DSO Live-Streams Russian Program

Once again my wife and I had our dinner while watching the latest live-streamed performance by the Detroit Symphony Orchestra (DSO). The title of the program was Tchaikovsky’s “Swan Lake” and Other Tales, but I would have preferred to call the event a “Russian excursion.” Three of the four composers on the program were Russian, each with a different background. In “order of appearance,” they were Dmitri Shostakovich, Igor Stravinsky, and Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky. The first composer on the program was John Adams; but he was represented by “Slonimsky’s Earbox,” named after the Russian-American musicologist who may be best known for the throughly engaging book he wrote entitled Lexicon of Musical Invective.

Cellist Wei Yu performing Shostakovich’s concerto (screen shot from yesterday’s live-stream)

The program was led by the Finnish conductor Hannu Lintu, who had a solid command in approaching all four of the composers. The concerto soloist was DSO Principal Cello Wei Yu, performing Dmitri Shostakovich’s Opus 107, the first of his two cello concertos, composed in the key of E-flat major. The second half of the program began with Stravinsky’s poéme symphonique, “Le chant du rossignol” (song of the nightingale), followed by selections from Tchaikovsky’s full-length ballet Swan Lake. All of these offerings were richly orchestrated; and, as is usually the case with these telecasts, the camera work guided the viewer through the panoply of diverse instrumental sonorities.

The performance was consistently satisfying from start to finish. Lintu knew just how to capture the brash rhetoric of Adams’ overture. I was fortunate enough to see Slonimsky “in action” with his coy but always perceptive rhetoric. I would like to believe that Adams was just as fortunate, because his music definitely aroused my own personal memories of the musicologist.

Nevertheless, the concerto was the high point of the evening; and the soloist’s command of the extended cadenza was nothing less than jaw-dropping. I would have thought that he had enough by the conclusion of his performance, but he returned to given an encore. This was the opening Prelude movement of Johann Sebastian Bach’s BWV 1012 (sixth) solo cello suite (which always seems to remind me of “The Irish Washerwoman”).

“Le chant du rossignol” is based on one of the more poignant fairy tales by Hans Christian Anderson. Stravinsky composed a full-length opera based on this tale, and the tone poem is basically a distillation of the opera. The distilled version is as engaging as it is brief, and I am somewhat disappointed that the music does not receive more attention. (The last time I wrote about it was in September of 2016, when Michael Tilson Thomas conducted a performance by the San Francisco Symphony.) The instrumentation shows Stravinsky at his best, and those qualities were excellently captured by last night’s camera work.

Given that my writing career (so to speak) began in my efforts as a ballet critic, I am still more than familiar with the full score of Swan Lake. It is usually abbreviated down to the music for the second of the four acts for concert purposes. However, Lintu assembled a suite of his own that accounted for all of those acts (but not with any regard for the narrative). He began with the prologue for the second act (because that is the most familiar music); but this was followed by the waltz in the first act. While his selections did not provide much of an account of the narrative, where this performance is concerned, there was no need to do so!

Choices for May 16, 2026

A little over a week ago, I wrote an article about how the concert season would begin to wrap up as of the very beginning of next month. Thus, concert-goers would be faced by having to choose among three performances, all beginning at 7:30 p.m. and taking place in the Civic Center. It turns out that the next round of choices will be taking place in the middle of the month with at least one of them in the Civic Center. I say “at least” because the first event has been announced by Groupmuse, refraining from identifying the venue until tickets have been secured. Having established the context, the events will be as follows:

7 p.m., to be announced by Groupmuse: This will be the next performance by the Sixth Station Trio, last discussed on this site this past February when they gave their third performance in the Old First Concerts series at Old First Presbyterian Church. That entire program was devoted to the music that Joe Hisaishi composed for Hayao Miyazaki’s anime Howl’s Moving Castle. Next month’s program will include only one Hisaishi composition, “Madness,” composed for the anime Porco Russo. This will be followed by three pieces composed for the video game Genshin Impact!. The first of these will be Koji Kondo’s “Great Fairy Fountain,” followed by “Gallant Challenge” and “Rapid as Wildfires,” composed by Yu Peng Chen. The program will begin with Astor Piazzola’s Las Cuatro Estaciones Porteños, a suite of four tango movements often referred to in English as “the four seasons of Buenos Aires.” The members of the trio are still pianist Katelyn Tan, violinist Anju Goto, and cellist Federico Strand Ramirez. [added 4/28, 9:35 a.m.: Groupmuse has now created a Web page for reservations; as of this writing eighteen of 30 spots are still available.]

Album cover of the new E4TT release (from the E4TT Web page for next month’s program)

7:30 p.m., Center for New Music: Ensemble for These Times will conclude its season with a program entitled El Tiempo Latine. This is also the title of the sixth CD to be released by E4TT. The performance will introduce a selection of the works that were recorded. All three core members will be joined by coloratura soprano Chelsea Hollow with Lylia Guion on violin. For those that do not yet know, those core members are soprano Nanette McGuinness, Megan Chartier on cello, and pianist Margaret Halbig. The venue will be at 55 Taylor  Street.

7:30 p.m., Knuth Music Hall, San Francisco State University: The San Francisco Contemporary Music Players (SFCMP) will conclude its 55th season with a program entitled American Reflections: Full Circle. The circle will be closed, so to speak, with a performance of John Adams’ “Son of Chamber Symphony.” The program will also see the world premiere by “Symphony: Color & Line,” composed by Edward Smaldone on an SFCMP commission. The other relatively recent work on the program will be Haruka Fujii’s “Divisions I,

completed in 2024. The program will begin with Nico Muhly’s “Flexible Music” (2003). The second half of the program will include John Zorn’s “Baudelaires,” completed in 2013. The venue will be the Knuth Music Hall on the campus of San Francisco State University at 1600 Holloway Street.

Jaap van Zweden Launches SFS Season

Last night in Davies Symphony Hall, Jaap van Zweden led the San Francisco Symphony (SFS) in its first performance for the 2025–26 season. This was the 46th anniversary of the All San Francisco Concert, which will be followed late this afternoon with Opening Night festivities. While Opening Night is a somewhat elite affair, the All San Francisco Concert is SFS’s was of saying “Thank You” to the citizens of San Francisco as a whole; and those working for Bay Area nonprofit, social services, and grassroots organizations are offered admission for a significantly reduced fee.

