Season Finales in the Modern Age

The San Francisco Symphony has been flying through the Summer Solstice and Pride Month with a dizzying array of concerts to end the season this week with performances of Berlioz's "Romeo and Juliet." Most recently, Davies Symphony Hall was turned into a bigger version of the SFS club venue SoundBox for an evening called "Music for a Modern Age."

Originally scheduled as an "American Mavericks" concert, the title was changed to more appropriately describe the concept of the program, and also to entice new listeners into the mother ship. Adding a lot of bells and whistles with costuming, theatrical lighting and video projections also added to the appeal and actually worked remarkably well for everyone in the larger audience. Regardless of varying attention spans, this was a night intended to entertain and provoke all.

Stationing musicians onstage and throughout the hall created a dreamlike ambience for the opening pieces by Charles Ives, the greatest American maverick composer of them all. "From the Steeples and the Mountains" served as a thrilling prelude to the following "The Unanswered Question." Trumpeter Mark Inouye was spot-on with his haunting solo, and Christian Reif conducted the mysterious offstage string ensemble. Atmospheric video by Adam Larsen was projected on four large sail-like panels behind the orchestra, and subdued lighting by Luke Kritzeck re-created the moody feel of the more intimate SoundBox experience.

Of course, everything on the bill was meant to attractively frame the West Coast premiere of SFS Music Director Michael Tilson Thomas' own composition, "Four Preludes on Playthings of the Wind" (2016), Text by Carl Sandburg (1920). Frequent SFS collaborator James Darrah directed soloist soprano Measha Brueggergosman and vocalists Mikaela Bennett and Kara Dugan in a curiously cheerful semi-staged performance of MTT's setting of Sandburg's dystopian poetry.

The once-intensely-relevant writer has been underserved by musicians, despite the inherent musicality of his verse. The dark vision of "Four Preludes on Playthings of the Wind" is sharply pertinent today. MTT has been tinkering with it since 1976, and has finished at just the right moment. In the wake of current world events, the vision of a crumbling nation, and of a great city left to the crying of crows and the surviving rats and lizards, is an impassioned and timely alarm.

In Darrah's staging, the Cassandra-like soloist sheds her initially somber costume by Dona Granata to walk more resplendently about the stage with equally glamorous back-up singers punctuating her sobering pronouncements. Brueggergosman has an astonishing range that covers everything from sultry band singer to operatic diva, and she seemed perfectly at ease with all of MTT's demands.

With the fascinating visuals of Larsen and Kritzeck enhancing the trio's impact, it was a little harder to assess the music itself. Even upon first hearing, and despite the admittedly attractive window dressing, MTT's music resonates with impressive force. One can hear some Gershwin and maybe even Bernstein at the edges, but there is individuality to the score that has only been hinted at previously. It is a substantial piece that deserves repeated listening. With a storied career and fabulous musical influences to inspire him, it was thrilling to see MTT conducting his own composition.

The second half of the exciting night was given to SFS Associate Concertmaster Nadya Tichman in a repeat of her highly praised appearance at SoundBox performing Music from Suite for Violin and American Gamelan by gay icon and American maverick Lou Harrison (with Richard Dee). Tichman was mesmerizing once more, and the exquisite score offered a lovely interlude before the concert's raucous finale.

George Antheil's "A Jazz Symphony" (1925, original version) really let MTT's theatrical instincts take off with his own conception for the stage. Co-directing with Broadway legend Patricia Birch, who added characteristically professional choreography, fearless leader set DSH aglow with all of the panache of the Roaring Twenties.

Pianist Peter Dugan was in the foreground; SFS musicians were seated bandstand-style, with Tilson Thomas conducting. The terrific dancers were Kiva Dawson, an adorable kewpie-doll chorine, and Erin N. Moore, a naughty and sexy temptress, seducing members of the orchestra and cheering the audience. The video by Clyde Scott was stunningly appropriate.

I don't know how their union felt about SFS musicians joining in the dance, but they were surprisingly adept, and if they don't tell, we won't, either.

Previous weeks at DSH were also filled with knock-out performances by guest conductors Susanna Malki in a heart-pounding Stravinsky "The Rite of Spring," and Vasily Petrenko emphasizing the elegance and rhythmic precision of Rachmaninoff's Symphony No. 1.

Guest artist superstar violinist Joshua Bell was another highlight of Petrenko's visit, with a predictably flawless and sinuous rendition of Lalo's "Symphonie espagnole."

This week brings some more dream-casting center stage at DSH as personal and Northern California favorites, mezzo-soprano Sasha Cooke, tenor Nicholas Phan, and bass-baritone Luca Pisaroni join Ragnar Bohlin's rightly admired SFS Chorus and the Orchestra for Berlioz's wonderful "Romeo et Juliette." The performances are being recorded for later release by SFS Media. The addition to the SFS discography is exciting, and the concerts make a grand finale for the season.