I sometimes go to concerts by this group ("San Francisco's leading orchestra promoting LGBTQ composers and artists"), and didn't want to miss this one as it was the retirement concert of music director Dawn Harms. She's worn a lot of hats locally as conductor and violinist, so she's a familiar face. Besides, it was a delectable program.
A large audience at Herbst Theater cheered the orchestra on through a program designated as celebrating "Freedom, Equality & Pride": the Boatswain's Mate Overture by Ethel Smyth (the great suffragist composer), Copland's Lincoln Portrait (with local actor Curt Branom as narrator, sometimes drowned out by the music, which isn't supposed to happen), and Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, the one whose "Ode to Joy" finale is taken as an anthem for freedom.
The performances were delightfully crisp and energetic throughout, especially gratifying in the rarely-heard Smyth, but things started to get really interesting in the "Ode to Joy." With Herbst's smallish stage already fully occupied by the not-overlarge orchestra, plus the solo singers in front, the chorus (members of the Masterworks Chorale) had to crowd onto the landings for the side exits next to the stage, women on one side, men on the other. The conductor signaled to them as if semaphoring to a distance.
Harms beefed up the orchestral presentation of the "Ode to Joy" theme by exaggerating the dynamics in both directions, so that it became an even bigger crescendo than Beethoven had written. Then baritone Hadleigh Adams, who fitted this concert in between appearances in Handel's Partenope at the SF Opera at the other end of the same block, brought his operatic acting skills to his part here. When he sang "nicht diese Töne" he looked and sounded genuinely distressed, and when he turned to "Freude" why he seemed joyful.
Big cheerful sound, only slightly blurry towards the end, mighty applause and cheers afterwards.
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