of the first movement. Much has been said recently about whether or not to applaud in the middle of multi-movement classical pieces. Generally, I like to hear the whole before applauding, but the audience was thrilled and I have every sympathy for the expression of appreciation in this case. Conductor Blomstedt, however, clearly disapproved, gesturing to the audience to stop with fingers waved behind his back (and apparently annoyed again at the end of the first movement of the Nielsen--although in that case, I suspect the applause was simply the result of confusion about whether the music had ended).

At the close of the Beethoven, Mr. Hadelich received a long standing ovation, to which he responded with an encore. I was pleased that he announced beforehand what he was going to play (Paganini's Caprice No. 24). I have no doubt I would have recognized it as a Paganini caprice, but I would have had to do some research to figure out which one it was. It's funny how very familiar pieces of music can be difficult to put a name to.

After intermission the ensemble played the Nielsen symphony--a rather expansive piece that seems always to be spilling out of a vessel too small for it. In some sections, it gave the impression of a solid wall of sound that was difficult to process. Elsewhere, the music became suddenly more melodic. There are some interesting textures here, but it was a lot to absorb all at once. I've certainly heard this before. I may even have a recording of it, but it's been a long time. While I've always found Nielsen interesting, and I certainly have a number of recordings of his music, they aren't recordings of music I turn to repeatedly. It's been many years since I've heard much Nielsen at all. I remember buying several Nielsen LPs in college at what was then my favorite haunt--Mole's Records, in Columbus, Ohio. Perhaps it's time to listen to some of them with more mature ears.

Had a tasty dinner afterwards at Absinthe. The yam and goat cheese ravioli were delicious. The emphasis was more on the yams than on the goat cheese. The slight sweetness of the yams went very well with a Fonsainte Grenache rosé I had from Corbieres. I enjoyed my appetizer (tuna tartare) with a Pouilly Fuissé.

Photographs of conductor Herbert Blomstedt and violinist Augustin Hadelich courtesy of the San Francisco Symphony.

Music I'm Listening to: The San Francisco Symphony with Esa-Pekka Salonen and Leila Josefowicz

I attended the Thursday, December 8 performance of the San Francisco Symphony with guest conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen and soloist Leila Josefowicz. The program opened with Pohjola's Daughter, by Sibelius, followed by Violin Concerto, by conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen himself. After intermission, soprano Christene Brewer joined the symphony in excerpts from Wagner's Götterdämmerung. I enjoyed the Sibelius and even liked the Wagner, but the main reason I wanted to attend this concert was to hear the Violin Concerto and see Salonen conduct, particularly as he was conducting a composition of his own--and what a thrilling performance it was. Salonen is dynamic on the podium, using broad gestures with both hands to communicate.

It would be difficult to try to describe something so complex as Salonen's Violin Concerto in detail, but I can start by saying how impressed I was that Josefowicz played it from memory. The more abstract music becomes and the less dependent on devices such as themes and variations and development of themes, the more difficult it must be to remember. They say muscle memory takes over, but the feat of recall involved here was nearly as impressive as Josefowicz's playing, which was impressive indeed.

The Violin Concerto opens with the soloist unaccompanied and it starts as if already in progress. The intensity is high from the get-go and the music feels relentless until the more pensive middle sections. Josefowicz played the early portions with a look of fierce determination on her face, at times seeming possessed, at other times looking somewhat more relaxed--even smiling--but there was a palpable tension even in the quietest passages. Particularly interesting was the use of a very rich percussion session that included numerous gongs and much else that was hard to see seated in the concert hall.

The music seemed highly original--modern without being modern in the sense of being stylistically linked to what we think of as modern music when the word "modern" brings the early 20th century to mind. Surely this music has antecedents. Some sections reminded me of Khatchaturian's violin concerto. Some sections had the portentous feel of a dramatic film score. Some sections put me in mind of Shostakovich. In the later movements, there are passages that introduce the feel of pop music. Yet, the overall impression was of music new and different.When I hear stories about Mahler conducting early performances of his own symphonies or of Beethoven premiering a new piano concerto, I wish I could have been present. What's more exciting than the thought of being in the presence of genius as it presents new ideas to the world? I had the feeling that I witnessed a bit of history on Thursday--that I was present at the sort of performance that will be talked about in the future by people looking back, wishing they'd been able to see Salonen himself at the podium conducting his own compositions. The music seemed like a cantilevered beam reaching into the future, even if it's too soon to know exactly what might lie beyond the reach of that beam--what it might be creating a bridge to. This was one of the best concerts I've attended in a long time.

Doing a little research, I see that Salonen's Violin Concerto had its premiere in April 2009, with Josefowicz as the soloist, and that it was written for her. I won't be surprised to see it enter the standard violin repertoire; it's likely to be played for many, many years to come. I was also able to confirm that Josefowicz is about four months pregnant, as she appeared to be--what it must sound like to the baby in there....

Photo of Esa-Pekka Salonen by Sonja Werner. Photo of Leila Josefowicz by Henry Fair. Photos Courtesy of the San Francisco Symphony.

Music I'm Listening To: An Old Friend in Someone Else's Skin

I had an odd experience today listening to the radio in the car. I felt like I had come face to face with an old friend in someone else's skin. The gestures were familiar, the sound of the voice exhilarating and evocative of shared past experience; I knew the person immediately. But there was something entirely new, something completely unknown--a very disorienting feeling. Still, it was an exciting feeling, creating an irresistible need to listen closely, to try to understand the changed form the familiar now inhabited--and to relate that back to the original, comparing.

This is a surprisingly taxing thing to do. It requires great concentration, and it forces a decision, a mental transformation. Either we abandon the old and accept the new (rarely easy), separating what is from what we remember it to have been, or we must reject the new outright. Some transformations go smoothly, others remain works in progress with uncertain outcomes.

For a moment, I thought I was listening to the Brahms Double Concerto (for violin and cello). Then immediately I thought I was listening to the Brahms Violin Concerto. Next, I thought I was simply listening to one of the two Brahms piano concertos, as the solo instrument was most certainly a piano, not a violin or a cello--but none of these ideas quite made sense. As I was listening to the piano, I kept hearing the music as it seemed it ought to have been--played instead by a violin. The music was both eerily familiar and new at the same time. Had this been Vivaldi or Bach, I don't think the confusion would have been so deep. I drove the long way home, waiting for the music to finish, eager to hear who and what I was listening to--although, by the time the music was over, I had come to the only conclusion that made any sense: this was a transcription for piano of the Brahms Violin Concerto. 

And so it was. I was listening to Johannes Brahms' Piano Concerto No. 3 [sic], arranged by Dejan Lazic (Dejan Lazic, piano; Robert Spano conducting the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra; Channel Classics CCS SA 29410.) This is a new disc, released March 9, 2010.

Brahms wrote only two piano concertos, but Mr. Lazic has conjured another one for us. According to what I've been able to find, Lazic has left the orchestral score untouched, but he has re-conceived the solo violin part for piano and written new cadenzas.

It's surprising how well the piece has made the transition from a concerto for stringed instrument to a piece featuring piano. It's virtually impossible not to hear the sound of bow on string in certain passages, in part because they are so familiar to the ear, but also because, having been conceived for violin, they naturally take advantage of the strengths and peculiarities of that instrument. It's hard to convert cantabile passages for violin into music for what is essentially a percussion instrument without doing them some violence, but Lazic's transcription is extremely persuasive. Only in a few places did I find myself longing for the scrape and grit of the string--only in a few places did I find it impossible to abandon the old friend for the new. All in all, a remarkable creation. I wonder if Brahms would have minded? Recommended.