concert review: Musicians of the San Francisco Symphony

Hurrah, I finally got to a live concert at Kohl Mansion, the first one since the Violins of Hope event two years and one month ago. Preconcert talks moved online; vaccination certificates and masks required; limited seating to allow for distancing.

The event was a chamber concert by musicians of the San Francisco Symphony. I've been to chamber music concerts by symphony musicians before; they have the advantage over regular chamber music concerts, which are invariably strings with or without a piano, that it's easy enough to recruit other instruments to play. So you might get a trio with flute or a quartet with oboe, although the repertoire works I most desire to hear performed this way, Saint-Saëns' Septet with a trumpet and Brahms's Trio with a French horn, I rarely have.

However, the most common unusual instrument to accompany the usual gang on such an event is a double bass, and that's what we had here. This inevitably means we get a piece by Rossini, who wrote a number of chamber works with double bass, and Dvořák's String Quintet with a double bass in it. (String Quintets more usually add to the standard string quartet - 2 violins, viola, cello - another viola, sometimes another cello. The Dvořák is by far the best-known work with this less usual disposition.)

Very fine playing. The double bassist was in tune, apparently - judging from previous experience - a difficult thing for a double bassist to manage. But these folks are from the SFS, an orchestra of supernal quality, and even the back of the second violin section, the usual residence of both the violinists here, is top-notch. And for the first time I got to write a published review of something by Florence Price. Here's the review.