Davies Symphony Hall, San Francisco, May 2, 2025–There should be an award for the greatness of this concert. Maestro Giancarlo Guerrero conducted music by Kaija Saariaho, Igor Stravinsky, Ottorino Respighi. Each selection was unique in mood, rhythms, story; something wonderful. Bring him back.

Maestro Giancarlo Guerrero conducted the entire concert without a score. His conducting style uses clear, strong arm movements, sometimes subtle motions, or a muscular one gathering in a whole section. A characteristic movement is one arm with baton straight up to the Davies roof; it looks strong enough to levitate him.

Guerrero is a six time Grammy winning conductor. For sixteen years he has been music director of the Nashville Symphony. In those years he commissioned and premiered about twenty-four pieces and released twenty-one recordings. He received eighteen Grammy nominations and eleven awards in various categories. He will become music director of Sarasota Orchestra in 2025. He has conducted the best known US orchestras: New York, Los Angeles, Boston, Chicago, Philadelphia, and more as well as European houses. He conducted the San Francisco Symphony first in 2013.

Kaija Saariaho, composer (1952 – 2023)

Guerrero spoke to the audience about Asteroid 4179: Toutatis, the first piece on the program. The composer, Kaija Saariaho, wrote it for a commission from the Berlin Philharmonic. It was to be a partner piece with Gustav Holst’s The Planets. There really is an asteroid with that number and name. Toutatis, the Celtic god, was to protect tribal life in ancient Gaul. NASA considers this asteroid to be unique in our solar system. It has no fixed north pole as Earth has and lacks an ongoing spin as planets have. Its shape, sort of irregularly long, it does not turn but “tumbles.” Toutatis never repeats a pattern in its wanderings. Regardless of the peculiarities of Toutatis, the music was terrific. Its sounds could have been electronic music, but it was not. The music was made by real instruments: oboes, flutes, horns, strings, celesta, glockenspiel, and more. It captured my attention, made me feel cold, and set me wondering if Asteroid 4179 would collide with us. The music created mysteries and new sounds. Guerreo led the SF Symphony on a space walk. I loved it.

Igor Stravinsky’s Petrushka has delicate moments and crashing alarms. I have not heard it for a long time; hearing it while watching its ballet may have let me miss the music’s innovations and drama. It is magical as it should be when a magician turns three puppets into live persons.

Igor Stravinsky, composer (1882-1971); Vaslav Nijinsky (in Petrushka costume) (1889 -or 1890 –1950 or 1951).

The Petrushka story was Stravinsky’s idea. Stravinsky wrote: “I had in mind a distinct picture of a puppet, suddenly endowed with life, exasperating the patience of the orchestra with diabolical cascades of arpeggi. The orchestra retaliates with menacing trumpet blasts. The outcome is a terrific noise which reaches its climax and ends in the sorrowful and querulous collapse of the poor puppet.”* Sergei Diaghilev, director of the Ballet Russes, had great artists for his sets and costumes, but Diaghilev was the Magician of the theater. He was behind every scene, except that he liked being seen. He joined Stravinsky in making the scenario. Alexandre Benois designed and painted marvelous scenes; Leon Bakst designed costumes which were museum worthy as were the sets. Despite the jolly Fair and the miracle of living puppets, it is a sad story. The fascinating music tells all the tensions and jealousy. The dainty ballerina chooses the Moor, a brute who has no culture. The three fail even though they are now alive like humans- or is that why? The Ballerina tries to  stop the Moor’s chase of Petrushka, but the Moor kills Petrushka. Petrushka’s ghost mocks the Moor; the Magician runs away from what he set in motion. The music changes quickly from loud to almost not there. The tiny, light steps of the Ballerina, Petrushka’s suffering, the brutal kick of the Moor, the crowd’s Russian dances; all the action is heard and makes the characters visible. It gives us so many changes that the listener can hear the thoughts of the puppets. Amazing. I felt I was hearing it for the first time. Thank you again, Maestro Guerreo and the very fine SFS musicians.

