The Weilersteins at the Conservatory

Donald and Vivian Hornik Weilerstein, the violin and piano duo above, were in town this week offering master classes at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, which was capped by a chamber music concert Thursday evening. The evening started with a bit of unintentional humor as Donald attempted to explain the ten-movement Impressions d'enfance by the Romanian-French composer George Enescu, complete with musical examples. Unfortunately, he was a terrible lecturer, speaking softly into a microphone in a droning voice that eventually gave both me and a nearby audience member a fit of hysterical giggles that we did our best to repress, without much success.



Once the duo started playing the music, though, all was forgiven and the laughing was replaced by wonder. The 1940 piece for violin and piano invokes insects, storms, a sunrise, and both the lightness and darkness of a childhood in Romania in a dense twenty minutes of music that is eccentric, bracing and beautiful. It was a real discovery from an underplayed composer, and the Weilersteins gave it an exciting performance.



This was followed by three students/recent graduates of the Conservatory playing an early (1911) Trio for Violin, Cello and Piano by Charles Ives. The sensationally good performers were (above, left to right) Noemy Gagnon-Lefrenais on violin, Allegra Chapman on piano, and Emanuel Evans on cello. The second movement depicting "games and antics by the Students on the Campus [of Yale] on a Holiday afternoon" was wild, with different fragments of popular songs being played simultaneously by the three soloists at seeming cross purposes.



After intermission, the Weilersteins were joined by students for Elgar's 1918 piano quintet. The performers were (above, left to right) the Weilersteins, Kristen Zimmerman on viola, Emanuel Evans on cello, and Douglas Kwon on violin. The performance was passionate and pretty, but after listening to the astringency of Enescu and Ives for the first hour, Elgar sounded a bit like too much sugar and cream in context. Check out the SF Conservatory calendar here for more concerts, most of which are superb and free.

Artistically Cracked Muni Cell

She was talking to her mother on her cellphone, saying "I love you, mom." She told mother about the present she was sending on Valentine's Day, which devolved into an argument about money that ended with "But I love you, mom." Everybody in the back of the Van Ness 47 bus could overhear the awkward, one-sided conversation.



A seat opened up after the call was over, and I noticed the phone was cracked which matched her chipped red fingernail polish. "That looks like an art photo," I told her, and asked to take a shot. "Sure, the phone is artistically cracked, not broken," she replied in amusement, and I assured her it was a better story.

Year of the Snake

The Asian Art Museum offered a free family day on Sunday with performances and activities dedicated to the upcoming Year of the Snake, the Chinese lunar New Year celebration which begins on February 10th.



The Chinese American International School from neighboring Hayes Valley provided a small student orchestra on traditional Chinese instruments that sounded great, though they were impossible to see from standing room around the edges of the seated audience, a longtime problem for live performances presented in Samsung Hall.



The real pleasure was watching parents hand in hand with their kids...



...negotiating old marble stairways together.

3D Noir

The Noir City Film Festival at the Castro Theatre projected a pair of restored 1953 3D movies on Friday, starting with Man in the Dark. It starred Edmond O'Brien as a gangster who undergoes an "experimental" brain operation (read lobotomy) with scalpels popping out of the screen at the audience. Without a memory of who he is, O'Brien becomes "good" but is kidnapped off the clinic's front lawn by his old partners in crime who want to know where he stashed the $130,000 stolen from a payroll truck.



The romantically happy ending featured a chase at an oceanfront amusement park, including over and around a roller coaster that was a dead ringer for The Big Dipper at the Santa Cruz Boardwalk. What's not to like? (Photo above is of torch singer Laura Ellis performing a teaser number onstage at the Castro for Saturday evening's Noir City Nightclub at the Regency Lodge.)