Pianist Parker Van Ostrand (from the Local News Matters Web page for last night’s performance)

This year’s program was an engaging variation on the traditional overture-concerto-symphony structure. The concerto soloist was pianist Parker Van Ostrand, performing what may be the most familiar piano concerto in the repertoire, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s Opus 23, his first piano concerto in B-flat minor. The overture was firmly rooted in the Bay Area with John Adams’ “Short Ride in a Fast Machine.” The intermission was followed by Ottorino Respighi’s four-movement tone poem, “Pines of Rome.”

“Short Ride” was first performed by the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra in 1986, but Adams is very much a major presence in the Bay Area. When Michael Tilson Thomas was Music Director, a performance in Davies was recorded on September 7, 2011 and subsequently released on an SFS Media CD, coupled with Adams’ “Harmonielehre.” I was glad to see that Amazon.com still has a Web page for this album, since it could not be more representative of Adams’ intimate relationship with SFS. Zweden had no trouble capturing and communicating the spirit of “Short Ride,” and I was glad to see that he will be returning to Davies in both January and February.

The Tchaikovsky concerto is, for many, the one concerto to rule them all. Ostrand is still a student at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, but he is definitely on the path to a future to be reckoned with. Mind you, he approached the opening movement with an energy that was almost Olympian. Nevertheless, he clearly had a command of everything that Tchaikovsky presented in the score. Once he got past the inevitable here-we-go-again rhetoric of the first movement, he began to settle into finding his own path to expressiveness over the course of the remainder of his performance.

Ostrand may be familiar to those with long memories of this site. He was the final solo recitalist in the 2023 San Francisco International Piano Festival. On that occasion his encore was the Alla Turca movement that concludes Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s K. 331 sonata in A major. However, what he really played was the “Concert Paraphrase on Mozart’s Turkish March,” composed by Arcadi Volodos (which I first heard performed as a Yuja Wang encore). Last night, for his first appearance with SFS, he decided it was time to play this encore again; and listening to it was as much fun as it was on my “first contact.”

As usual, the Respighi performance pulled out all the stops. That included the two brass quartets situated on either side of the choir loft above the orchestra. “Pines of Rome” also includes a nightingale in its third episode on the Janiculum Hill. Respighi had a phonograph recording prepared for that episode. (I had a high school music teacher, who argued with me that recordings had not yet been invented. He did not know that “Pines of Rome” was composed in 1924!) Respighi died in 1936, meaning that he never experienced the emergence of concrete music as a genre!

SFS: 2025 All San Francisco Concert

Jaap van Zweden, conductor for this year’s All San Francisco Concert

This is the time of year when tickets for the San Francisco Symphony (SFS) All San Francisco Concert, provided at a subsidized price for Bay Area nonprofit, social services, and grassroots organizations, become available to the general public. This year’s program is likely to be familiar to many (if not most) readers. The overture-concerto-symphony program will begin with John Adams’ “Short Ride in a Fast Machine.” This will be followed by one of the best-known piano concertos in the “standard repertoire,” Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s Opus 23, his first piano concerto composed in the key of B-flat minor. The soloist will be pianist Parker Van Ostrand. The intermission will be followed by Ottorino Respighi’s tone poem in four movements, “Pines of Rome.” The conductor will be Jaap van Zweden.

The remaining tickets for the general public are limited to the 2nd Tier in Davies Symphony Hall. Very few seats are available, all at the price of $12. Tickets may be purchased online through a Web page, which shows which seats remain. They will also be sold at the Davies Symphony Hall Box Office at 201 Van Ness Avenue, on the southwest corner of Grove Street. Purchases may also be made by calling 415-864-6000. The performance will take place in Davies at 7:30 p.m. on Thursday, September 11.

SFCMP Announces Plans for 55th Season

A little over a week ago, the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players (SFCMP) announced plans for its 2025–2026 Concert Season. It has been inspired by the 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States, and the title of the season will be American Reflections: Hear/Now. American Reflections will be the title of each of the four programs to be presented during this 55th concert season. Once again, the schedule will be a “movable feast” involving the alternation between two different venues. Dates, times, and venues, along with subtitles for each program, will be as follows:

John Adams, who will provide the “bookends” for the new SFCMP concert season (photograph by Deborah O’Grady)

Sunday, November 16, 4 p.m., Brava Theater, Exuberance: This will be the West Coast premiere of “First Work,” completed on a commission this year by Samuel Carl Adams. This will conclude the first half of the program, while the second half will conclude with “Chamber Symphony,” composed by John Adams (Sam’s father) in 1992. The Brava Theater is located in the Mission at 2781 24th Street.

Saturday, January 31, 8 p.m., Taube Atrium Theater, Fire & Lightening: “Mosaic,” composed by Elliott Carter for harp and ensemble, will receive its West Coast premiere. The harp soloist will be Amy Ahn. The venue is located on the top floor of the Veterans Building, which is on the southwest corner of Van Ness Avenue and McAllister Street.

Saturday, April 11, 7:30 p.m., Taube Atrium Theater, Steps Toward Ascent: The featured composer will be Steve Reich with the performance of his “Jacob’s Ladder,” composed in 2023.

Saturday, May 16, 7:30 p.m., Brava Theater, Full Circle: John Adams will return, providing the season with its “bookends.” Appropriately enough, his second offering will be “Son of Chamber Symphony.” This was completed in 2007, about fifteen years after “Chamber Symphony.”

The Web page for this season has already been created. This will provide a much more thorough account, along with options for both individual and season tickets. As in the past, seating will continue to be by general admission.

SFS: Preparing for the Opening Gala

Conductor Jaap van Zweden (photograph by Simon van Boxtel, courtesy of SFS)

Having accounted for the “concert” dates in the Summer with the Symphony programs to be presented by the San Francisco Symphony (SFS), I suspect that at least some readers are beginning to think about the coming season. (Some of them have probably already purchased subscriptions.) The new season will begin “officially” on Friday, September 12, in Davies Symphony Hall. The conductor for this occasion will be Jaap van Zweden. Pianist Yuja Wang, who has been a regular visitor to Davies, will be the soloist in a performance of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s Opus 23, his first piano concerto, composed in the key of B-flat minor. The program will begin with “Short Ride in a Fast Machine” by the Bay Area’s own composer, John Adams. The final work on the program will be Ottorino Respighi’s “Pines of Rome.” In other words, this is the sort of program that will, as some would say, crank the volume up to eleven!

