concert review: Prometheus Symphony

Sometimes it's the venue that makes or breaks a concert.

I don't understand it, actually. I've heard the Prometheus Symphony - a nonprofessional group from Oakland - in this church - a rectangular cavern of red brick that calls itself St. Paul's Episcopal - before. I've even heard them play Carl Nielsen here before.

So why was Nielsen's Third Symphony such an acoustic disaster? Except for a few quiet passages, and the beginning of the finale when the whole orchestra plays the theme tutti - this symphony, which doesn't have more different things going on at once than the average complex symphony - came out like a slab of undifferentiated mud. Only the fact that I already knew how it was supposed to sound enabled me to pick out the melodic line or anything else from the chaos of noise.

Insofar as I could tell, the orchestra was doing a pretty good job, though it seemed a bit hesitant over the rhythmically irregular sequence of chords which started the work off. Of the other work on the program, a cycle of four French songs that Benjamin Britten composed at the age of 14 - I won't even attempt an evaluation. Soprano Raeeka Shehabi-Yaghmi, whom I've heard before, has a strong voice, but I wouldn't have been able to make out any of the French words even if they were printed in the program, which they weren't.

At least this trip was a brilliant success logistically. I drove to the nearest BART station, 35 minutes if there's no traffic, and took the train in. I used to walk the half-mile to the church from the station to these afternoon concerts, but that kind of distance is beyond me now, so Google maps found me a bus line that stops only a block away. Afterwards I took the bus back to downtown for dinner. My favorite Chinese restaurant there, close to the Paramount Theater which is my usual destination, closed during the pandemic, but I found another one, a tiny hole in the wall several blocks away but with stunningly good food, so I was happy.