“Saturday’s Symphony Silicon Valley concert … was directed by the distinguished and experienced JoAnn Falletta, and featured a new composition by the venerable classical and jazz composer David Amram,” writes David Bratman in Tuesday’s (10/29) San Francisco Classical Voice. Amram’s Partners, a double concerto for violin and cello, featured as soloists “SSV concertmaster Robin Mayforth and principal cellist Evan Kahn. They made a gallant pair…. Each of Amram’s three movements is named for a pair of musical collaborators he knew … in the 1950s…. The first movement, inspired by folksingers Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger, runs through a series of themes evoking various forms of Anglo-Celtic and Native American folk music… The second, slow movement is inspired by jazz greats Lester Young and Billie Holiday…. The finale [was] inspired by Machito Grillo and Celia Cruz, among the founders of Afro-Cuban jazz…. The concert began with two brief orchestral tone poems by Lili Boulanger…. Falletta conducted the two pieces [D’un soir triste and D’un matin de printemps] as a continuous suite…. The orchestra played it with an intensity of color that expressed Boulanger’s qualities to the full.” Also on the program was Rachmaninoff’s Symphonic Dances.
Posted November 1, 2019