Single tickets will not go on sale until this Thursday, June 19, at noon. However, those interested in donating to SFS have the option of sponsoring the full-evening Opening Gala. This will begin in Davies at 5:30 p.m. with Silver Receptions in the Wattis Room and the Loge Lobby. The concert will then be followed with a Gala Dinner in the Zellerbach Rehearsal Hall beginning at 8:30 p.m. Individual sponsorships are available for $2500 ($1853 tax deductible), $5000 ($4353 tax deductible), and $10,000 ($9353 tax deductible). There are also “Table” sponsorships, which accommodate ten guests. Those sponsorships are available for between $15,000 and $100,000. Sponsors will also enjoy the benefit of complementary parking. A Web page has been created with further details and hyperlinks for purchasing the available options.

SFS Commissions and Premieres in 2025–26

Playbill for the Vienna Premiere of Don Giovanni in 1788 (from the Wikipedia Web page, public domain)

Like yesterday’s article about debut performances during the 2025–26 season of the San Francisco Symphony (SFS), the category of “Commissions and Premieres” involves previously accounted for performance dates. Indeed, with the exception of John Adams’ “Short Ride on a Fast Machine,” all of the “Works by Living Composers” fall into this category. That leaves only three other premiere performances, all by works from past centuries. The composers and their respective selections are as follows:

1. Johann Sebastian Bach: Easter Oratorio (BWV 249)
2. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: aria from Don Giovanni (K. 527) sung by Golda Schultz
3. Ralph Vaughan Williams: the overture to the incidental music composed for Aristophanes’ play The Wasps

(On a personal note, I have a particular fondness for the “special effects” at the beginning of the Vaughan Williams overture!)

Conductor Mark Elder Makes his SFS Debut

Conductor Mark Elder (photograph by Groves Artists, courtesy of SFS)

Mark Elder is no stranger for those that have followed the San Francisco Opera for some time. I first encountered him in the fall of 2015, when he had trouble keeping the brass section under control while conducting Richard Wagner’s score for Die Meistersinger con Nürnberg. My only other experience with his performance was in the spring of 2019, when he was the conductor for the Great Performances at the Met broadcast of Camille Saint-Saëns’ Samson et Dalila. Sadly, this was no more satisfying than his approach to Wagner.

Last night in Davies Symphony Hall, Elder made his debut conducting the San Francisco Symphony (SFS). Having more liberty to prepare a repertoire, he put together a program that was decidedly more engaging than either of his previous operatic encounters. The first half of the program accounted for French music from the two extremes of the nineteenth century. The “central” selection was Claude Debussy’s “Prélude à l’Après-midi d’un faune,” which was composed in 1894. This was flanked on either side by overtures by Hector Berlioz. The program began with his overture to Les Franc-juges, described in the program book notes by James M. Keller as his “first operatic failure.” The first half concluded with “Le roi Lear,” a concert overture inspired by William Shakespeare’s King Lear.

Berlioz was never shy when it came to instrumentation, and Elder displayed a solid command of the scores for both of these overtures. Of particular interest was the interplay across the first and second violin sections. This was enhanced through the conductor’s decision to have the two sections face each other, rather than play side-by-side. This afforded the attentive listener better opportunities to appreciate the many details in how Berlioz managed his orchestral textures.

Those textures were equally significant during the second half of the program, most of which accounted for Richard Strauss’ Opus 30 tone poem “Also sprach Zarathustra.” Strauss was heavily interested in the writings of Friedrich Nietzsche, which he encountered in the early 1890s. Also sprach Zarathustra was conceived by Nietzsche as a four-part treatise; but it unfolds as a prose narrative, whose plot line (such as it is) provided Strauss with a framework for his tone poem. Each of the tone poem’s episodes reflects on a specific segment of Nietzsche’s text. To be fair, I have to confess that, over the course of my several listening experiences, I could easily apprehend the episodic structure without finding much of a relationship to a narrative thread. Nevertheless, Elder’s conducting could not have been clearer in guiding one through those episodes, regardless of any presence or absence of a plot-line.

He then decided that Strauss’ account of heavy philosophy deserved a lighter “punch line.” As a result, last night’s program concluded with one of John Adams’ most engaging compositions, “Short Ride in a Fast Machine.” This quickly blew away any of the “scholarly cobwebs” that may have been induced by Strauss’ musical reflections on Nietzsche! This music was an SFS favorite back when Michael Tilson Thomas was Music Director. Personally, I was glad to encounter it again.

SFS: “Everything Old is New Again”

The Wheel of Fortune from the Carmina Burana manuscript, which frames the structure of Carl Orff’s cantata (from the Wikipedia page for the Carmina Burana collection of poetry)

Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana was all the rage in my student days. It was first performed at the Frankfurt Opera of June 8, 1937. Its premiere was so successful that Orff instructed his publisher to destroy all of his earlier compositions. It may have facilitated the composer’s denazification process following World War II, since all of the texts dated from the thirteenth century in Medieval Latin, Old French, and Middle-High German. As the  San Francisco Symphony (SFS) program note by René Spencer Sailer (written for the St. Lous Symphony) observed, those texts are “stubbornly secular, often bawdy verses touch[ing] on the corruption of the clergy, the benefits of intoxication, the sorrow of love, the glories of nature, and the pitiless wheel of fortune that determines our destinies.”

Attitudes towards this music have been on a roller-coaster ride since the Sixties, when it began to emerge on long-playing records. For the better part of my mature life, it has been dismissed as little more than trivial, if not downright infantile. However, time tends to assuage arrogance as well as healing wounds; and it would be fair to say that we now live in an age that is not afraid to have fun with both the text and Orff’s raucous instrumental settings.

Last night in Davies Symphony Hall, visiting conductor David Robertson was never shy in having fun with this music. Indeed, that fun was shared by not only the full forces of the San Francisco Symphony (SFS) but also the SFS Chorus (directed by Jenny Wong) and the San Francisco Girls Chorus, prepared by Artistic Director Valérie Sainte-Agathe. The vocal soloists were soprano Susanna Phillips, tenor Arnold Livingston Geis, and baritone Will Liverman; but their solo work was quite modest compared to the demands Orff made on the full chorus and subsections of it. While the overall instrumentation was massive, there were also more intimate passages, including a dance episode for the duet of flute and timpani and several engaging solo passages by Concertmaster Jeremy Constant. For me, the high point of the performance came with Geis’ delivery of the swan being roasted for a feast (“Olim lacus colueram”).

