Prokofiev and Rachmaninoff at the SF Symphony

Last week's all-Russian SF Symphony program was an enjoyable grab-bag led by guest conductor Karina Canellakis. It started with a 15-minute tone poem from 2003 by Victoria Borislava-Oslos entitled The Kingdom of Silence, where presumably the Kingdom is Death. The piece begins delicately with a duet between celesta and glockenspiel, slowly involving the rest of the large orchestra, followed by a number of noisy episodes that didn't seem at all connected to each other. Finally, the music returns to the soft violins, celesta and glockenspiel, not leaving much of an impression.

The next piece was Prokofiev's 1935 Violin Concerto #2 with the Scottish soloist Nicola Benedetti in a bright red jumper on Saturday evening. Sergei Prokofiev is one of my all-time favorite composers, from his early avant-garde music in Paris to his later Socialist Realist music in the Soviet Union. This violin concerto is liminal, when Prokofiev was on the brink of returning to Russia after fleeing the country during the Revolution. It also has a collection of his finest melodies intertwined in interesting ways that sound extremely tricky to get right.

Nicola Benedetti was wonderful, dancing along while sawing away virtuosically, and she conveyed the sweetness in the melodies of the first two movements without overdoing it. Canellakis also did a fine job conducting, although she didn't quite manage to blend the medium-sized orchestra and soloist, with their devilishly competing rhythms. Still, the performance worked and the wild final movement with its slashing rhythms embroidered with castanets was a gas.

After intermission, Canellakis conducted the best live version I have heard of Rachmaninoff's 1940 Symphonic Dances, bringing out all the lushness and color of the music. Unfortunately, while my fellow audience members were swooning at the familiar melodies and rich scoring, the work has never done anything for me. My loss.