Gaffigan at the SF Symphony

I've been crushing on conductor James Gaffigan since 2007 when I stumbled across him at an SF Symphony Summer in the City pops concert (link here). He was MTT's assistant for three years before taking on the rest of the world for the last decade, with posts in Lucerne and the Netherlands and gigs at every major opera house globally. San Francisco Opera is currently looking for a Music Director and Gaffigan is one of a few being auditioned there later this year with productions. On a purely selfish level, I hope he gets the job so I can hear him more. He's one of those special characters who has music in their fingertips.

This afternoon's concert, with Gaffigan as guest conductor, started with a Wagnerian Good Friday Music from Parsifal overture. Following was a performance of Beethoven's Fourth Piano Concerto, which I've always thought of as "the pretty one." The soloist was Hélène Grimaud who gave a flawless performance in terms of accuracy, but which was surprisingly dull, undifferentiated, and unmusical.

Meanwhile, the orchestra under Gaffigan sounded vastly more interesting in their background interjections, and I kept wishing we were hearing that version of the concerto. Sometimes having a soloist and an orchestra going separate ways can be intriguing, but not in this case.

The second half of the program was Mozart's Symphony #31, which he wrote at the age of 22, and Samuel Barber's Symphony #1 which he wrote at age 26 in 1936. Gaffigan is a Mozart lover who conducts Amadeus' music with a wonderful mixture of pleasure and understanding. The major revelation of the afternoon was the Barber Symphony, which he conducted in a great performance by the orchestra as if it were an undiscovered Sibelius-influenced masterpiece. I've been disappointed lately by every Barber piece I've heard at the Symphony over the last decade, but today was a happy corrective. And the brass section was a perfect blast.