As I sat down with my program last night, I anticipated that the high spirits of Carmina Burana would be complemented by the world premiere performance that would precede the intermission. This was John Adams’ piano concerto entitled “After the Fall” and composed on an SFS commission. The soloist was Víkingur Ólafsson, for whom the work was written. My first encounter with Adams was at the 92nd Street Y in Manhattan, when I attended a program entitled Meet the Minimalists. The final work on that program was “Grand PIanola Music;” and I was hooked from the very beginning to the final cadence. Sadly, those vivid memories may have been to my disadvantage, because “After the Fall” came across as little more than a weak shadow of what Adams had been doing some forty-odd years ago. The music lasted for about half an hour but had pretty much made its point within the first fifteen minutes.

On the other hand, the raucousness of Carmina Burana was much better complemented by the opening selection on the program. This was Charles Ives’ “The Unanswered Question.” The work is scored for only four flutes, one trumpet, and strings. The role of the trumpet is to “pose the question,” which it does with a single brief phrase. Each time we hear the question stated, the flutes try to reply. However, they never provide a satisfactory answer and grow more and more irritated in the rhetoric of their responses. Finally, the trumpet asks the question one last time; and this time there is no attempt at an answer. Robertson could not have done a better job in capturing the serenity of this enigmatic composition. Ives composed this work in 1906. Did Orff come up with an answer thirty years later?

Friction Quartet to Present Second SF Recital

Friction Quartet members Otis Harriel, Mitso Floor, Doug Machiz, and Kevin Rogers

I apologize for this being a last-minute announcement; but, to be fair, I received notification only yesterday! Program details have been finalized for the second program to be performed in San Francisco for the current season by the Friction Quartet. The recital will be curated by Doug Machiz, the quartet’s cellist, who will be performing with violinists Otis Harriel and Kevin Rogers with Mitso Floor on viola. The title of the program will be Collections; and, as I have been informed, it will present “three colorful, creative and monumental collections that defy classification.

The first of these is likely to be familiar to many readers, the Book of Alleged Dances by John Adams. This will be followed by Canções da America, a compilation of sources of South American folk music arranged for string quartet by Clarice Assad. The final selection, Family Group with Aliens, was composed by Piers Hellawell on a Friction commission. This is basically a “nested” suite in which each successive movement is a miniaturized version of the opening movement.

The program will begin at 7:30 p.m. tomorrow, December 12, in the Noe Valley Ministry at 1021 Sanchez Street, just south of 23rd Street; and a Web page has been created for purchasing tickets.

Trifonov Shifts Attention from Europe to Americas

Pianist Daniil Trifonov has been a regular visitor to San Francisco, both as concerto soloist and recitalist, over the course of several years. This coming February, he will return to Davies Symphony Hall as soloist in a performance of Sergei Prokofiev’s Opus 18 (second) piano concerto in G minor with the San Francisco Symphony. In addition, this site has tried to keep up with his Deutsche Grammophon recordings, the most recent of which was Bach: The Art of Life, a “family portrait” that juxtaposed works by Johann Sebastian Bach with selections by four of his sons.

Daniil Trifonov on the cover of his latest album (courtesy of Crossover Media)

Trifonov’s latest album takes him across the Atlantic Ocean, so to speak. It is the first of two releases both under the title My American Story. The subtitle for that first release is North, and it offers an impressively diverse account of music composed in the United States. Taken as a whole, it amounts to an engaging account of how music was being made during the twentieth century.

The breadth of that diversity can be oriented around the two concerto selections on the album, each reflecting a different perspective across the two centuries. The first of these is George Gershwin’s “Concerto in F” (originally given the title “New York Concerto”). Following the success of “Rhapsody in Blue,” the conductor Walter Damrosch commissioned Gershwin to compose a full-scale piano concerto for his New York Symphony Orchestra. “Rhapsody in Blue” has been composed for solo piano and jazz band, but it was subsequently prepared for orchestral performance by Ferde Grofé. The concerto, on the other hand, is entirely a product of Gershwin’s own efforts.

A little less than a century later, Mason Bates composed his first piano concerto. It was written for Trifonov and given its first performance in January of 2022. It was co-commissioned by Trifonov and the Philadelphia Orchestra, with whom he played the work’s debut. The recording of that concerto on North was made with that same ensemble led by Yannick Nézet-Séguin, who has been the ensemble’s music director since 2012.

I feel as if I have been following Bates’ work for almost as long as I have been writing on this site. Unless I am mistaken, that dates back to the spring of 2009, when Michael Tilson Thomas conducted Bates’ “The B-Sides” with the San Francisco Symphony. It took me a while to get used to him (which may be the same for any thoughts he may have had when reading what I wrote about him); but I came away from listening to his concerto with the sense that he had approached it with more security than Gershwin had brought to his “parallel” effort. Indeed, I can confess that my very first impression of Bates leaned towards “enfant terrible;” but the firm and secure hand he brought to composing for both piano and ensemble is a far cry from either of those words!

All the other selections on this first My American Story album are solo performances. I must confess that I was particularly taken with the tracks that involved arrangements of popular tunes by leading pianists from each half of the twentieth century. The earlier of these was one of the most influential musicians (who happened to play piano) of his time, Art Tatum. The second could be said the same for his time, the pianist being Bill Evans. In listening to these tracks, one can easily detect Trifonov’s appreciation of both of those jazz masters. That appreciation also extends to the final track on the album, which is “4’33”,” John Cage’s “silent” composition. On the other hand his approach to the more “serious” composers, such as Aaron Copland, John Adams, and John Corigliano, struck me as more dutiful than engaging; but that is probably just because I am not shy in voicing personal opinions!

A Trinity Alps Chamber Players Groupmuse

Yesterday evening at Monument SF, Ian Scarfe, founder and Director of the Trinity Alps Chamber Music Festival, presented his latest groupmuse concert. He was joined by violinist Sam Weiser and cellist Evan Kahn in a program whose “main event” was the performance of Robert Schumann’s Opus 80 (second) piano trio in F major. This served as the concluding “bookend” of the program, which began with another Schumann selection, three selected movements from the Opus 102 Five Pieces in Folk Style, a duo for cello and piano. Between these two pieces Scarfe gave a solo performance of the first and third movements from Samuel Barber’s Opus 20 Excursions, after which he was joined by Weiser for the first movement (entitled “Relaxed Grooves”) of John Adams 1995 suite Road Movies.

Scarfe provided remarks for each of these selections. Such commentary is often risky business, but Scarfe managed to find that “sweet spot” between saying too little and saying too much. It was clear that he had cultivated a strong personal attachment to each of the selections; but it was just as clear that, for the entire evening, the experience was all about the music taking priority over the musicians.