Ottorino Respighi, composer (1879 – 1936)

Guerreo spoke to the audience before conducting Ottorino Respighi’s Fountains of Rome and Pines of Rome.  He described the real places that Respighi’s music calls forth. The Fountains were composed in 1914-16; Pines were composed 1923-24. Each work has four scenes. Respighi wrote:  “In this symphonic poem the composer has endeavored to give expression to the sentiments, and visions suggested to him by four of Rome’s fountains, contemplated at the hour when their characters are most in harmony with the surrounding landscape, or at which their beauty is most impressive to the observer.”*  These two symphonic poems were joined by Roman Festivals, 1928.  Michael Tilson Thomas conducted that piece at his 80th birthday celebration, April 26.

The first Fountain is in the farmland of Valle Giulia. Cattle roam in the “fresh, damp mists of the Roman dawn.“* The music does not stop as it might for movements. Instead, loud horns play while the orchestra trills; it is the Triton Fountain. Mythical beings like “naiads and tritons” chase each other and dance in a “frenzy” around the sprays of water. Fountain number three’s music is quieter, set at noon at the Trevi Fountain. Neptune, the mythical god of the sea, rides in a chariot led across the water by seahorses. The last Fountain was at Villa Medici. It is sunset. There are bells and sounds of leaves in a breeze in peaceful surroundings. The most interesting sound is the recording of a nightingale singing. Although Respighi was considered a conservative composer by many, he had the the nerve, or vision, to engage the bird’s song. The reality of the bird’s voice opens one’s mind to the environment. Hearing it was a memorable, treasured moment. It was possibly the first use of electronic sound in music.

The idea of changing music as different hours change light and shadows is a notion similar to Monet’s, the Impressionist painter of a series of haystacks. He, like Respighi, took in the environment’s change with the daylight’s changes. A conservative composer when compared with Stravinsky, but perhaps now more current as his musical vision included the natural environment.

The Pines of Rome begins at the Villa Borghese (Allegretto vivace). Children play in pine groves. They pretend to be soldiers and “They twitter and shriek like swallows at evening,..”  Next is Pines Near a Catacomb (Lento)  The trees shadow the entrance of a catacomb. The music sounds a hymn and chanting until it is cut off. Next scene is The Pines of the Janiculum (Lento). Respighi wrote “there is a thrill in the air.” It is a full moon, we hear a nightingale, and see the trees’ shadows. The Pines of the Appian Way (Tempo di Marcia)  close this atmospheric symphonic poem. Respighi hears “incessant marching” and imagines a poet who “has a fantastic vision of past glories” and sees the historic Roman army burst “forth in the grandeur of a newly risen sun…mounting in Triumph…”

The triumph is that of the SF Symphony conducted by Giancarlo Guerreo. My message regarding Maestro Guerreo is: BRING HIM BACK!

*signifies quotations from Stravinsky and from Respighi, taken from the SFS program book.

San Francisco, Davies Symphony Hall, Feb. 23 — An exciting program of new music, it opened with Strange Beasts, by Xavier Muzik. His work was a SF Symphony Commission and World Premiere. Muzik was the 2023 winner of the Michael Morgan Prize from the Emerging Black Composers Project of the SF Symphony and SF Conservatory of Music. The music was interesting; in the words of the composer, “intentionally organized, narrative in structure, and harmonically rich.”

While the orchestral music kept playing, photographs also by Muzik were projected on a screen above the stage. The composer described the Strange Beasts as the giant buildings in Los Angeles, maybe a park or two. The pictures were shown upside down and right side up, or shown repeatedly in fast percussive blips. For Muzik, the giant buildings reminded him of Godzilla. Watching the photos, I had trouble focusing on the music. I respect the composer’s decision to have both arts make “a dance,” as he wrote. I would like to hear the music again so I could better experience the sounds. He said that the pandemic lock down increased his anxiety and led him to recognize his anxiety while walking below the Strange Beasts. His original music helped the audience sense his and our anxiety.

