All those about to be quoted agree that the San Francisco Symphony season, opening tomorrow, has much to go for it (e.g. the top item of this column), there are questions and objections. That sort of thing happens with every orchestra everywhere, but perhaps there are some special reasons for criticism of the home team — especially the claim of "risk-taking" on Michael Tilson Thomas's 20th season here.
MTT is a risk-taker, just take a look at the programs of his New World Symphony — Barber, Milhaud, Holloway, Monn/Schoenberg, Stravinsky, Antheil, Knussen, Sinigaglia, Bristol, Hindemith, Clyne, Viñao, Takemitsu, and Westlake for starters — and some of the earlier years in San Francisco, plus "An American Festival" and "American Mavericks" of blessed memory. But what now? Beethoven. As Lisa Hirsch puts it:
... there's quite a lot of music this SFS season that I'd like to hear, but, unfortunately, the season is also so heavily loaded with Beethoven and other top-10 composers that I'm tearing my hair out. There'll be one piece, new or unusual, that I want to hear, but it's sandwiched between stuff I'm just not very excited about.
Hirsch goes on to quote Jeff Dunn's compilation:
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Beethoven 25
Stravinsky 11
Mozart 10
Bach 9
Brahms 9
Haydn 8
Prokofiev 7
Ravel 7
Tchaikovsky 6
Rachmaninoff 4
Further:
That's more than twice as much Beethoven as the next two composers combined. And if you're alive, being named Adams will go a long way to getting your work performed in San Francisco. The Adamses, father John Coolidge and son Samuel Carl, have two works each. No other living composer has more than one.
Yet another tack is taken by Michael Strickland, who leads to the same conclusion, beginning with the recollection of the 1970s progamming in the Embassy Theater on Market Street, where:
Ken Russell's lurid, X-rated 1971 film, The Devils with Vanessa Redgrave as a nun being exorcised by Oliver Reed, (was) followed by the black-and-white 1954 Hollywood boardroom melodrama, Executive Suite, with an all-star cast including Barbara Stanwyck and William Holden. On what alternative planet were these two films supposed to have any kind of aesthetic correlation?
Strange pairings in Davies Symphony Hall, says Strickland, include Bach's Brandenburg Concerto No. 3 and Henry Brandt's "spatial music" of Ice Field, with the Tchaikovsky Symphony No. 5 to conclude the evening. Another sandwich problem is the Britten Violin Concerto (good), bookended by pieces "I really don't want to hear live again, such as Barber's Adagio for Strings and Rachmaninov's Symphonic Dances. In fact, I am taking a sabbatical from Rachmaninov for the indefinite future because the composer was not all that prolific and the same pieces of his are performed repeatedly every year at the San Francisco Symphony."
Repetitions of the non-risk taking kind, besides Beethoven, include Prokofief, especially his Romeo and Juliet, at its umpteenth repetion.
It's amazing how San Francisco Ballet seems to have a more varied and adventurous programming — in addition to classical ballet music favorites, of course. See next item.