Both of the Schumann selections were composed during a particularly productive period in his life. (Just look at the difference between the opus numbers.) Where the trio was concerned, this was also a period of retrospective reflection. The first movement of the trio includes a quotation taken from a much earlier song cycle, the Opus 39 Liederkreis, appropriating the theme of the second song, “Intermezzo.”

Schumann composed three piano trios. The first of these, Opus 63 in D minor, was composed in the same year as Opus 80, 1847. The third trio, Opus 110 in G minor, came much later in 1851. Unless I am mistaken, my only previous encounters with any of them took place at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music (SFCM). (All three of last night’s performers are SFCM alumni.) By the same account, I was glad to have an opportunity to listen to some of Barber’s piano music, since, these days, encounters with any of his music are few and far between. Adams has fared much better in garnering attention, but it was still a pleasure to experience the playfulness that Scarfe and Weiser brought to his music.

The entire program took place in a setting that was both casual and intimate, which is exactly what good chamber music listening requires.

SFO Announces 100th Anniversary Concert

1940s photograph of SFO founder Gaetano Merola conducting the SFO Orchestra (from the SFO Archives)

In addition to the three operas that San Francisco Opera (SFO) will present over the course of next month, there will be one final event to celebrate the Centennial Season. The Centennial Celebration concert, which launched the season this past September, will be complemented by a 100th Anniversary Concert, a musical account of SFO’s first century. The program will feature fifteen vocal soloists, the SFO Orchestra and Chorus, and three conductors.

Beginning with the conductors, Caroline H. Hume Music Director Eun Sun Kim will share the podium with former Music Director Donald Runnicles, and former Principal Guest Conductor Patrick Summers. The vocal soloists will be sopranos Karita Mattila, Ailyn Pérez, Patricia Racette, Nina Stemme, Heidi Stober, and Adela Zaharia, mezzo-sopranos Susan Graham and Daniela Mack, tenors Lawrence Brownlee, Michael Fabiano, Brandon Jovanovich, and Russell Thomas, baritones Lucas Meachem and Brian Mulligan, and bass-baritone Christian Van Horn. The current plan for the program (which is subject to change) is as follows:

• Prelude from Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg (Richard Wagner); San Francisco Opera Orchestra; Eun Sun Kim, conductor
• “Amour viens rendre à mon âme” from Orphée et Eurydice (Christoph Willibald Gluck); Daniela Mack; Donald Runnicles, conductor
• “Pur ti miro” from L’Incoronazione di Poppea (Claudio Monteverdi); Heidi Stober and Susan Graham; Patrick Summers, conductor
• “Odi il voto” from Ernani (Giuseppe Verdi); Russell Thomas; San Francisco Opera Chorus; Eun Sun Kim, conductor
• “Pierrot’s Tanzlied” from Die tote Stadt (Erich Wolfgang Korngold); Lucas Meachem; Donald Runnicles, conductor
• “Embroidery” aria from Peter Grimes (Benjamin Britten); Heidi Stober; Donald Runnicles, conductor
• “Vicino a te” from Andrea Chénier (Umberto Giordano); Michael Fabiano and Ailyn Pérez; Eun Sun Kim, conductor
• “Va, pensiero” from Nabucco (Giuseppe Verdi); San Francisco Opera Chorus; Patrick Summers, conductor
• “Ch’ella mi creda” from La Fanciulla del West (Giacomo Puccini); Brandon Jovanovich; Eun Sun Kim, conductor
• Act I finale from Tosca (Giacomo Puccini); Christian Van Horn; San Francisco Opera Chorus; Eun Sun Kim, conductor
• “Entrance of the Guests” from Tannhäuser (Richard Wagner); San Francisco Opera Chorus; Donald Runnicles, conductor
• “Batter my heart” from Doctor Atomic (John Adams); Brian Mulligan; Eun Sun Kim, conductor
• “Co chvila” from Jenůfa (Leoš Janáček); Karita Mattila; Donald Runnicles, conductor
• “Losing my mind” from Follies (Stephen Sondheim); Patricia Racette; Patrick Summers, conductor
• “Ah, je veux vivre” from Roméo et Juliette (Charles Gounod); Adela Zaharia; Eun Sun Kim, conductor
• “Ombra mai fu” from Serse (Xerxes) (George Frideric Handel); Susan Graham; Patrick Summers, conductor
• “Prosti, nebesnoye sozdanye” from Pique Dame (Piotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky); Brandon Jovanovich; 
• Donald Runnicles, conductor
• “Là ci darem la mano” from Don Giovanni (Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart); Heidi Stober and Christian Van Horn; Eun Sun Kim, conductor
• “Cessa di più resistere” from Il Barbiere di Siviglia (Gioachino Rossini); Lawrence Brownlee; San Francisco Opera Chorus; Patrick Summers, conductor
• Liebestod from Tristan und Isolde (Richard Wagner); Nina Stemme; Donald Runnicles, conductor
• “Ave Signor” from Mefistofele (Arrigo Boito); San Francisco Opera Chorus; Eun Sun Kim, conductor

The entire program should last approximately three hours with one intermission.

This concert will be given only one performance, beginning at 6 p.m. on Friday, June 16. Ticket prices range from $30 to $350; and, depending on location, there is a facility fee of either $2 or $3 per ticket. All tickets may be purchased in the outer lobby of the War Memorial Opera House at 301 Van Ness Avenue or by calling the Box Office at 415-864-3330. Box Office hours are 10 a.m.–5 p.m. on Monday and 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Tuesday through Saturday. In addition, there will be a livestream (no on-demand access) on the entire program; the charge will be $27.50. Web pages are available both for tickets to the Opera House and for the livestream. Finally, those going to the Opera House will have the option of purchasing dinner packages (which will be sold separately from the tickets for the performance). A single Web page has been created with hyperlinks for the different dinner options. Tickets may also again be purchased through the Box Office.

A Question About John Adams New Opera

What was the Prelude that begins Richard Wagner's Das Rheingold doing at the start of the Battle of Actium? 

A Second Look at John Adams’ “Grand Opera”

Yesterday afternoon my wife and I returned to the War Memorial Opera House for a second encounter with John Adams’ latest opera, Antony and Cleopatra, this time from the Box seats we have held for over fifteen years of San Francisco Opera (SFO) subscriptions. Readers may recall that, after my first encounter, I questioned whether Adams’ music had done justice to William Shakespeare’s command of iambic pentameter. In discussing our first encounter with my wife, I wondered whether any music could do justice to iambic pentameter without devolving into banal singsong.

