"New World" at the San Francisco Symphony

Last night I saw the San  Francisco Symphony for the first time. It's kind of embarrassing, I've lived in the Bay Area all my life but never taken the time to go see the Symphony. I decided I finally needed to go and see what I've been missing this whole time. Turns out this was the best opportunity: The played Beethoven's Piano Concert No. 5, "Emperor," and Dvorák's Slavic Dance No. 8, and Symphony No. 9, "New World." In a few weeks the San Francisco Symphony will take their summer break and come back in September when I'll be back up at school. I really lucked out here.

Entering the concert hall was great. I did a research paper on the acoustic renovations of this hall and had seen so many photos of the place that I felt I had been there before. I looked at the famous "acoustical cloud" made up of over 100 adjustable glass convex squares and saw how they were arranged. It's hard to explain. To see what I'm talking about check out this movie and this panorama.

The orchestra was a bit smaller that I was expecting, I suppose it's because it's the summer. It was conducted by James Gaffigan for the summer instead of Michael Tilson-Thomas. Gaffigan turned out to be a really good conductor. The Slavic Dance was played very well and despite it being short, it was bursting with energy.

Next, Natasha Paremski came onstage to play the "Emperor Concerto." She is a stunning pianist. Her interpretation was incredible, and played with great sensitivity to each passage, and maintained a fluid sort of grace the whole time. You could tell at the same time that she owned that piano; she let it know who was boss. It was probably the best "Emperor Concerto" I've ever heard. I would like to hear this girl play Rachmaninov and see what she does with it. The only down side was that she didn't play an encore.

Dvorák's ninth was the final work on the program. I've heard it played life once before, and it wasn't very good, so I was more than confident this was going to be awesome. I was not disappointed. The SFS made the whole work sound tremendously exciting from beginning to end. Even though some of the players probably had the attitude of "Well, this is a summer concert. It's not part of the real season. I don't really have to work as hard," it didn't keep the rest of the players down. For the first time I could really hear America's influence on Dvorák. He didn't quote folk tunes but he wrote new tunes and made them sound like they were quoted folk tunes. Genius.

The highlight of the evening was the Largo, the second movement. The English Horn player doesn't really do much the rest of the evening and he's got to be warmed up, tuned and really to impress by time the huge solo comes up in the Largo. He was right on the money tonight. Along with the strings, it was just an emotional powerhouse. Gaffigan led them well through the dynamics (albeit a little too fast for my taste) and phrasing of the piece.

All in all, it was a great evening of music. You really can't beat actually going there to hear it in person. All I gotta say is: Keep Music Live.