Arrivederci Hans, das war der letzte Tanz.
Let’s spend a few graphs on Hans Graf. He is music director at the Houston Symphony, and guest conducting the SF Symphony this week, Thursday till Saturday. Now whatever you may say about Texas, consider that he earlier had the same job at the Iraq National Symphony Orchestra, and all of a sudden, Houston sounds much more, well, inviting (truth be told, it was in pre-Saddam Baghdad in 1975-76, when it was actually a nicer place to be). The guy has extensive experience with top tier orchestras, like LA or Boston, and will conduct ours for the first time.
Friday will be a farewell: it is the last "Friday 6.5 show" of the season, a last dance of sorts, if only to make sense of our title. The performance is at 6:30pm, so people can go straight from work in their Friday casual attire. Gosh, do they wear shorts? We don’t know, we try to go earlier in the run so as to share our opinion as quickly as possible. We are very partial to the Thursday matinees, the little old ladies are so sweet. Anyhow, the show being about 2 hours long typically, you get out just in time for dinner at Zuni, Hayes Street Grill or Citizen Cake, and the night is still young and full of fun ahead. Being artsy and classy early in the evening gives you a good excuse to do the dumb things you’d do on a Friday night anyway. It all evens out.
This week’s series features an eclectic mix of old and new, challenging and pleasing. A Beethoven symphony (not the ta-ta-ta-tum one, not the keeping score one and not the ode to joy one, another one), and his Romance for violin.
Picture of Hans Graf courtesy of Houston Symphony
The violin is also heavily featured in Aftersight, a piece by Victor Kissine, a composer who is so living he’ll be on hand for Q&A with Hans Graf acting as a translator (English-Russian, we are being told, even though English-French should be an option, since Kissine lives in Belgium and Graf used to lead the Bordeaux orchestra, something to remember while you order at Absinthe afterwards). The violin, held by SFS concertmaster and soloist extraordinaire Alexander Barantschik, is the 1742 Guarnerius del Gesù, which actually belongs to you! Well, it belongs to the Fine Arts Museums of SF, but it’s a public institution, so you should actually attend the show just to see where your tax dollars went (actually, knowing the Fine Arts Museums, it’s probably a wealthy donor who pitched in, and there’s a huge bronze name plaque attached to the back of the instrument in recognition).
If you want to listen to Barantschik’s cute Russian accent describing Aftersight as “verrry intense and verrry Rrrussian,” you can! Here!.
Concert tomorrow matinee (2pm) and Saturday (8pm): info here.
Friday 6.5 concert, 6:30pm: info here.
Box Office: (415) 864-6000.