12 Wonderful Musical Performances 2023

This best-of list is incomplete because there were plenty of musical events I didn't attend, so here is a chronological account of a dozen favorite things in 2023. In February, the 95-year-old conductor Herbert Blomstedt returned to the San Francisco Symphony for his annual visit to the orchestra where he was once Music Director. The program was a newly discovered 1823 symphony by Jan Václav Voříšek and Dvorak's Symphony #8 in performances of surpassing beauty. Pictured above is assistant concertmaster Wyatt Underhill assisting Blomstedt to the podium. (Click here for the review.)

Also in February, Cal Performances brought back the Mark Morris Dance Group to perform The Look of Love at Zellerbach Hall in Berkeley. It was a compilation of Burt Bacharach songs with live performances by Ethan Iverson on piano, Jonathan Finlayson on trumpet, Simon Willson on bass, Vinnie Sperrazza on drums, and Marcy Harriell on vocals. The performance was so captivating that it changed my mind about Bacharach's music, which I had previously disdained. Now I can't get it out of my head. (Click here for the review.)

April featured a memorial concert at Herbst Theater for composer Ingram Marshall who split his career between his native New England and California before his death at age 70 in 2022. Friends and collaborators gave him a moving send-off with performances of music he had written for them. From left to right are Timo Andres, Libby Van Cleve, Ben Verdery, John Adams, and Sarah Cahill. (Click here for the review.)

The San Francisco Ballet Orchestra under conductor Martin West, is one of the city's unsung treasures and they were superb all season. Particularly demanding and brilliantly performed was Prokofiev's full-length ballet score for the 1945 Cinderella in a sumptuously creative production by choreographer Christopher Wheeldon. (Click here for the review.)

In May, the San Francisco Silent Film Festival presented a screening of the 1929 G.W. Pabst/Louise Brooks masterpiece, Pandora's Box at Oakland's Paramount Theater. The legendary Club Foot Orchestra, augmented with a few SF Conservatory instrumentalists, performed their jazzy, brilliant original score to accompany the film. (Click here for the review.)

In its summer season, the San Francisco Opera mounted Richard Strauss's weird, gargantuan fairy tale opera, the 1919 Die Frau Ohne Schatten. An old David Hockney production from London was bathed in sonic splendor from a stellar cast and a huge orchestra led by former Music Director Donald Runnicles. I didn't write about it at the time, but Lisa Hirsch did. (Click here for the review.)

At the same time across Grove Street, the San Francisco Symphony presented Kaija Saariaho's 2006 opera, Adriana Mater just days after the Finnish conductor passed away at age 70. Music Director Esa-Pekka Salonen, director Peter Sellars, and lighting designer James Ingalls created the 2008 U.S. premiere production in Santa Fe, and reunited for one of the first revivals of this dramatically dark, musically splendrous opera. Pictured are the four principal singers: Nicholas Phan, Axelle Fanyo, Fleur Barron, and Christopher Purves. (Click here for the review.)

In July at the Masonic Temple fronting Oakland's Lake Merritt, West Edge Opera presented a 2010 "mariachi opera," Cruzar la Cara de la Luna. The music was composed by José "Pepe" Martínez, a popular Mexican composer who was dubbed "the Mozart of Mariachi." The work was unexpectedly moving and the production by a mostly local Latino cast, mariachi band, and artistic team was superb. (Click here for the review.)

In October, SF Symphony Music Director Esa-Pekka Salonen conducted a major, infrequently performed John Adams "symphony," Naive and Sentimental Music. Salonen had conducted the world premiere in 1988 with the LA Philharmonic and it was a treat to hear a live revival. (Click here for the review.)

The following week Salonen presented the world premiere of a piano concerto by Swedish composer Anders Hillborg written for pianist Emanuel Ax. In fact, Hillborg's second piano concerto has the subtitle, The MAX Concerto. It was fabulous, and so was a rock-and-roll rendition by the orchestra of Beethoven's Second Symphony. (Click here for the review.)

The San Francisco Opera had a consistently excellent season all year, highlighted by three new operas that the company had co-commissioned. The first two were El Ultimo Sueno de Frida y Diego by composer Gabriela Lena Frank and librettist Nilo Cruz followed by The (R)evolution of Steve Jobs by composer Mason Bates and librettist Mark Campbell. Both were successful on their own terms and were widely enjoyed, but the opera I fell in love with was Omar by composer/librettist Rhiannon Giddens and composer Michael Abels. Its story of an African Muslim scholar who spent most of his life as an American slave was an unusual mixture of history and religious ritual, highlighted by a definitive performance in the title role by Jamez McCorkle. All three operas, by the way, were enhanced by extraordinarily beautiful and creative physical productions. (Click here for the review.)

The SF Opera season ended with a genuinely funny, charming production of Donizetti's 1834 comedy, The Elixir of Love. Pene Pati gave a perfect performance that combined physical comedy chops with a glorious, seamless tenor as the naive, lovesick hero, and debuting conductor Ramon Tebar had the chorus and orchestra in fine form. (Click here for the review.)