The San Francisco Symphony program last weekend was trashed by two critics I admire,
Steven Winn at SFCV and
Joshua Kosman at On a Pacific Aisle, but I thoroughly enjoyed it. Maybe I was in just in the mood, but I thought the conducting of the young conductor Tianyi Lu was remarkable, The program started with
Zhiân, a 2023 piece by the Iranian-Canadian composer Iman Habibi. The work for large orchestra was written in solidarity with the women of Iran protesting against their theocratic government, and it bounced all over the place, but by the end of its 13 minutes I was enjoying its sound world.
(All photos by Brandon Patoc.)
This was followed by Korngold's 1945
Violin Concerto, the composer's return to "serious" music after writing innumerable Hollywood film scores over the last decade, some of which are classics on their own terms. The critical reception of the violin concerto was dismissive at the time, but it's a fun piece with some enchanting tunes repurposed from Bette Davis movies and adventure epics. The young Spanish soloist María Dueñas was a disappointment in her solo role, recessive when the music required more assertion, but the orchestra under Lu was doing all kinds of interesting things with Korngold's score.
After intermission, Lu conducted the best version I have ever heard of Rimsky-Korsakov's 1888 symphonic suite,
Scheherazade. The piece can be a long slog because it's basically a few catchy tunes repeated over and over for 45 minutes without much variation.
Last Saturday, though, I was entranced by the Technicolor spectacle throughout, and was impressed with the conductor's ability to keep a musical line drawn through the entire piece while playing around with soft and loud dynamics in unusual ways that kept the music interesting. I hope Tianyi Lu is invited back again.
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