New Century Chamber Orchestra Luminaries

The New Century Chamber Orchestra presented a very mixed bag of music last Saturday at the Presidio Theatre. The concert was highlighted by two commissions from local composers Jake Heggie and Nathaniel Stookey, seen above talking to Gordon Getty, the oil industry billionaire and composer who has been donating huge amounts of money to Bay Area music organizations for decades.

The opener was a short Overture by Jake Heggie, written for the string orchestra's 30th anniversary in 2022. The music was pleasant, but vanished from my consciousness as soon as it was over. The next piece was the wildly virtuosic 1775 violin concerto by the recently rediscovered Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges. The piece sounded a bit like Mozart meets Paganini, and was thoroughly enjoyable. The cadenza in the third, final movement was so crazed that the audience laughed when Music Director Daniel Hope finished sawing away, allowing the orchestra to rejoin him for the finale.

Daniel Hope's playing was fabulous, and so was the support he received from associate concertmaster Dawn Harms and principal violist Anna Kruger.

Nathaniel Stookey introduced his world premiere piece, Bubble Chamber, with a gracious speech praising Getty. Proclaiming himself a native San Franciscan, Stookey noted that every musical organization with which he's been associated, from childhood to middle age, has been supported on some level by Getty. His introduction to Bubble Chamber noted that champagne bubbles were his initial inspiration along with Richard Strauss's Metamorphosen with its many individuated parts for string orchestra. I was expecting something frothy but instead the ten-minute work was a dense, fascinating, swirling journey that ended in mysterious pizzicatos and transparent textures. I loved it and wished they had played it all over again immediately.

Instead, the final piece was a string orchestra version of Tchaikovsky's 1890 Souvenir de Florence, which was originally written for a sextet of two violins, two violas, and two cellos. I am not a big fan of beefed up arrangements of chamber music because the clear voices tend to turn into mush with more instruments, and this was no exception. Still, it was very well played, and the profusion of pretty tunes made everyone happy.