Spent a great evening last night at the San Francisco Symphony. Kevin Smokler, author of Bookmark Now, organized a bloggers night, and a dozen of us had dinner at Arlequin and then met up with another dozen or so bloggers at Davies Symphony Hall.
It was only my second time at Davies, one of the nation’s most stunning symphony halls, and somehow we wound up with killer seats in the orchestra section, 14 rows from center stage. I hadn’t been to a symphony performance since seeing the great Itzhak Perlman at Lincoln Center in Manhattan a few years back.
On this night, an animated associate conductor James Gaffigan (pictured above) led the 70-member chamber in a sublime performance of Tchaikovsky’s Fantasy Overture from Romeo and Juliet, followed by the passion and pathos of Richard Strauss’s Don Juan, Opus 20. Both were the kind of accessible, lite summer fare that tends to bring in wider audiences during the symphony’s "Summer in the City" performances.
Things became more challenging, and interesting, after intermission, when guest pianist Gabriela Martinez lit up the keyboard with a precise, exquisite rendition of Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 3 in D minor, Opus 30.
A highlight came during intermission, when Gaffigan and horn player Jonathan Ring came by the press room and answered questions from the bloggers. I asked Gaffigan how the programs are chosen, and he said he tends to pick accessible pieces for the summer series while music director Michael Tilson Thomas tends to favor more complex works during the regular season.
Someone asked Ring about the horn section being outnumbered by the violins, and he answered playfully, "We can bury the violins at will." And then, more seriously, "It’s all about balance."
All in all, an exquisite evening, and I’ll be back soon. If you haven’t been to a performance recently — and for our bloggers corps, half had never been to Davies before — here’s how you can. They have a kids site as well. The symphony will give a free concert on Aug. 24 at Yerba Buena Gardens and then they’re off for three weeks of performances in Europe.
JD Lasica, founder of Inside Social Media, is also a fiction author and the co-founder of the cruise discovery engine Cruiseable. See his About page, contact JD or follow him on Twitter.
Leave a Reply