Tchaikovsky and Elgar at the SF Symphony

Driving back to San Francisco from Palm Springs on the day after that disastrous U.S. election, we heard Dianne Nicolini on KUSC introducing some piece of light classical music "to help process our feelings," which made me laugh. In a similar spirit, I attended Thursday's San Francisco Symphony concert which was featuring a pair of popular favorites by Tchaikovsky and Elgar, the musical equivalent of comfort food, and it was thoroughly enjoyable.

The debuting guest conductor was the 41-year-old Nicholas Collon, who founded London's Aurora Orchestra 20 years ago. The concert actually started with an edge, the 2007 Three-piece Suite by Thomas Adès extracted from his scandalous 1995 opera, Powder Her Face. West Edge Opera offered a remarkable production in 2016 at the abandoned Oakland train station (click here for an account), and the suite brought back vivid memories of both its lewdness and inventiveness. The opera was written for a small, jazzy chamber ensemble where the sour tangos and frenzied sexuality are more potent than in this large reorchestration, but it was a fun reminder of the original.

Next up was Tchaikovsky's 1875 Piano Concerto #1 with the 30-year-old American pianist Conrad Tao as the soloist. The familiar, ultra-Romantic opening measures set the template for many other composers, including Rachmaninoff's subsequent piano concertos, and Tao attacked the keyboard with abandon. If he was trying to show that he could play the piano faster and louder than anybody else, he clearly succeeded. At moments, it felt like a punk rock version of the concerto, and though I wouldn't want to hear it performed that way all the time, the result was exciting and made the overplayed music sound new and unfamiliar.

After the usual standing ovation, Tao returned for an unusual encore, his own transcription of Art Tatum's 1953 jazz rendition of "that unfamiliar song, Over The Rainbow." It was a kick.

The second half of the concert was devoted to Edward Elgar's 1895 breakthrough compositon, Enigma Variations, a set of 14 orchestral miniatures depicting friends and family, including the composer himself. Collon's conducting was a bit of a mixed bag, but the central Nimrod movement, which Dianne Nicolini seems to broadcast every other day on classical radio stations, was exquisite perfection. It helped to process a few feelings.