concert review: San Francisco Symphony

All Stravinsky, all the time. 3 works from 3 distinct periods, in reverse chronological order.

The ballet Agon, which sounded enough like a cell phone going off that, when one did go off, it fit right in.

The Violin Concerto, an exercise in forcing Gil Shahan to play as painfully and horribly as humanly possible.

I like some of Stravinsky's middle and late works, but these are not two of them.

Finally, The Rite of Spring. MTT said at the start of the concert that he considers this happy music, and he gave it an interpretation so bustling and cheerful that I heard a kinship to Gershwin's American in Paris.