February 8, 2008
The Philistine Has An SFist Polyphony
Okay, before you ask, this is not the much-beloved Our Locals On Reality TV Project Runway recap, this is the SFist Symphony review -- we'll explain later in the post.
We had a little San Francisco Polyphony of our own on our way to the SF Symphony concert yesterday night to see Gyorgy Ligeti's shimmerily-dissonant orchestral piece of the same name -- the driver of our MUNI bus finally got fed up with people sneaking in through the back door, stopped the bus smack dab on Mission Street, and announced that the cops were coming to bust all the fare jumpers when we got to Van Ness. Alas, we got to Davies Symphony Hall before we could see if he'd made good on the threat.
Tonight's performance featured guest conductor Ingo Metzmacher, who looked adorably like Schroeder from Peanuts, except instead of Beethoven, Metzmacher loves 20th century Eastern European composers, with Ligeti, the Bartok Piano Concerto no. 3, and the Shostakovich Symphony No. 6 on the program.
Ligeti wrote the San Francisco Polyphony in our fair city in 1973-74. The program notes reiterated several times that the listener should not expect this to be some kind of musical picture of SF, but we'll fall into that easy trap anyways and say that Ligeti must have written the piece in the summer, because it sounds kind of sunshine-y/foggy. Also -- we deeply enjoyed the section of the piece that sounded like Critical Mass. Our city rules.
So! You're probably still wondering why we have a picture of Christian's outfit from Wednesday's Project Runway up there, aren't you? We'll explain after the jump.
Pianist Helene Grimaud soloed on the Bartok Piano Concerto No. 3, and dang! The outfit she was wearing looked just like Christian's outfit for the wrestling divas of the WWE on Project Runway last night!! Complete with chaps! Okay, maybe a little bit more formal, and no lace, but it totally did. The Piano Concerto was a little bit more melodic than we prefer our Bartok, and Grimaud's carpal-tunnel-inducing hand position was distracting us through the strenuously-chorded portions of the finale, but -- did we mention she totally had on Christian's wrestling outfit???????
The Shostakovich was fine -- it controversially has only three movements instead of the usual four, but the first section is long like a first movement and slow like a second. It's no Shosty 5, but things dramatically picked up by movements three and four, though, and Schroeder Metzmacher was shaking his tushy like a rumba dancer by the galloping finale. (ADORABLE.) The crowd went wild.
The symphony plays this program two more times -- tonight at 8 p.m., and Saturday at 8 p.m. too. Maybe Grimaud will wear Big Chris Marsh's adorable hoodie outfit tomorrow! That's totally our favorite outfit of this Project Runway season!


That's totally MY favorite outfit of this Project Runway season, too! Oh yeah, and that music sounds like it was great. But back to Project Runway ...
You mean I got to watch project runway now?