pair of concerts

To Kohl Mansion last Sunday for the Reverón Piano Trio, named for a painter from their native land, Venezuela. Years ago I heard another Latin American chamber ensemble, the Dalí String Quartet, also named after a painter and who also filled half their concert with a Latin American potpourri. The difference was, the Dalí were delightfully wild and crazy guys in their Latin half, but their excursion into standard repertoire, by Mozart, was rather dull and unconvincing.

The Reverón were far more balanced. Their Latin half was taken soberly, though it included a lively chunk of Astor Piazzolla and a piece by Ricardo Lorenz in which the cello lengthily imitates the buzz of a noisy electric ceiling fan. Also in that half, a little waltz by the 19C piano virtuoso Teresa Carreño which sounded like circus music. That's because a lot of Latin American salon music of that era was transcribed for circus organs and that became the associated style. Here, have a listen to "Over the Waves" by Juventino Rosas, which is the piece I most have in mind in making that association. The main theme starts 30 seconds in; tell me you don't recognize it.

But the other half of the Reverón concert was anything but dull or unconvincing. For one thing, it wasn't a standard repertoire piece but the D-minor Trio of Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel, Felix's sister. This was the best performance of it I've heard, and it ought to be standard repertoire after this. Wonderfully clear, even compelling, full of individual character.

Anyway, I wrote a review saying all of that.

To Davies on Thursday for the San Francisco Symphony, which may be the last time I get to hear them for a while if the musicians go on strike when their contract extension expires next week. The Symphony Chorus appeared this week, having already gone through their own strike last fall, and were greeted by huge applause by the audience, and even bigger applause greeted the announcement on the supertitles screen that an anonymous donor has given $4 million to endow the Chorus.

What were they singing? Why, Carmina Burana. Led by guest conductor David Robertson, this was a pretty dull run-through if you've heard Carmina as often as I have. Heavy, trudging. Of the soloists, the soprano was OK, but the baritone, though deep-voiced enough, had nowhere near enough power to carry off the part. His drunken abbot was pathetic. The tenor, unusually, appeared on stage only to sing his one solo, the lament of the roasted swan, and then slogged slowly off again, perhaps sad because his character was dead but more likely because he'd been merely adequate in singing about it.

The Chorus was good, though, and even better was the strong and pure sound of the SF Girls Chorus in the children's role, singing (in Latin) words more hair-raising than any children should be approaching, but that's a perennial problem with this work.

Also on the program, yet another newly commissioned piano concerto, this one by John Adams. I liked it better than his clotted and noisy previous piano concerto. This one was light and shining, more like typical Adams. Titled After the Fall, it consists largely of falling phrases, get it?, first provided by soloist Vikingur Ólafsson as the strings shimmer in the background, then by the strings as Ólafsson shimmers in the background. Towards the end the piece is attacked by a lemming-like horde of copies of a quotation from a Bach prelude, which takes over without making the music sound much like Bach. Overall it was OK, though it would probably have gone better with a perkier conductor.

Oh yes, and an opener of Ives's The Unanswered Question, a piece too short and quiet, if dissonant, to contribute to a judgement of the evening.