We caught the second orchestral program of the American Mavericks Festival at the SF Symphony and what an eclectic, puzzling, and overall exhilarating show it was. (The third program repeats tonight through Saturday). Chronologically, it was rather straightforward: from the most recent Cage Song Books (1970) back towards Carl Ruggles 1931 Sun-treader. In terms of dynamics, it was progressively ordered from very soft to very loud. But any other classification attempt fails, as each of the four pieces had a very strong, very idiosyncratic personality. more ›

Countering your Tom Cruise, Mark Cuban and John McCain for the short list of American mavericks, MTT and the SF Symphony offer their own selection: Aaron Copland, Lou Harrison, Charles Ives, in the first concert of their festival dedicated to the trail blazers of American music. If that concert last night was any indication, go buy yourself a pass to the rest of the concerts, which includes world premieres by Mason Bates, John Adams, Meredith Monk performed by Jessye Norman, Emanuel Ax, Jeremy Denk or the St Lawrence string quartet: you're in for an ear opening experience. more ›

The Martyre de Saint Sebastien, a play by Gabriele D'Annunzio with music by Claude Debussy, was, according to its original producer, "bad." Says the program notes of the SF Symphony. The run which concluded last Sunday of a staged concert version with additional video projections, demonstrated that its music was exquisite, but yeah, the surrounding stuff could be a drag. more ›

At the San Francisco Symphony it's new year, new stuff. The 1992 Ligeti violin concerto will be heard live in San Francisco for the first time ever tomorrow through Sunday. You may recall Ligeti from the soundtrack of 2001, A Space Odyssey or from the San Francisco Polyphony, an early 70s commission of the SF Symphony he wrote shortly after a six month stint as Composer in Residence at the farm. Ligeti (1923-2006) may be another dead European composer, but unlike them Wolfgangs and Ludwigs, he took the trouble to visit and write stuff for us. more ›

As the audience in the classical music hall gets grayer and grayer, the San Francisco Symphony does what it can to stay ahead. But it too gets older too, turning 100 tonight. The centenarian does not look any the worse for wear though, with a year-long celebration that kicks off in high gear featuring a grand gala with virtuosos Lang Lang and Itzhak Perlman. more ›

A grab bag of a few items about classical music in the bay: more ›

Lang-Lang is the antidote to recessions and deaths of classical music. There are only a few others than the Chinese piano superstar who can sell out Davies Symphony hall on a Tuesday evening for a solo recital of Beethoven, Albeniz and Prokofiev, as part of the SF Symphony Great performers series. more ›

A few performances we caught, before the Thanksgiving holidays distracted us from writing them up: Bryn Terfel at Cal Performances, Aida at SF Opera and Yefim Bronfman with the SF Symphony more ›

Richard Strauss Four Last Songs form a coda to the composer's career, who was over eighty when he wrote them, and selected texts of falling leaves, crepuscular vibe and mournful elegy. They're however a fitting start for the upcoming South African soprano Elza van den Heever, who heartrendingly sang them last night with MTT and the San Francisco Symphony. VDH made her first splash when, as an Adler fellow and the understudy for Donna Anna in Don Giovanni, the SF Opera dumped the originally planned soprano to give her the role. She kicked ass. And she did again last night. more ›

There's MTT the evangelist, advocating for rarely heard works and composers. And there's MTT the maestro, conducting old chestnuts with fresh vigor. Both were in full display last night, with a first half dedicated to modernists works from between the two world wars by composers rarely invited to Davies Symphony hall; and a second half with the ubiquitous Beethoven, in fine form. The program repeats tonight and tomorrow. more ›

We attend Davies Symphony Hall for the visceral experience of a full orchestra performing: You hear it, but you feel it too, it resonates within you, it echoes off the walls and reverberates. All the more when the organ gets in the game: no instrument immerses you more deeply in the music, it's a sensation you can't get on recording. Saint-Saëns's 3rd symphony finale just grabs your gut with the brute force of the organ sounds Last night's program at the SF Symphony, with Copland Organ and Tchaikovsky 4th symphonies succeeded in building big walls of sound, and let them collapse onto you. By the last movement of the Tchaikovsky, you came out bruised, in a good way. more ›

Yuja Wang became an overnight sensation when piano legend Martha Argerich cancelled a performance with the Boston symphony and Yuja stepped in and was so electrifying she brilliantly saved the evening. The next step on the road to stardom is of course to be in the position to cancel, rather than waiting in the wings. Congratulations to Yuja then, who had to withdraw from her April SF Performances recital for physical reasons. more ›

Robin Holloway wrote his opera, Clarissa, in 1976; it wasn't premiered until 1990, for a performance run in London that MTT attended. MTT was so excited by the music, he asked for an orchestral suite to be composed out of it. This took form in 1998, when the soprano who was scheduled to sing canceled due to illness. So the composer blazingly reworked the piece into an orchestral version. It only took twelve years to find a suitable singing replacement, as we finally heard the piece Thursday night. And what a replacement it was! more ›

