Musings on ballet, classical music, the violin, and life
I’ve never attended the symphony before with the sense that I might not stay for the program’s second half, but that was my thinking when I entered San Francisco Symphony’s Davies Hall on a recent Sunday afternoon. The first of the program’s two semi-staged works was Ravel’s Ma Mère l’Oye (“Mother Goose”) featuring dancers from … Read more
Last week I called the San Francisco Symphony box office to switch dates for a subscription ticket with a conflict: Sunday’s performance of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9, conducted by Michael Tilson Thomas. There was Saturday night availability, but as life has been busy of late, I weighed the pros and cons of deferring to a … Read more
There is something about going to the symphony in the summer that makes it feel like such a different experience from its wintertime counterpart. How strange to enter Davies Symphony Hall while it’s still light outside. Inside, you stand at any of the building’s floor-to-ceiling windows—in truth, one entire side of the building is almost … Read more
I suppose it’s not all that curious. If you are a concert pianist and your right arm is a casualty in World War I, afterwards you have two options. One: give up your music career and calling, do something inferior and cry into your soup for the rest of your life. Two: tell yourself, “All … Read more
Jean Sibelius’ tone-poem, Finlandia, wasn’t supposed to be the program headliner one recent Saturday night at the San Francisco Symphony. The main draw was the Sibelius Violin Concerto, gracefully and sensitively rendered by Latvian violinist Baiba Skride, with Finnish guest conductor Osmö Vänskä leading the orchestra. Vänskä, music director of the Minnesota … Read more