The Opera Tattler

* Notes *

British conductor Edward Gardner led the San Francisco Symphony in an audience-pleasing concert of Holst’s The Planets and Bruch’s Violin Concerto No. 1 in G minor last night. Gardner has a lot of energy and ideas, and the orchestra sounded wonderfully shimmery.

I had never heard The Planets live, and the piece is nearly an hour long, divided into seven movements. I thought it was interesting that Earth was not among these. There is a great range of moods based on the planet at hand, Mars, the Bringer of War that starts the work is bombastic and extremely loud, while Venus, the Bringer of Peace is, as to be expected, much more calm and gentle.

It was clear that Gardner knows the piece well, and he drew out the best from the orchestra. The different emotions of each movement were well-defined, and Gardner did not shy from being brusque, which was interesting to hear, usually we don’t hear harshness from this group of musicians, at least not intentional harshness.

The fleetness of Mercury came through, as did the “jollity” of Jupiter. The chorus was extremely spooky in the ethereal last movement, Neptune, the Mystic. It was hard to tell where the singers were in the hall from the orchestra level, they seemed above us, but this was effective and eerie

The first half of the concert began with the first performances of Vaughan Williams’ Overture to The Wasps (1909) at  San Francisco Symphony. This music was for Aristophanes’ play, and had a good range from insectile to pastoral.

Best of all may have been the Violin Concerto by Bruch, with Randall Goosby as soloist. Goosby has a lot of warmth and refinement. His technique is flawless, the bowing seemed exact. He sounded quite lovely with the orchestra and seemed to sincerely appreciate his fellow musicians. It was nice to hear how fluidly he played, supported by the orchestra, and I enjoyed how unflashy Goodsby is. His encore was Louisiana Blues Strut by Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson, which was a joy to hear.

* Tattling *

This performance looked to be very well attended, nearly all the seats around us were full. There was very little whispering or electronic noise. At least two people dropped objects during the first movement of the Bruch, and this was so audible since these moments were during the solo violin parts without the orchestra.

Someone in one of the orchestra level boxes was incensed by another audience member in the side orchestra, house left, around Row S or T. She hissed at the person, I imagine they must have been filming with their mobile phone during Jupiter, the Bringer of Jollity.

Gardner spoke to the audience before he started the music, joking about his hair color being different from the last time he was at San Francisco Symphony and explaining the pieces. He mentioned that British composers were very influenced by Brahms.