Latest news with #DaviesSymphonyHall
San Francisco Chronicle
a day ago
- Entertainment
- San Francisco Chronicle
Review: Sheku and Isata Kanneh-Mason dazzle in S.F. Symphony recital with rare sonatas
Young artists can't make it big without playing the big concertos — long, technically difficult works that take years to perfect. By this metric, siblings Sheku and Isata Kanneh-Mason have certainly earned their respective places in the spotlight. Last season, Bay Area audiences were treated to the former soloing in Dmitri Shostakovich's Cello Concerto No. 1 with the San Francisco Symphony, and it surely won't be long before the latter digs into her piano repertoire with the orchestra here. But for anyone who somehow missed the siblings' previous local performances, including a joint recital at Davies Symphony Hall in 2022, the pair's return on Sunday, June 1, as part of the Symphony's Great Performers Series, made a most illuminating introduction to their larger-than-life artistry. Otherworldly legato distinguished Sheku's performance, especially in the evening's first work, Felix Mendelssohn's songlike Cello Sonata No. 1. Each movement of the piece arced with the appropriate drama, but the phrasing was mostly subtle, the sound refined. Playing with husky, high-up-the-string fingerings and his bow near the fingerboard, Sheku created sounds to make the listener lean in. You'd be forgiven not to have appreciated, at first, the magnitude of Isata's contribution — her physical movements at the keyboard were that efficient. But these pretty cello melodies wouldn't stay afloat without the pianist's finger-twisting figurations, and Isata's flowed easily. She imbued the dangling chords of Mendelssohn's Andante with a brooding elegance. She also beautifully balanced the cascading arpeggiations in the other piano-centric piece on Sunday's first half, Gabriel Fauré's urgent Cello Sonata No. 1. Even Francis Poulenc's frothy Cello Sonata, which featured at the end of the program, had surprising depth between the pert march of its first movement and the zany dance of its finale. The rapturous Cavatine that came between was a masterclass in the slow build, Isata's fingers here coaxing bottomless expression from the keys. None of these sonatas are much played, and all were welcome on this recital. But the real revelation among the evening's repertoire was a two-movement character piece written expressly for the Kanneh-Masons by 41-year-old British composer Natalie Klouda. There's plenty of rustling and rattling in Klouda's 'Tor Mordôn,' whose title is derived from the ancient languages of Great Britain and means 'sea mount of light.' The composition's extravagant landscapes swarm with dragons and frogs, the stuff of Antiguan and Welsh legends — a nod to the Kanneh-Masons' heritage. On Sunday, it all translated wonderfully into music. Over Isata's murmuring lines, Sheku's glissandos roiled. His icy harmonics sliced up and down the fingerboard; her harmonies hung in strange clouds. With luck, the Kanneh-Masons will lend 'Tor Mordôn' to other performers. But have no doubt about it, this is their piece.
San Francisco Chronicle
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- San Francisco Chronicle
Review: Hilary Hahn draws a packed house for Esa-Pekka Salonen and S.F. Symphony
Like a slow drumroll, four strikes of the timpani herald the beginning of Beethoven's Violin Concerto. This time, they also announced Hilary Hahn's triumphant return to San Francisco. The American violinist resumed performing earlier this spring after taking a monthslong hiatus due to injury. In past seasons, Hahn had come to the Bay Area most often as a recitalist, which made this San Francisco Symphony concert on Thursday, May 29 — one of Music Director Esa-Pekka Salonen's final programs before he departs the orchestra in mid-June — that much more special. More Information Esa-Pekka Salonen's final concerts Esa-Pekka Salonen & Hilary Hahn: San Francisco Symphony. 7:30 p.m. Friday, May 30; 2 p.m. Sunday, June 1. $49-$350. Salonen Conducts Sibelius 7: San Francisco Symphony. 7:30 p.m. June 6-7; 2 p.m. June 8. $49-$179. Salonen Conducts Mahler 2: San Francisco Symphony. 7:30 p.m. Thursday-Saturday, June 12-14. $145-$399. All shows are at Davies Symphony Hall, 201 Van Ness Ave., S.F. 415-864-6000. For more information and to purchase tickets, visit Beethoven's concerto, however, is as ubiquitous as classical music gets. How could it be otherwise, with such singable melodies? The embellishments throughout the solo part, pearly scales and arpeggios, resemble a violinist's warmup — simple in theory and yet almost impossibly difficult to hit in front of an audience. Hahn augmented the concerto's technical scope with her choice of cadenzas, the same substantial ones by turn-of-the-century violinist Fritz Kreisler that she's been playing since her days as a child prodigy. Indeed, this performance wasn't so very different from the recording she made at 18 or even from her earlier German debut with the piece in a now-famous televised concert. This isn't to slight the Hahn of 2025. She was simply that rare young artist who seemed to emerge fully formed — with tasteful interpretations, stellar bow technique and