Yesterday I recalled that not only iambic pentameter but also Shakespeare’s iambic pentameter could be given a fair shake in at least one musical genre. When I was in high school, I knew a fellow student that would sing a tune called “Shakespeare Blues.” The idea was that he would fit familiar Shakespeare couplets into a twelve-bar blues pattern, and the result worked like a charm. Needless to say, twelve-bar blues never finds its way into Adams Antony and Cleopatra score!

More importantly, however, yesterday’s seating gave me a much better perspective on Adams’ approach to instrumentation. I realized that the ensemble was far larger than I could take in from my angle of viewing. However, as had been the case a little less than a year ago in the SFO production of Ludwig van Beethoven’s Opus 72 Fidelio, Music Director Eun Sun Kim clearly put a good deal of thought into how all of those instrumental resources should be configured.

From the audience point of view, almost the entire string section was grouped on the left. The right was then divided into parallel ranks with the winds closest to the podium and the brass behind the winds. Behind the brass one encountered a generous panoply of percussion instruments. Finally, the center-rear area was shared by Chester Englander on cimbalom and Laura Poe on celeste. From the listener’s point of view, Kim’s configuration afforded greater clarity for the winds and brass, which tended to develop the thematic lines with textured accompaniment from the string passages. Needless to say, Kim knew exactly how to balance these resources against the many different vocal dispositions on stage, including those of the SFO Regular Chorus, directed by John Keene.

While my experience of the orchestra was enhanced from by vantage point, my impressions of both the libretto and the staging tended to decline with my second encounter. Most important is that the sense of “experienced time” tended to drag out as the narrative plodded its way to the deaths of the two protagonists. To some extent, these deaths are overshadowed by what is probably the most chilling episode in the entire opera. This is a rousing speech that Octavian (tenor Paul Appleby) delivers to an audience that hangs on his every word. As I had previously observed, this marked the beginning of Octavian’s rise above the other members of the triumvirate, Antony (bass-baritone Gerald Finley) and Lepidus (bass-baritone Philip Skinner); and Director Elkhanah Pulitzer staged this as an object lesson in how fascism is born.

Bitten by the asp, Cleopatra (Amina Edris) faces death in her most regal attire (photograph by Cory Weaver, courtesy of SFO)

The problem is that this episode was so intense that the subsequent deaths of the two title characters almost seemed inconsequential. Mind you, there is all that confusion about who dies when that turns the narrative into a rather frustrating muddle. However, once Cleopatra (soprano Amina Edris) knows that Antony is really dead, even the most attentive viewer would be forgiven for wishing that she would “get on with it” and let the asp do its thing!

SFO: Grand Opera for Our Times?

Following up on the San Francisco Opera (SFO) festivities for the world premiere performance of John Adams’ latest opera, Antony and Cleopatra, this past Saturday, last night I experienced my own “first taste” of this new composition during its second performance at the War Memorial Opera House. As was observed a little over a month ago, Adams provided his own libretto, for the most part an adaptation of the play by William Shakespeare with the same title. Working with consultation provided by Elkhanah Pulitzer and Lucia Scheckner, Adams drew upon texts from other Shakespeare plays, as well as “supplementary passages” from Plutarch, Virgil, and other classical texts.

Pulitzer directed the staging, and Scheckner served as dramaturg. The primary “concept” behind that staging had more to do with Thirties Hollywood films than with Rome’s transition from republic to empire. This involved an elegantly elaborate system of panels, designed by Mimi Lien, which was conveniently configured to reveal “windows” of different sizes and shapes to present different episodes from the narrative. Thus, rather than watching a juxtaposition of scenes that one would see in a movie, the viewer was guided from one region in the field of view to another as the scenes changed. The result was a context of “wide-screen cinema,” which seemed to suggest a return to the “grand opera” of the nineteenth century through a vehicle of the twentieth. That perspective tended provided just the right “contemporary” setting for Adams’ music.

Following up on Adams’ many partnerships with director Peter Sellars, a production solidly grounded in a literary foundation was a welcome relief from “shock value eye candy.” Adams was far more than capable when it came to establishing a “narrative spinal cord” for the libretto; and Pulitzer’s approaches to staging consistently followed the path of that narrative, rather than undermining it with razzle-dazzle distractions. Nevertheless, the duration of the evening clocked in at around three and one-half hours (including a 25-minute intermission). As the narrative seemed to approach Cleopatra’s death at a snail’s pace, one could be forgiven for wishing that the performance would “cut to the chase.”

The tension of the forced marriage of Antony (Gerald Finley, right) to Octavia (Elizabeth DeShong) (photography by Cory Weaver, courtesy of SFO)

Nevertheless, bass-baritone Gerald Finley and soprano Amina Edris (who was born in Cairo) brought compelling and convincing performances to their respective title roles. Those that know their Roman history know that this was a period during with the Republic was ruled by a triumvirate, which consisted of Antony, Octavian (tenor Paul Appleby), and Lepidus (bass-baritone Philip Skinner). These roles established the context of Roman politics and foreshadowed the rise of Octavian (later Caesar Augustus) above the other two.

One also observes Octavian trying to control Antony through marriage. After the death of Antony’s wife, he is led into a wedding with Octavian’s sister Octavia (mezzo Elizabeth DeShong). As a result the overall network of personalities is one of “strategic connections,” given a helpful diagram in the program book.

The one significant problem is that the libretto discloses a complex web of interactions, which Shakespeare’s text managed to unfold with his deft capacity for rhetoric. We know that he could guide his attentive audience through complications and conniving schemes by virtue of his skillful management of iambic pentameter. Unfortunately, Adams’ music never rose to the convincing clarity of Shakespeare’s iambs.

The compelling passages in the score come in the instrumental lines, whose repetitive qualities evoke an intense depiction of the rumblings of Fate. There is also a clear “sense of place” in Egypt when the score calls for extended passages performed on cimbalom (played by Chester Englander). When it comes to the vocal lines, however, Adams’ capacity for melody never rises to the heights of spoken delivery of the “source text.”

Taken as a whole, Antony and Cleopatra has its assets and its liabilities; and, hopefully, some of those liabilities will get straightened out over the course of subsequent performances.

