The weekend before Thanksgiving I went to three concerts. I was reviewing two of them, but the publication of the reviews was very late. So I waited to write about them until now.
1. South Bay Philharmonic, Friday
This is the community orchestra that B. is a violist in. They gathered to play Vasily Kalinnikov's First Symphony, which I've been hearing practiced in my living room almost continuously for the past several months. You may not have heard of Vasily Kalinnikov or his First Symphony, but I had. It was written just after Tchaikovsky's death, and sounds more like a Tchaikovsky symphony than anything else that isn't a Tchaikovsky symphony. I like it a lot, and enjoyed what was I think only the second time I'd heard it live. Especially the Andante, which was haunting.
2. Redwood Symphony, Saturday
This gathering was to play Dmitri Shostakovich's Fourth Symphony, which is the Very Difficult symphony I wrote on Nov. 22 that I was facing reviewing. My review says most of it, including why I was so looking forward to hearing this, which is that it's by far the most Mahlerian symphony Shostakovich ever wrote, and the Redwood Symphony does revelatory Mahler. I didn't find this performance revelatory in terms of casting insight as to how or why the composer wrote it as he did, but it was excellently done, just sizzling. I was particularly relieved that my study sessions had enabled me to internalize this "one damn thing randomly after another" piece enough to usually know what was coming next, because it really contributed to my appreciation of this first time I'd heard the piece live.
3. Peninsula Symphony and Stanford Symphonic Chorus, Sunday
Then I went to Bing to hear something by a favorite composer that I'd never heard at all, live or otherwise. Indeed, for years I hadn't even been aware that Howard Hanson had written a final, choral, seventh symphony. He called it "A Sea Symphony." So did Ralph Vaughan Williams title his choral symphony, 65 years earlier. Hanson set poems by Walt Whitman extolling the sea and shipping on the sea. So did Vaughan Williams. Hanson wrote four movements. So did Vaughan Williams. But Vaughan Williams's symphony is an hour long, Hanson's only 20. It also doesn't sound that much like Vaughan Williams, or like Hanson either, being a bit imitative but a bit watery. I'm glad I heard it, though, and I wrote a review.
Then this week, I went to hear
4. The Chamber Music Society of San Francisco, Monday
at the Freight - which does classical chamber music occasionally - in the form of a string quartet, playing Mozart's K. 575 and Beethoven's Op. 127. Good solid performances, just not as weighty as the works deserve. Large audience, mostly grey-haired.
Distressing discovery of the evening was that almost the entire block of Center Street with the good restaurants that are convenient to the BART station has been closed down for redevelopment, and will be shut off for the next two years. One of the restaurants I like has moved, but to too far away to be convenient for a pre-Freight dinner, alas.