near-flawless intonation. After the orchestra's elegant introduction, Hahn's superpowers were on display from the first ascending octaves through the final chords. The bravura passages, in which she exerted extraordinary control over the dropping of her left-hand fingers, were brilliant and clear. The slow movement's variations were lacy fine, the wispy high notes resounding like tiny, perfect bells. And the musicality was a touch more expressive from the mature violinist. The streams of triplets in the opening Allegro, and the silvery slurs in a dolorous corner of the Rondo finale, seemed more considered. Here and there (and in the encore, Steven Banks' 'Through My Mother's Eyes,' a schmaltzy showpiece with a big heart), the phrases broadened more than they once did. Some three decades into her career and with a full house rooting for her, Hahn appeared to revel anew in this old music. Her fans made an impressive audience for Beethoven's Fourth Symphony in the first half of the program — a performance that, under Salonen's leadership, struggled both rhythmically and dramatically. If the Fourth — a refined work tucked between Beethoven's heroic 'Eroica' and fateful Fifth — is perhaps the least played of the composer's nine symphonies, it's not the piece's fault, only the programmers'. At any rate, the San Francisco Symphony has engaged Dutch conductor Jaap van Zweden for a Beethoven cycle covering three seasons, beginning in 2026. Let the Fourth soon sound again.
San Francisco Chronicle
5 days ago
- Entertainment
- San Francisco Chronicle
What does a conductor really do? Unveiling the mystique behind the baton
If you go to an orchestra concert, it's pretty easy to figure out what most of the people onstage are contributing to the overall experience. The violinists and cellists move their bows back and forth across the strings, providing lush, sweeping carpets of sound. The flutists tootle sweetly and the percussionist gives an occasional thwack on the big bass drum. Meanwhile, everyone's attention is focused on the man or woman standing on the podium, waving a baton and contributing… what, exactly? It's a legitimate question. Classical music devotees and concert hall neophytes alike tend to take it for granted that it's the conductor, more than anyone, who lends each orchestral performance its distinctive character. The conductor has become practically a cultural archetype, the object of endless fascination and the subject of breathless biographies and Hollywood films. Recent examples include Bradley Cooper's Leonard Bernstein biopic ' Maestro ' (2023) and the Oscar-nominated ' Tár ' (2022), starring Cate Blanchett. So when the music sizzles and soars, the conductor gets the credit. When it bogs down, or fails to cohere into a meaningful whole, the conductor takes the blame. More Information Esa-Pekka Salonen's Final Concerts Esa-Pekka Salonen & Hilary Hahn: San Francisco Symphony. 2 p.m. Thursday, May 29; 7:30 p.m. Friday, May 30; 2 p.m. Sunday, June 1. $49-$350. Salonen Conducts Sibelius 7: San Francisco Symphony. 7:30 p.m. June 6-7; 2 p.m. June 8. $49-$179. Salonen Conducts Mahler 2: San Francisco Symphony. 7:30 p.m. Thursday-Saturday, June 12-14. $145-$399. All shows are at Davies Symphony Hall, 201 Van Ness Ave., S.F. 415-864-6000. For more information and to purchase tickets, visit But what are they actually doing up there? Why is the conductor so important to a performance, and what are the skills that make one conductor's work audibly better than another's? These questions are always relevant, but they've become even more urgent as Bay Area audiences prepare for the departure of San Francisco Symphony Music Director Esa-Pekka Salonen after his final performance on June 14. (The search for Salonen's replacement is currently under way, according to Symphony spokesperson Taryn Lott. But the process can take several years, she added, and 'like most hiring practices, much of the process will not take place publicly to protect the privacy of those involved.') To understand what makes a conductor's contributions to any individual performance distinctive — as well as the importance of a music director's ongoing presence in the life of an orchestra — is to begin to grasp the magnitude of the impending loss. 'A music director, because they work with an orchestra for 16 or 18 weeks out of the year, has a real impact on that orchestra's sound,' said John Mangum, who served as the Symphony's artistic administrator in 2011-14 before taking on the top executive posts at the Houston Symphony and, since last year, the Lyric Opera of Chicago. 'They don't just conduct great concerts. They take the lead in shaping the orchestra's sound, and their interests define the organization's artistic profile.' But even within the more limited scope of a one-week guest engagement or a single concert, a conductor wields enormous influence over the musical outcome. Nicole Paiement, artistic and general director of San Francisco's Opera Parallèle, likens a conductor to the architect of a musical performance, and the individual musicians to the carpenters, masons and electricians responsible for their particular tasks. 'Members of an orchestra are great musicians, and they know how to play their parts better than the conductor does,' Paiement said. 