The SF Symphony intended to present Threni this week, one of the few twelve-tone works of Stravinsky. Intriguing, definitely. But visa issues would not let the vocal ensemble EXAUDI, cross the pond, and no singers, no Threni. We had to settle instead for an impromptu performance of Bernstein's Chichester Psalms and Stravinsky's Ode, along with the originally planned Daphnis and Chloé. You can hear it all again on Sunday, but not tonight, due to the Black & White ball taking over Civic Center, and Tony Bennett coming back to fetch his heart. The B&W ball, by the way, supports music programs in public school: you should attend just to make Schwarzenegger cry. more ›

Charles Ives was such an avant-garde composer in his time, his place in the musical canon still has to be explained. To us. By MTT. Yet, it's a testament to his lasting influence that living composers keep being inspired. This week, Victor Kissine will append a Post-Scriptum to Ives's Unanswered Question. This commission from the SF Symphony will have its world premiere tomorrow under the baton of MTT. more ›

Yo-Yo Ma is one of the world's most celebrated musicians, his name one of the most recognizable. To wit: he played for millions of people at Obama's inauguration, and has won tons of hardware (like fifteen Grammy awards.) more ›

The music season on Wednesday night, with a sparkling opening night gala. The evening started with complimentary champagne in the hallways of Davies Symphony Hall, because nothing lubricates appreciation for music better than bubbly. Still, two women left the hall after the national anthem, because there is only so much orchestral music than one can put up with, even inebriated. The bemused look on Michael Tilsson Thomas' face as they left was priceless. more ›

The SF Symphony journey from Schubert to Berg is coming to an end this week, with a final program combining Berg's Violin Concerto with Schubert's Mass in E flat major. We believe that the whole exercise was only a pretext to make Berg more palatable to the San Francisco audience: by insisting on the roots of his music into a Viennese romanticism, Berg is much less challenging than as a twelve tone music proponent. The connection between both was elusive, but if a little fuzzy marketing is needed to spoon feed Berg's magnificent music to the audience, so be it, and enjoy! more ›

The SF Symphony journey from Schubert to Berg continued on Wednesday with an intimate exploration of some lieder and chamber music, as well as the Lulu suite. The directions for the voyage (which continues tonight, tomorrow and next week) go like, start from Schubert, take a turn at Brahms, another at Wagner, when you reach Bruckner, go straight until Mahler, make a sharp left there, when you see Schoenberg, you'll have reached Berg. Not exactly a straight line, and not an obvious connection. more ›

The SF Symphony kicks off its Schubert and Berg journey with a mix-and-match of the Viennese composers. Tonight, and repeating through Saturday (the last show in Cupertino), we hear Berg's Seven Early songs, and Three Pieces for Orchestra, teamed up with Schubert's Rosamunde Overture and Unfinished Symphony. more ›

Yuja Wang will dazzle us this week at Davies Symphony Hall, playing the dastardly difficult Prokofiev piano concerto #2 with MTT. Here she plays the concerto's scherzo with the YouTube symphony orchestra. She is all of twenty-two, but already acclaimed as the future of classical music. She has performed with the San Francisco symphony three times already, earning accolade galore from the critics: "an artist of dazzling genius," says the SF Chronicle, surrounded by "an aura of greatness...Wang combines a practically superhuman keyboard technique with artistic eloquence that is second to none." That is some serious hyperbole to put on the shoulder of such a tiny "sparrow, (a very pretty sparrow)," drools the LA Times. more ›

The Sofia Gubaidulina residency with the SF Symphony continues tonight and tomorrow with the US premiere of her Violin Concerto No. 2, , with the magnificent Anne-Sophie Mutter as the soloist, for whom the piece was written. more ›

"'Classical' music does not need gimmicks OR marketers/managers," hrumphs an SFGate commenter. more ›

Each year, the Symphony organizes a summer festival dedicated to a theme or a composer. Next year sounds pretty intriguing: Schubert/Berg, two Viennese schools, two different styles to contrast and highlight each other. We're looking forward to it. This year, not so much: the festival was dedicated to Brahms, and we were like, blah. Programming Brahms is as exciting as a dinner of mac'n'cheese: the League of American Orchestras computed the most performed pieces of the 2006-07 season, and Brahms pieces rank 1st, 4th, 6th and 8th. We feel, why set up a special extra Brahms session when you can't swing a bow without hitting one of his symphonies. It's not like we're Brahms-deprived and need an extra dose. And yet, we went, twice, and had a great time. more ›

We caught the symphony on Thursday for a really cool program: Mostly Ives, with a Mendelssohn violin concerto squeezed in between for good measure. Those quicker than us with their opinions found the concerto rather pedestrian. But it's such a delicious yet cloying confection that even under the the jurisdiction of a particularly uninspired interpretation, is still satisfying. And the soloist, 22yo Sergey Khachatryan, did spark some fireworks in the final movement. more ›