Merola Grand Finale’s Adventurous Breadth

Last night in the War Memorial Opera House, the Merola Opera Program wrapped up its annual Summer Festival with its Merola Grand Finale concert. Each of the 25 vocalists that served as Merola Artists over the last few months was given at least one opportunity to perform, and the entire production was staged by another Merola Artist, Matthew J. Schulz. As in the past, the set was kept to a minimum; and all the vocalists wore formal evening attire. The orchestra was conducted by Patrick Furrer, who launched the evening with the overture to Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s K. 492 opera The Marriage of Figaro. The entire performance (including one intermission) ran for about three hours.

As usual, most of the content involved familiar composers and, for the most part, familiar operas. Indeed, Schulz chose to follow the overture with the opening scene of K. 492, the pair of duets sung by the title character (bass-baritone William Socolof) and his bride-to-be Susanna (soprano Ashley Marie Robillard), which lays down the foundation for the many complications that will follow over the course of the opera’s four acts. The selection was followed by most of the “usual suspects” of nineteenth-century opera. In “order of appearance” these were Charles Gounod, Georges Bizet, Hector Berlioz, Gaetano Donizetti, Giacomo Puccini, Giuseppe Verdi, and Pietro Mascagni. Following past tradition, the program concluded with “Tutto nel mondo è burla” (everything in the world is a jest), which concludes Verdi’s Falstaff.

However, what made this Finale different from all other Finales (if the reader will pardon that appropriated turn of phrase) was the inclusion of two African-American composers from two successive centuries. The first of these was William Grant Still, represented by the performance of a selection from his one-act opera “Highway 1, USA,” first performed in 1963. The score was originally composed in the Forties with a libretto by Verna Arvey that would anticipate the tribulations-of-being-Black narrative that would come to public attention when Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun opened on Broadway in 1959.  Like Hansberry’s Younger family, Arvey’s characters are a husband (Bob) with dreams beyond his grasp (baritone Scott Lee) and his frustrated wife Mary (soprano Aida Evans). Still composed nine operas over the course of his prolific career, and even a slight taste of his approach to opera was welcome indeed.

The other composer was Jeanine Tesori, who is probably better known for her five Tony Award nominations than for her ventures into opera. Composed in 2019, Blue is a two-act opera that marks a significant departure from the world of Broadway and off-Broadway. She worked with Tazewell Thompson as her librettist, who, in turn, drew upon accounts of “the black experience” by writers such as Claude Brown (Manchild in the Promised Land), James Baldwin (The Fire Next Time), and Ta-Nehisi Coates (Between the World and Me). The lead character is a Mother (mezzo Veena Akama-Makia) living in a Harlem apartment with her husband and her son.

Kitty Oppenheimer (Nikola Adele Printz) expressing her strained relationship with her husband Robert (William Socolof), who is absorbed only in the Manhattan Project (photograph by Kristen Loken, courtesy of Carla Befera & Co.)

From a personal point of view, the most welcome offering on the program was a reencounter with “Am I in your light?” sung by Kitty Oppenheimer (mezzo Nikola Adele Printz) in John Adams’ Doctor Atomic. This opera was premiered by the San Francisco Opera on October 1, 2005. Since Adams’ Antony & Cleopatra will be receiving its world premiere in the Opera House this coming September 10, this brief selection from an earlier opera served to whet the taste for Adams’ latest undertaking.

SFO: First “Centennial” Opera to be New Adams

The first opera to be performed in the coming Centennial Season of the San Francisco Opera (SFO) will be the latest opera composed by John Adams, Antony and Cleopatra. This work was commissioned by SFO in conjunction with Liceu Opera Barcelona, Teatro Massimo di Palermo, and the Metropolitan Opera; but, because of its centennial significance, SFO will enjoy the privilege of giving the opera its world premiere performance. It will also mark the post-pandemic return of a full SFO season.

Eun Sun Kim conducting a reading of John Adams’ score this past December (photograph by Kristen Loken, courtesy of SFO)

As might be expected, the libretto of Adams’ opera involves an adaptation of the play by William Shakespeare with the same title. Adams himself worked on that adaptation with consultation provided by Elkhanah Pulitzer and Lucia Scheckner. Pulitzer will also direct the staging of the opera, and Scheckner will serve as dramaturg. The conductor will be Caroline H. Hume Music Director Eun Sun Kim.

As one can see from the Wikipedia page, Shakespeare’s play had one of the largest casts he had summoned to present his narrative. However, there are only five principal characters. In the opera performance the role of Cleopatra will be sung by soprano Amina Edris, who is, herself, Egyptian (as well as being and Adler alumna). Antony will be sung by bass-baritone Gerald Finley. Those that know their Roman history probably know that, following the assassination of Julius Caesar, the Roman Republic was led by a triumvirate, which included Mark Antony, Octavius Caesar, and Lepidus. Tenor Paul Appleby will sing the role of Caesar, and Lepidus will be sung by bass Philip Skinner (also an Adler alumnus). The only one of Shakespeare’s principal character to be omitted from the opera libretto is Sextus Pompey, who led a rebellion that tried to overthrow the triumvirate. (Those who know the line “Knew you not Pompey?” from Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar probably also know that it refers to Sextus’ father, who had been in a triumvirate with Julius, which dissolved when Caesar took full leadership.)

In the context of this cast of characters, it is worth noting that Shakespeare was not the only source for Adams’ libretto. Plutarch (46–119) wrote biographies of both Julius and Octavius (later Augustus) Caesar. Virgil, on the other hand, wrote his Aeneid in service to Augustus. He had previously written the Georgics, which he apparently read to Octavius after the latter had defeated Antony and Cleopatra at the Battle of Actium. There are other classical texts that Adams may have consulted (such as The Twelve Caesars of Suetonius); but Virgil and Plutarch appear to be the primary influences (unless I am informed otherwise).

This production will be given seven performances at 7:30 p.m. on September 10, 15, 23, and 27, and October 5 and at 2 p.m. on September 18 and October 2. Ticket prices range from $26 to $408; and, depending on location, there is a facility fee of either $2 or $3 per ticket. There will also be a livestream of the September 18 matinee. Virtual tickets will be available later this month for $27.50. At that time they will be processed through the Web page for digital content. All other tickets may be purchased in the outer lobby of the War Memorial Opera House at 301 Van Ness Avenue or by calling the Box Office at 415-864-3330. Box Office hours are 10 a.m.–5 p.m. on Monday and 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Tuesday through Saturday. There is also a Web page with hyperlinks for purchasing tickets for all seven of the performances.