Sergei Prokofie, composer (1891 – 1953)

Prokofiev’s Piano Concerto No. 2, in G minor, Opus 16 is stunning in its newness. It could have been composed yesterday, though it was composed 1912-1913. Prokofiev was only 22 years old when he created it. Sadly, the complete score was destroyed in a fire during the 1917 Russian Revolution. The composer reconstructed the Concerto using piano pages. Prokofiev wrote, “It was so completely rewritten…it might almost be considered No. 4.” He had written No. 3 in 1921. Prokofiev used the opportunity to make the rewritten version even more complex “in its contrapuntal fabric,” as he described it. This piano concerto has the distinction of being the most difficult piano Concerto. It is said that Martha Argerich refused to play it, Kissin put off learning it, and even Prokofiev, always an above first rate pianist, had difficulties in the 1930s performing with the BBC Symphony Orchestra. It had “gone out of his fingers.” The first movement is surprising with the melody and its extensions, a variety of colors, and a cadenza which is probably bigger than in any other concerto. The second movement, Scherzo dares the soloist to present the 16th notes fast enough. At this point, I whispered, “This is anxiety.” The Concerto’s nerves and anxiety are contagious. Prokofiev wrote this magnificent Concerto in a world of trauma. There was the 1905 Russian Revolution which interrupted his study at the St. Petersburg Conservatory; World War I, 1914-1919; two revolutions in Russia, 1917-1922; World War II. In addition, he was being denounced under Stalin. There is something in this Concerto that whirls and jumps even in the quieter movements in the center of the work. The music is wild, nearly primitive, unsettling to the audience. I sat on the edge of my seat the whole time, thrilled.

Daniil Trifonov, pianist

Daniil Trifonov was incredible. The Prokofiev Piano Concerto No. 2 suited him just right. He was on top of the challenging speed of the Scherzo and the touching, lyrical moments of the Andantino. The Finale was musical and brave. What a triumph for Trifonov, Esa-Pekka Salonen, and the entire SF Symphony. The audience called him back for more and more bows. Trifonov gave a beautiful encore: Prokofiev’s Gavotte from Cinderella, Op. 95, No.2

Igor Stravinsky, composer (1882 – 1971) with Vaslav Nijinsky, Danseur Noble, Choreographer (1889 or 1890 – 1950), Nijinsky is in his costume for Petrouchka (1911).

The Rite of Spring caused a riot at the Theatre des Champs Elysees. The 1913 premiere of this strange music and the mysterious ballet brings to life its ancient, maybe pre-historic story. Vaslav Nijinsky choreographed the dance. Some would stay and be enveloped by the actions and story. Others would not walk out; instead the audience would shout and curse and turn over chairs. Nijinsky’s genius for expressive movement brought new movements that represented the ancient folk stories. Much of the music originated in authentic folk music. The opening bassoon music has roots in a Lithuanian folk tune.

Igor Stravinsky conducting.

For readers who are not familiar with the tale of The Rite of Spring, here is a brief summary. First Part: Adoration of the Earth  It is a celebration of spring time. There are pipers playing, fortune tellers, and an old woman who knows the future. Young girls have been in a river. Their faces are painted. They begin spring time dances. Wise old men come in a procession. Games and dances stop.  All join in to a dance that blesses the Earth; and all become one with Earth. Second Part: The Great Sacrifice    Virgins walk in circles, play secretive games. One is singled out to be the victim. She is pointed out twice while the circle walking continues. She is honored by the other young women. She sacrifices herself in front of the old men. There is The Great Sacrifice. 

It is strange that this ancient folk story is the medium for new music and new dancing. I learned about The Rite of Spring when I was about ten years old. My mother told me about Nijinsky and the Ballet Russes. She was a wonderful dancer. I do not remember when I saw the ballet and heard the music. However, it bothered me deeply that a young girl would be sacrificed. I do not think I would have joined the riot in 1913; I would be fascinated by the movement and the strange bassoon song. I can hear it now as I type. The natural and modern movement captured me. Maybe I would adopt the movements on top of the ballet classes. I would also learn an ancient chant:  Votes for Women.