Bay Area Rainbow Symphony with Samuel Vargas

The Bay Area Rainbow Symphony is an amateur orchestra formed in 2008 that is amazingly ambitious and accomplished. Two weeks ago they offered a concert at the small, round Taube Atrium Theater on the top floor of the Veterans Building in San Francisco. The opener was Arnold Schoenberg's 1945 Fanfare for a Bowl Concert on Motifs of Die Gurrelieder. I had never heard of the two-minute piece for brass and percussion before, so that was a treat, although the exposed brass section was having intonation issues.

This was followed by the Venezuelan violin soloist Samuel Vargas in Florence Price's 1952 Violin Concerto No. 2 for Violin and Orchestra. This was another presumably lost work by the recently revived composer that was discovered in 1975 in an abandoned Illinois home she once owned.

The orchestra accompanied Vargas beautifully in the 15-minute concerto, with the wind section sounding particularly fine, including clarinets Gene Nakajima (photo above) and Ritchie Iu, along with principal flute David Latulippe.

Vargas is a spectacularly good violinist, and his onstage charm was as sparkly as the boots he wore.

Vargas and the orchestra continued with a familiar warhorse, Camille Saint-Saëns's 1863 Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso, in the best live performance I have heard anywhere of the piece. Vargas returned after intermission for an encore of his own composition based on Venezuelan folk tunes where he fiddled, whistled, and sang exquisitely. If you ever get a chance to see him, do so.

Then the fine conductor Dawn Harms launched the orchestra into Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 3 in D Major "Polish". It is a blustery five-movement work mostly known from Balanchine's Jewels ballet, where the symphony minus the first movement provides the music for Diamonds.

The group may have bitten off more than they could chew with this 45-minute symphony but it was fun sitting in what felt like the laps of the orchestra for the big, rambunctious piece. The group's next concert will be held at the SF Conservatory on June 10th when they will tackle Bernstein's Symphony No. 2 Age of Anxiety.