Operas to be Excerpted for Merola Grand Finale

The programming for the annual Merola Grand Finale has not yet been totally finalized. However, the Merola Opera Program has now released the list of operas that will provide excerpts for the program. That list includes the following:

• Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: The Marriage of Figaro (K. 492)
• Giacomo Puccini: Madama Butterfly and La bohème
• Georges Bizet: Les pêcheurs de perles (the pearl fishers) and Carmen
• Charles Gounod: Roméo et Juliette and Faust
• Pietro Mascagni: L’amico Fritz
• George Frideric Handel: Amadigi di Gaula (Amadis of Gaul, HWV 11)
• Hector Berlioz: L’enfance du Christ (the childhood of Christ)
• Gaetano Donizetti: Don Pasquale, L’elisir d’amore (the elixir of love), and Lucia di Lammermoor
• Jeanine Tesori: Blue
• William Grand Still: Highway 1, USA
• Benjamin Britten: Albert Herring
• John Adams: Doctor Atomic
• Giuseppe Verdi: Falstaff
• Richard Strauss: Ariadne auf Naxos

All of this season’s Merolini will participate. In alphabetical order they are:

• Veena Akama-Makia (Mezzo-soprano)
• Amanda Batista (Soprano)
• Cody Bowers (Countertenor)
• Le Bu (Bass-baritone)
• Andres Cascante (Baritone)
• Shawn Chang (Pianist/Coach)
• Edwin Jhamaal Davis (Bass)
• Daniel Luis Espinal (Tenor)
• Adia Evans (Soprano)
• Gongming Jiang (Pianist/Coach)
• Chance Jonas-O'Toole (Tenor)
• SeungYun Kim (Bass-baritone)
• Maggie Kinabrew (Soprano)
• Scott Lee (Baritone)
• Chelsea Lehnea (Soprano)
• Yang Lin (Pianist/Coach)
• Celeste Morales (Soprano)
• Artyom Pak (Pianist/Coach)
• Jonghyun Park (Tenor)
• Olivia Prendergast (Soprano)
• Nikola Adele Printz (Mezzo-soprano)
• Maggie Reneé (Mezzo-soprano)
• Deborah Robertson (Pianist/Coach)
• Ashley Marie Robillard (Soprano)
• Arianna Rodriguez (Soprano)
• Sahel Salam (Tenor)
• Moisés Salazar (Tenor)
• Matthew J. Schulz (Stage Director)
• Olivia Smith (Soprano)
• William Socolof (Bass-baritone)
• Erin Wagner (Mezzo-soprano)

The conductor will be Patrick Furrer, who has been a staff member of the Metropolitan Opera since 2011. As observed above, the staging of the entire production will be directed by Schultz. The performance will begin at 7:30 pm. on Saturday evening, August 20. Ticket prices will be $53, $43, and $28. The performance will take place in the War Memorial Opera House, which is located at 301 Van Ness Avenue on the northwest corner of Grove Street.

Tickets will be sold at the Box Office in the outer lobby, and they can be purchased online through a Web page on the San Francisco Opera Web site. The hyperlink for tickets leads to a Web page that displays which sections of the Opera House are available at which prices. This will facilitate seat selection through a hyperlink to a Web page that finalizes the purchase. For those wishing to purchase tickets at the Box Office, it is open on Monday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and on Tuesday through Friday from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Tickets can also be purchased by calling the Box Office telephone number, which is 415-864-3330.

Sibelius Saves the Day as SFS Season Ends

Last night in Davies Symphony Hall Music Director Esa-Pekka Salonen led the first of three performances of the final subscription program in the 2021–22 season of the San Francisco Symphony (SFS). This was basically an overture-concerto-symphony program with both the overture and the concerto receiving their first SFS performances. These were, respectively, Steven Stucky’s “Radical Light” and John Adams’ “Must the Devil Have All the Good Tunes?” with pianist Víkingur Ólafsson. The symphony was Jean Sibelius’ Opus 82 (fifth) in E-flat major.

Salonen was clearly in his comfort zone conducting this symphony. There is a sense of a vast expanse that is so intricately crafted that, in 1919, the composer pared down the version he had completed in 1915 from four movements to three. While the overall duration of the symphony is half an hour, there is an intensity to the pace of all three of those movements through which one loses all sense of the passing of time. Indeed, the concluding coda is so meticulous in its extensive use of rests that time only “gets back into joint” with the concluding perfect cadence:

from the Wikipedia page for Sibelius’ Opus 82

If Salonen provided a first-rate account of Sibelius’ command of craft at its finest, whether it involved imaginative phrasing or ingenious instrumentation, neither of the preceding offerings rose to those same heights. Stucky composed “Radical Light” for Salonen during the latter’s tenure with the Los Angeles Philharmonic. It was originally composed for a series of concerts planned as a Sibelius festival. Apparently, “Radical Light” was performed between Sibelius’ final (seventh) symphony, Opus 105 in C major, and his intensely ambiguous Opus 63 (fourth) in A minor.

Stucky’s rich instrumentation provided an excellent complement to Sibelius’ own approaches to orchestration. However, Stucky’s score was far richer in the percussion section while, ironically, ignoring the timpani entirely. It was decidedly briefer than any of the Sibelius symphonies. However, once the opening gestures had been established, the attentive listener could be forgiven for wondering if the composer had run out of things to say. Indeed, there was almost a sense of “enough is enough” that set in less than halfway through the performance.

Even more disappointing was Adams’ latest venture into music for piano and orchestra, composed for Gustavo Dudamel and the Los Angeles Philharmonic and first performed on March 7, 2019 with Yuja Wang as piano soloist. There has always been a prankish side to Adams’ work, the best example of which remains his raucous “Grand Pianola Music” with two pianos, abundant percussion, and three female vocalists channeling The Supremes. Where his latest concertante work is concerned, the question is not one of who has “all the good tunes” as it is one of when the piano will back off and let us listen to the rest of the orchestra.

Mind you, there is no shortage of good raucous humor in the score. Indeed, the gags play out from the very first measures, which are sure to remind anyone of my age that the theme music for the television detective series Peter Gunn first brought Henry Mancini to public attention. Nevertheless, none of Adams’ “good tunes” ever rise to the wit that abounded back in his “Grand Pianola” days; and, as a result, I came away from this music more with wistful melancholy than with a bounce in my step.

Fortunately, there were a few intimations of such bounce in Ólafsson’s encore selection. He played the three very brief selections that Béla Bartók collected under the title Hungarian Folksongs from the Csík District. Simplicity and quietude were just the right antidote to assist recovering from the excesses of Adams’ concerto.