music

John Luther Adams, Ye-Eun Choi with the SF Symphony

When it’s hip to be square.

My cousin was going to join me for a concert at the San Francisco Symphony, but being a young techie, he was still waiting to land at the airport at curtain time. I thought about that as I looked in line for someone to use my other ticket. As this was a Sunday matinee, with rush tickets available for the young and elderly, most patrons were young or had blue-rinsed hair or a hearing aid. Where were all the young techies? Working hard or doing hip things, I guess.

I asked a young man with long hair in front of me if he was looking for a single ticket. “No, I’m looking for a pair of tickets,” he said, frowning at me as if I had asked something risky. An older lady stopped and asked if this was the line for tickets.

“Do you need a single ticket?” I asked. “My wife couldn’t come.” This wasn’t exactly a lie, because I did ask my wife first, but I wanted her to know this wasn’t a date.

“How much?”

“Oh, it’s free,” I replied. “Otherwise I would just turn the ticket back in.” She was happy to join me and explained that she had also just recently given away a ticket.

“See what you missed?” I teased the young fellow in front of me. He frowned again.

We found our seats in the orchestra section, fairly close to the stage. “They give good seats to the press,” I told her. “Oh, these are great,” she assured me.

Then someone tall sat in front of her. “We can trade,” I offered. “Oh, no.” She conferred with the lady on her other side about the two empty seats there. “We can sit there. They’ve closed the doors,” she said.

“I’m fine here on the aisle. Why don’t you go ahead and take that other seat?” I could see that she was trying to fill in for my wife, but it was really a free ticket.

Michael Tilson Thomas took a mike and introduced the first piece, The Light that Fills the World, by John Luther Adams. I looked over the audience. After some fiddling with canes they were rapt.

“His music is concerned with long spans and light… of the large pristine landscapes of Alaska. He’s not interested in rhythm, like Reich, but in sustained sounds. Christian Baldini, an annotator and composer, will be conducting our colleagues in this.”

That conductor and seven musicians entered, two double basses, the small portative organ, contrabassoon, violin and two marimbas, and arranged themselves in a semicircle. Beginning with rumbling bass notes, their magic unfolded across many octaves, with marimba thrumming rapidly on high metals, and organ notes seeping through. This chamber sound overflowed Davies Hall with its odd textures.

It was hard to tell if this was about the return of light from the depths of winter, as Adams described in the program notes, but there was a sense of huge forces, and the trembling of a still day, and the unhurried buzz of emptiness.

It was uplifting and the audience was spellbound.

And then the extraordinary confluence that had brought many of them out: new superstar violinist Ye-Eun Choi performing Brahms’ inimitable Violin Concerto. Flair and intimacy, power and vulnerability were the order of the day. They opened with sonorous dollops of sound and built to a grand statement, and then suddenly gave way to a lonely oboe note. It was the most remarkable emotional fluency on the planet, and then paved the way for Choi’s forceful violin entrance and a driving series of chords and arpeggios.

Ye-Eun Choi- photo by Felix BroedeI had forgotten what an incredible unity and sound the SF Symphony has, following MTT’s every gesture and intent through that tangled beauty.

Also, I have seldom heard such perfection as Ye-Eun Choi brought to her runs. But that perfection came at a cost – there was an iciness to her high register, a celebration of technical mastery that overshadowed Brahms’ longing and regret.

She was 25 years old, and not what one would define as hip, but with a gorgeous backless dress and a fierce attack on life.

During the long applause I looked around again at the 2,500 people standing at Davies, patrons who had time for a deeper experience on a Sunday afternoon, and I remembered reading an article in last Sunday’s Chronicle. “Young, hip and wired,” read the headline. And under it, “Architectural images show narrowness of vision for culture of tomorrow.” This was an article about architects’ models and the selling of a sanitized future, so maybe it’s a stretch. But still, it mirrors a culture of ageism, of blandness and youth, perhaps even a culture of those who program and a populace that is slowly being programmed.

The Bay Area is changing, and we are not changing with it.

—Adam Broner

Photo of violinist Ye-Eun Choi, photo by Felix Broede