'But what they don't have is the whole picture of the piece. As the conductor, you are the only one who has an image in your mind of how everything fits together. It's up to you to keep everyone together in a single vision.' Shepherding some 100 skilled artists through a performance that is simultaneously precise and expressively free, with a coherent interpretive point of view that makes an audience hear something new and lively in what is often familiar repertoire, can seem like an implausibly complicated feat. It requires an ability to track large numbers of simultaneous musical strands in real time. It calls for interpersonal gifts that can inspire musicians to do their best in the service of the conductor's vision. (Older generations of conductors leaned more heavily on tyrannical browbeating — a technique that, like spanking children, has happily gone out of fashion.) It also entails cultivating and mastering an enormous gestural language, an array of physical and facial cues that allow conductors to communicate wordlessly but unambiguously with members of the orchestra. A lot of that multitasking can be invisible to an audience, because most of the work of conducting takes place in rehearsal. That's where interpretive priorities are set, difficult transitions are ironed out and agreements are worked out in advance. 'What the audience sees at a performance is really the final touches of what a conductor does,' says Patti Niemi, the acting principal percussionist of the San Francisco Opera Orchestra. 'By then, they're mostly a traffic cop. Their primary purpose is everything they do up to that point.' Historically speaking, conductors weren't always part of the orchestral tradition. Until about 1820, an orchestra's principal requirement was someone to beat time, and that task could be entrusted to a member of the orchestra — typically the concertmaster (the leader of the first violin section) or someone at the harpsichord or piano. Even today, there are ensembles such as San Francisco's New Century Chamber Orchestra that perform without a conductor. Other groups could do it if they had to. 'Truth be told, any orchestra could probably play Beethoven's Fifth without a conductor,' said violinist René Mandel, who plays frequently with the San Francisco Symphony and is the former executive director of the Berkeley Symphony Orchestra. 'You could have the concertmaster leading off, and the orchestra could do it on their own with the concertmaster guiding them through certain spots. But, he added, 'that doesn't mean you don't need a conductor.' The importance of the conductor grew steadily throughout the 19th century, as orchestras became larger and as the music written for them became more complex. At the same time, the aesthetics of the Romantic era contributed to a regard for the conductor as an exalted poetic figure, second only to the actual composer. The aura surrounding a conductor still lingers, because there does seem to be something almost other-worldly about what they do. Talk to any musician about the conductor's role, and you can be sure that a vein of vague magical thinking will surface before the conversation is more than a few minutes old. 'For me, the best conductors have an intangible quality to what they do,' said Mangum. 'It's hard to pin down, but you know it as soon as you hear it. They have a vision in mind of what they want to achieve musically, and they can convey that to the orchestra physically or verbally or both.' A conductor such as the late Bernard Haitink, according to Edwin Outwater, 'can create so much beauty just in the way they draw sound from an orchestra.' 'It's the way he moved,' continued Outwater, who heads the conducting program at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, 'and the way he elicited the music physically and with his eyes and face. A conductor connects a group of people and gets them on the same page so they can sound beautiful and expressive.' Mystical woo-woo aside, though, the list of hard practicalities a conductor is responsible for is strikingly long. The most basic task is simply keeping the beat so that every member of the orchestra knows where they are at any given moment. As with nearly every aspect of the craft, there are countless ways to do this, and each conductor finds a personal technique. Most use a baton so as to show a downbeat as crisply and precisely as possible; others prefer to use just their hands. Even the simple act of beating time contains multitudes from an interpretive standpoint. A sharp downward chop of the baton, for example, prompts the orchestra to play a phrase in a crisply articulated fashion, while a fluid side-to-side motion elicits something gentler and more mellifluous. The conductor also has to keep tabs on which musicians have been silent for a while, and let them know when it's time for them to resume playing. 'You don't want to cue the violins while they have the big melody,' explains Paiement. 