“San Francisco Symphony patrons who showed up at Davies Symphony Hall on Friday night expecting an orchestra concert might have been surprised to find an odd Parisian cabaret show breaking out,” writers Joshua Kosman in Saturday’s (6/24) San Francisco Chronicle. “And that was just the capper, coming after successive visits to a dystopian night club and a tranquil Indonesian village. The weekend’s program, dubbed ‘Music for a Modern Age,’ was a manic, madcap multimedia revue [conceived by] Music Director Michael Tilson Thomas … There were dancers and singers, video projections and elaborate lighting cues, a funk band and a gamelan. It was all very breathless … The closing number, an elaborately staged version of George Antheil‘s 1925 ‘Jazz Symphony’ … certainly conveyed a giddy sense of Jazz Age Paris. ‘Four Preludes on Playthings of the Wind,’ Thomas’ own polystylistic setting of a Carl Sandburg meditation on the inevitable decline of great civilizations, whirled through its paces with enough kinetic energy … But the evening’s most telling rewards came … in a pair of short Charles Ives pieces (‘From the Steeples and the Mountains’ and ‘The Unanswered Question’), and especially in an exquisite performance of four movements from Lou Harrison‘s ‘Suite for Violin and American Gamelan.’ ”
Posted June 26, 2017
