I go to occasional concerts by the local LGBT&c orchestra because I like their programming. This concert, guest conducted by local luminary John Kendall Bailey, was held in the large hall at the SF Conservatory, which is still rather small and was packed.
There were two items new to me that I was eager to hear. Sussex Landscape is a tone poem by Avril Coleridge-Taylor, who was the daughter of the more-remembered Samuel Coleridge-Taylor but whom I'd not previously known of. The piece was written in 1940, when Sussex, where she lived, and neighboring Kent were right in the path of invasion by air and (potentially) sea. So not surprisingly it's somber-toned, with shafts of light peering through on occasion, ranging in mood from anguished to pensive. The idiom is more like Carwithen than, say, Finzi.
Kurt Atterberg is my favorite of the phalanx of great Swedish composers of the first half of the 20C. I had not heard his Suite No. 3, which is for strings with solo parts for violin and viola, another dark and quiet work of impressive beauty.
The rest of the program consisted of familiar but not overplayed classics. I was impressed enough by the robust presentation of Britten's Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra, with a rigor better reflecting its subtitle, Variations and Fugue on a Theme of Purcell, that I was willing to stay and hear the suite from Ravel's Daphnis and Chloé, one of the most overripe works in the entire repertoire. Also pretty well done without indulgence.
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