'That's annoying to the violinists. But an oboist who hasn't played for 52 bars and suddenly enters? To acknowledge that entrance and say, 'Here we go, this is where you come in' — that's totally important.' Beyond these practical nuts and bolts lies a more elusive set of skills: the art of conveying mood, phrasing and articulation to the orchestra through silent communication. (If there's one thing conductors and orchestra musicians agree on, it's that the less a conductor talks, the better.) During a lesson at the Conservatory last spring, Outwater coached Chih-Yao Chang, a Taiwanese graduate student in the conducting program, through a tricky section of Stravinsky's ballet 'Petrushka,' while pianist Peter Grünberg served as a stand-in for the orchestra. The lesson involved an occasional correction of rhythm or timing, but most of it was devoted to helping Chang get the right response from a hypothetical orchestra. In the opening measures, which depict a country fair, Outwater demonstrated how he would conduct the passage, then prompted Chang for a description. 'What changed about the gesture?' he asked. 'What did I do differently?' 'It's lighter,' Chang said. 'Lighter, yeah, and bigger. More open. The music is energetic, but it has to have some buoyancy too,' Outwater added. Later, he urged Chang to keep in mind that 'Petrushka' is a ballet. 'The next step is not to conduct but to dance with the orchestra,' Outwater noted. 'Sometimes you direct the orchestra if you want to bring them through a phrase, but for a lot of this rhythmic music you have to create a feeling of dancing together.' Chang, who started out as a flutist, switched to conducting in the wake of a lung injury. The difference between the two pursuits, he said, is striking. 'As a flutist, you only need to care about yourself and your score. But as a conductor, you're working with 60 or 70 people who all have different characters and different abilities,' Chang observed. 'How to combine everybody is very interesting to me.' Ultimately, the conductor's job is to fuse all those disparate musical sensibilities into a single interpretive voice. Just as a violinist or a bassoonist makes expressive choices in approaching a single phrase, the conductor uses the orchestra to shape an entire work. 'Fundamentally, a conductor's purpose is to use us as their instrument,' says the Opera Orchestra's Niemi. 'They make all the fundamental choices about a piece of music.' And the range of choices is practically infinite, as Outwater likes to demonstrate by invoking the opening line of Hamlet's soliloquy. ''To be or not to be' — those are six words on the page, but there are a thousand ways to say it,' he points out. 'Laurence Olivier says it one way, Kenneth Branagh says it another way. 'The same thing is true of the beginning of Beethoven's Fifth. There are four notes, but there are a million ways to do them that have multiple possibilities and meanings.'
San Francisco Chronicle
27-05-2025
- Entertainment
- San Francisco Chronicle
Morgan Freeman to bring ‘Symphonic Blues Experience' to the Bay Area
Morgan Freeman wants to immerse Bay Area music fans in the sounds of his home state of Mississippi. The actor, who turns 88 on Sunday, June 1, is bringing 'Morgan Freeman's Symphonic Blues Experience' to several Northern California venues this year, beginning with an evening at San Francisco's Davies Symphony Hall on July 25. The shows feature Freeman as host and narrator during a program of Delta Blues music by musicians from Clarksdale, Miss.'s Ground Zero Blues Club, which Freeman co-founded, in collaboration with local symphony orchestras. Thirteen dates have been announced so far, with more to come. Other Northern California stops on the tour include Stanford's Bing Auditorium on Nov. 19, Gallo Center for the Arts in Modesto on Nov. 21 and Sonoma State University's Green Music Center in Rohnert Park on Nov. 22. 'The Blues is not just music, it's history wrapped in rhythm, the echoes of lives lived and lost; heartache and hope all tangled together,' Freeman says in a trailer for the tour posted on YouTube. 'This is the story of people who turned hardship into something powerful, who found beauty in their sorrows, and who sang out loud when the world tried to keep them quiet.' The San Francisco performance kicks off the tour, which is presented in partnership with Visit Mississippi, Visit Clarksdale and Memphis Tourism. Tickets range from $79 to $300 and are on sale at The other local venues will make tickets available in June. 'This experience gives the blues its rightful place on the world's stage and ensures its legacy continues to echo through future generations,' Freeman said in a statement announcing the tour. Freeman, who won the best supporting actor Oscar for his role in Clint Eastwood's best picture-winning boxing drama ' Million Dollar Baby ' (2004), has been a ubiquitous presence in film and television since the 1970s, when he was a regular on PBS' 'The Electric Company.' Memorable films include the best picture-winning films 'Driving Miss Daisy' (1989) and 'Unforgiven' (1992) as well as beloved films such as 'The Shawshank Redemption' (1994), 'Se7en' (1995), ' The Bucket List ' (2007) and his role as Lucius Fox in Christopher Nolan's ' Dark Knight ' trilogy. Trained as both an actor and a dancer, Freeman was a member of the Opera Ring musical theater group in San Francisco in the early 1960s.
