Backing into action
With the slow grinding of gears, the year's musical activities get under way at last
Like all years, 2025 has been slow to get off the ground, musically speaking. We had (you should pardon the expression) Christmas, plus the end-of-the-year lull for retrospection. Then we took a week or so to look forward to the promise of the upcoming months. This past week, at long last, the musical world heaved itself up off the sofa, still feeling the aftereffects of those long sluggish weeks, and decided to actually swing into gear, albeit tentatively. I could relate.
What the week brought, specifically, was a return visit by conductor James Gaffigan, who spent a few formative years in the Bay Area in the 20-aughts as an associate conductor with the San Francisco Symphony. Gaffigan is a resourceful, skilled conductor, with an energetic approach that can often pay artistic dividends. But somehow his programming decisions don’t always make a lot of sense from where I sit. He puts this piece together with that piece, and by the evening’s end you’ve heard plenty of music without quite having had a musical experience.
The concert Gaffigan led with the Symphony on Thursday in Davies Symphony Hall was no exception. It featured pieces by two American composers on the first half, but really that’s about all they had in common; if you’re hoping for Missy Mazzoli and Samuel Barber to strike up a musical conversation across the decades, you’re going to be waiting a long time. The second half was devoted to Prokofiev’s Fifth Symphony, because sure, why not?
In the end, it was left to violinist Ray Chen to make himself, and the Barber Violin Concerto, the centerpiece of the program, bending the entire evening around his neon-bright, charismatic presence. It’s what he does; like the jar in Wallace Stevens’ poem, he takes dominion everywhere, which is a double-edged matter. I think I can admire Chen’s artistry — which is technically potent and full of dynamic expressivity — and acknowledge his power to move a crowd, while still confessing that he gets on my last nerve. The way he works an audience, with big grins and ingratiating chit-chat, feels like something out of a TV talk show. The whole package is too tautly perfect, the salesmanship too overt.
On the other hand, the product Chen has to sell is the real deal. He’s got an appealing string tone that walks a fine line between wiry and sumptuous, and he plays with the kind of urgency that keeps you on your toes. And Barber’s 1940 concerto — luxuriant, vivid, full of limpid melody and extroverted pyrotechnics — is the perfect vehicle for him, from the long-breathed rhapsody of the first movement to the ferocious exertions of the final Presto. His encore, the Prelude from Ysaÿe’s Sonata No. 2, picked up right where the concerto had left off in terms of energy and tonal clarity.
Mazzoli’s Sinfonia (for Orbiting Spheres), a short curtain-raiser from 2014 built on shifting string textures, includes a clever bit of orchestration — the use of harmonicas to create a sort of faint cosmic breath — but otherwise didn’t seem to have much to offer beyond planetarium music. But Gaffigan and the orchestra came alive after intermission, barreling through the Prokofiev with guns a-blazing. I keep thinking there’s a sleeker and more transparent possible approach to this piece, one that elevates the composer’s distinctively tangy harmonic language and his quirky counterpoint over the emphasis on high-impact orchestration. But no one ever plays it that way, so I’m probably wrong.
Elsewhere:
Rebecca Wishnia, San Francisco Chronicle/SFCV: “The wheezing harmonicas included in Mazzoli’s score are only a few among the innovations that make Sinfonia a sonic world apart.”
Michael Strickland, Civic Center: “The performance [of the Barber] on Thursday's opening night was hard-charging, which seemed at odds with the gentleness of the first two movements, but it was an interesting approach that made the piece sound more anguished than meditative.”
Stephen Smoliar, The Rehearsal Studio: “Yes, there are shadows of Hollywood film scores in many of the textures; but Barber’s expressiveness gave them depth, rather than trivialization.”
Lisa Hirsch, Iron Tongue of Midnight: “What didn't bore me at all was the first work on the program, Missy Mazzoli's Sinfonia (for Orbiting Spheres), which was about ten minutes of purely gorgeous sound, rotating slowly around the orchestra and with a remarkable concluding sonority that included a bunch of harmonicas.”
Cryptic clue of the week
From Out of Left Field #250 by Henri Picciotto and me, sent to subscribers last Thursday:
In Springfield, covering up a bit of risky business (8)
Last week’s clue:
Kick a boat (4)
Solution: PUNT
kick: definition
a boat: another definition
Coming up
New Century Chamber Orchestra: One of the things I love about Shostakovich’s Piano Concerto No. 1, in addition to the music itself, is that it’s a concerto for piano and trumpet; come for one soloist, and Shostakovich throws in a second one free of charge. The dexterous pianist Inon Barnatan will be joined by trumpeter Brandon Ridenour for performances of the piece with music director Daniel Hope and the New Century Chamber Orchestra in a program that also features music by Bartók and C.P.E. Bach. Jan. 17-19, Berkeley, Rohnert Park, San Francisco. www.ncco.org.
Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment: Soprano Julia Bullock is best known as a peerless interpreter of contemporary and modern music, including the works of John Adams and, most recently around these parts, Olivier Messiaen. But she’s also a wondrous singer in the Baroque repertoire, a specialty she’ll put on display in her upcoming appearance with this period-instrument ensemble. Jan. 19, Zellerbach Hall, UC Berkeley. www.calperformances.org.
This is a tremendous piece of writing. Makes me so sad that this kind of criticism has become an endangered species.