On Ash Wednesday evening, the San Francisco Symphony offered a hastily put-together program after the scheduled conductor, Carlos Kalmar, canceled with illness and was replaced at the last minute by Alasdair Neale, who used to be the Symphony's Associate Conductor for 12 years.
The original program promised an orchestrated Hungarian Rhapsody by Lizst, a "Fantasy for Cello and Orchestra" called "A Song of Orpheus" by the 20th century American composer William Schuman, and Dvorak's rarely heard Symphony #6. The substitutions were Dvorak's "Carnival Overture" for the Lizst, and Dvorak's widely played Seventh Symphony rather than the Sixth.
The "Carnival Overture" is bombastic Top 10 classical music that you have heard a million times whether you know it or not, and the performance was wonderfully rousing and fun, just as it was written to be.
Unfortunately, the 1961 "A Song of Orpheus" was some of the most boring-ass music I've heard at the symphony in some time, dry and conservative and rhythmically uninteresting. Rick from Napa (above) even fell asleep during the 30-minute piece and threatened to start snoring at any moment, which must have been disconcerting for the soloist, since we were in the first row.
William Schuman was a New York pop songwriter in the 1920s who famously went to a Toscanini concert in 1930, where they were serendipitously playing Wagner and Schumann (with two n's), and the one "n" Schuman decided on the spot to become a classical composer, studying with Roy Harris for a number of years.
He seemed to have played the politics of the New York classical music world with immense skill, winning the first Pulitzer Prize for music; becoming the Director of Publications for G. Schirmer, Inc.; followed by the presidency of the Julliard School of Music for 17 years; and capped by being the first president of Lincoln Center. He also wrote ten symphonies along the way, which I am sure were dutifully played by everyone. In Michael Steinberg's program notes, he writes: "this composition shows us another and particularly likable side of William Schuman." If this is the likable side, please spare me the other.
The only reason to play the piece is if one is featuring an insanely virtuosic cellist, but the soloist for these concerts is Michael Grebanier, the Principal Cellist of the San Francisco Symphony. He's a good musician but a truly mediocre soloist. The practice of having various instrumentalists within the orchestra play a soloist role on occasion has yielded some wonderful moments over the years, but I don't remember Grebanier having supplied any of them.
After intermission, we were treated to the "tragic" and "intensely patriotic" Symphony Number Seven of Dvorak.
Though I love most of Dvorak, especially his opera "Rusalka" and all of his chamber music, the symphonies have always struck me as sounding like second-rate Brahms. Still, after the Schuman "fantasy," second-rate Brahms sounded perfectly masterful.
Plus, the orchestra played with obvious enjoyment for their old friend Alasdair Neale, and in the case of the musician pictured above, with an authentic fervor that was a treat to watch.
In honor of the 13th Annual International Bear Rendezvous in San Francisco, we went to the afternoon beer bust at the Lone Star saloon on Saturday.
The "Bear" movement is a reaction to the thin, manicured gay boy look that has been the predominantly marketed flavor for decades, though the movement's insistence on men having to be large and hairy to be considered attractive is equally as absurd. Still, as a marketing device, it certainly seems to be lucrative.
The nonprofit beneficiary of the beer bust was the gay Alexander Hamilton American Legion Post...
...one of whose leaders is John Caldera.
He seems to be everywhere you turn these days. The evening previously Mr. Caldera was playing wine hostess at Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi's art opening which is covered in the post below.
This year, the International Bear Rendezvous folks had moved their headquarters from the Market Street Ramada to the Van Ness and California Holiday Inn, and I'm sorry not to have walked by. Watching Japanese tourists negotiating a lobby filled with legions of 300-pound bearded men with nametags kissing each other is a sight that really shouldn't be missed.
However, The Bears must have had planned activities at the Holiday Inn because the assembled beer drinkers at the Lone Star were the same old shamans who usually show up on Saturday afternoons, minus one of our beloved buddies, Jess Johnston (above) who died suddenly of pneumonia last month.
The gay state assemblyman, Mark Leno, had obviously been misinformed about the nature of the crowd, because he welcomed everyone to San Francisco even though the vast majority were locals.
Leno also probably shouldn't have arrived quite so late into the beer bust because the crowd was well-lubricated and in a mood to heckle the politician.
The next day I went to the Asian Art Museum to find porcine imagery since we have just entered the Year of the Pig, or the Boar, or whatever you prefer to call it. Strangely enough, though there was dragon, monkey, elephant, and other animal imagery galore throughout the museum, the only pigs I could find were the tiny jade figurine one puts into the hands of the dead (above), and a Japanese netsuke of a tiny boar with a monkey on its back (below).
In any case, here's a Happy New Year to those lackeys of the Chinese Communist Government, Rita Hao at SFist and M.C- at The Standing Room.
And here's a ceramic Chinese Buddha from the 16th century for Miss Heidi and everybody else.
On Thursday the 15th at San Francisco's City Hall...
...there was a "Public Safety Commission" hearing led by Supervisors Mirkarimi, Maxwell, and Dufty that was dealing with crime-fighting issues, which was a bit of a bad joke.
There were a number of Police Department spokesmen speaking in bureaucratese about why nobody seems to get arrested in San Francisco unless you attack Elie Weisel in a downtown hotel and leave all your identification behind so the police can actually track you down.
The Civic Center building I live in has been the target of a number of thieves recently who have stolen bikes from the basement and personal effects from tenants' apartments. When the police have been called, they show up anywhere from 10 to 12 hours after the phone call, and when told that there is a video camera in the lobby that might help in identifying the perpetrators, the police have said to the manager, and I quote, "We're not interested in seeing it. Why don't you go back to your apartment?"
There is something so rotten at the top of San Francisco's Police Department that the entire city is starting to smell it.
H. Brown, in a smart, funny column at the "Fog City Journal," (click here) despairs of anything changing unless we get rid of Newsom, Harris, Fong and a few others in one fell swoop.
h. was also hosting his weekly "Burrito Salon" on Friday the 16th, where a number of local political celebrities were mixing it up...
...including Angela Alioto...
...and City Attorney public spokesman Matt Dorsey, who in person was friendly and charming. He could give Gavin's spokesman, Peter Ragone, a few lessons in people management.
Dorsey brought Brown a hostess gift, which was a bottle of wine called "Rabid Red," which couldn't have been any more appropriate.
Later that evening, the monthly art show in Supervisor Mirkarimi's office in City Hall took place...
...with tapestries by Martin Grizzell, above right.
Supervisor Mirkarimi was absent, since he had joined Mayor Newsom for a whirlwind weekend trip to Japan to visit "sister city" Osaka...
...but his aide Boris did a fine job of playing host, as did the amiable artist himself. Now, if Mirkarimi could just reform the terribly managed San Francisco Police Department...