San Francisco Chronicle
03-05-2025
- Entertainment
- San Francisco Chronicle
Review: S.F. Symphony and Giancarlo Guerrero deliver orchestral showstoppers
Conductor Giancarlo Guerrero's two previous appearances with the San Francisco Symphony amply showcased his flair for colorful, dramatic music. After a two-year gap, he's back at Davies Symphony Hall with a program of glittering orchestral showpieces. The late Kaija Saariaho composed 'Asteroid 4179: Toutatis' in 2005 as a complement to a Berlin Philharmonic concert featuring Gustav Holst's 'The Planets.' The asteroid in question is tiny and irregularly shaped, and at about four minutes in length, the music matches the object's scale. In addition to the astronomical theme, there are the typical Saariaho trademarks: beautiful, ingeniously layered orchestration and power that wells up over the course of the work. The piece opens with crystalline transparency, a piccolo, percussion and celesta floating above the larger orchestra. Massed brass instruments interrupt, and after a brief climax, the orchestra dies away into silence. It was a thoughtful start to this flashy program heard on Friday, May 2, the first of two concerts at Davies, concluding on Saturday, May 3. Igor Stravinsky's great ballet score 'Petrushka' unfolds on a completely different scale, taking some 40 minutes to tell the story of three puppets brought to life by a magician. Guerrero led a taut, exciting account of the work, performed in Stravinsky's revised 1947 version. One of the Costa Rican conductor's superpowers is his ability to throw a spotlight on a piece's structure through knife-edge timing and control of dynamics. Another is knowing when to step back and let the musicians do their thing. Tight ensemble playing was a hallmark of this 'Petrushka.' At the same time, Guerrero gave associate principal flute Blair Francis Paponiu complete freedom in her beautifully played cadenza. The conductor's emphasis on sharply articulated rhythms paid off throughout the work, especially in 'The Grand Carnival' section, when competing bands seemingly play in different meters. Every crescendo and decrescendo was perfectly timed. Occasionally, a section or player was drowned out in the welter of sound. John Wilson's casual virtuosity on piano, positioned right in front of the conductor, was a highlight of the 'Russian Dance,' but Guerrero covered Wilson's playing too often in the opening tableau. The strings were sometimes obliterated by the brass. Nonetheless, this was a thrilling account of a great work. What do Stravinsky and Ottorino Respighi have in common? Both composers studied with Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, one of the great orchestrators of the 19th century, and both came away with enormous skill in handling huge forces. The second half of Friday's program was devoted to Respighi's 'Fountains of Rome' and 'Pines of Rome,' flamboyant blockbusters that have to walk a fine line to avoid turning into kitsch. (This is never an issue with Stravinsky.) Guerrero performed them with a straight face, and his enormous technical skill and ear for color and dynamics made this music sound better than perhaps it fundamentally is. The first work makes its way around Rome, picturing fountains in different locations throughout the day. The 'Valle Giulia' movement, with chiming winds and a prominent celesta part, seemingly pays homage to Richard Strauss' opera 'Der Rosenkavalier.' Special kudos to Marc Shapiro, whose celesta playing contributed beautifully to all four works on the program, and to principal oboe Eugene Izotov and principal flute Yubeen Kim for their work in both Respighi pieces. The brass, too, played brilliantly throughout. It's an oddity of 'Pines of Rome' that the splashy first movement, 'The Pines of the Villa Borghese,' sounds more like an actual fountain than anything in 'Fountains of Rome.' In 'Pines Near a Catacomb,' Guerrero finely judged every climax; principal trumpet Mark Inouye was magnificent in his moody offstage solo (and also in 'Petrushka'). Principal clarinet Carey Bell's long-breathed, introspective solo in 'The Pines of the Janiculum' was another highlight, as were the silken strings and oceanic sound Guerrero conjured. As for the last movement, 'The Pines of the Appian Way,' here Respighi generates excitement through some of the more obvious tricks in a composer's arsenal: antiphonal brass playing from the terrace, full-orchestra chromatic slides and an admittedly electrifying five-minute-long crescendo. The movement is intended to evoke marching Roman legions, but it might just as well be invoking Italian Fascists or Imperial Stormtroopers. We describe, you decide. San Francisco Classical Voice.
