concert review: SF Music Day

Today I did get up to the City early on. But as I didn't need to be there until 12.30 instead of 10.00, it was easier.

The topic was SF Music Day, an annual event I'd never heard of before. The promoters take over the Veterans Building for an afternoon, presenting 6 events (each slightly less than an hour) in each of three concert spaces in the building. Times are coordinated, so attendees can hop from one room to another, but I didn't. Most of the items in Herbst Theatre, the main space, were jazz-oriented, so I planted myself for the entire afternoon in the cavernous and echoing room on the second floor where the classical performers were. The acoustics were fine for the music, but it was difficult to make out any spoken words from anybody.

The highlights came at the end. Pianist Elizabeth Schumann thundered her way through Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition and loaded it with enough tone color that an orchestration seemed superfluous. Then she surprised everybody by choosing for an encore Gershwin's "Embraceable You," but encores have a long tradition of clashing strongly with the main work. Then Schumann came back with four of her colleagues from Ensemble San Francisco for an energetic and catchy run through Dvořák's Op. 81 Piano Quintet.

The day had begun with the Benicia Chamber Players, who regularly perform on both sides of the Carquinez Strait, in two movements from Schubert's "Rosamunde" Quartet, the work I missed yesterday, and a squeaky squawky work by Gabriella Smith. Then some of the young chamber musicians who are the subjects for master classes at Kohl Mansion played movements from string quartets and piano quartets by the Viennese classicists.

In between these and the closing numbers, we got a couple more varied groups. The Turas Ensemble is two barefoot sopranos who sing ethereal versions of I know not what, because I couldn't make out any of their spoken explanations of what they were doing, or their lyrics either. Some songs unaccompanied, some with dulcimer or hurdy-gurdy or whatnot. And the Berkeley Choros Ensemble play instrumental popular music from Brazil, rather pleasant to listen to and moving enough to encourage one older couple to get up and dance, or at least sway together, to the music.

Getting out of a concert in the City at 5.45 on a Sunday - not Friday or Saturday when places would be crowded - would ordinarily be a perfect time to seek out a restaurant for dinner. But today I felt no urge to do that, and went straight home instead, where I'm partaking what I ought.