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From the opening note of the violins, cool and smooth as a frozen pond, the San Francisco Symphony exuded depth. A dozen violinists playing the same note, and attaining the richness of multiple instruments while staying in perfect tune and time, takes tremendous talent - and these pe ople have it.
 Today's performance was one of many at the Kennedy Center this 2002 Fall season by some very prestigious organizations, including the Vienna Philharmonic, the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra, and cellist Yo-yo Ma. The playbill featured works from Bela Bart ok, Carl Ruggles, and Richard Strauss. The performance was one of many sponsored by the Washington Performing Arts Society (www.wpas.org), an ambitious organization whose purpose is to further the development and enjoyment of music, theater, and dance in the greater Washington, D.C. area, and to make the city as much a cultural capital as a governmental one.
I sat between the wife of a foreign embassy official and a young percussionist studying under WPAS's youth fellowship program. Funny, I didn't meet people like this at the monster truck rally...
 Michael Tilson Thomas has been Conductor and Musical Director for the San Francisco Symphony since 1995. It is a treat to see him in action, arms waving about, hands moving expressively and passionately as he conducts. He not only draws the very best out of his musicians but visibly enjoys every minute of it.
I think this afternoon's Bartok piece, 'Music for Strings, Percussion, and Celesta', should be called 'The Bipolar Symphony'. The opening movement, played 'Andante tranquillo', or "calmly", can best be described by a color: grey. Gently overlapping chords in minor keys, and some very artistically dissonant tones, lend an air of resigned despair until the volume rises toward a surprising intense climax. Then the final, graceful note of the violins trails off like the quiet death of hope. The melodic celeste (think of the Nutcracker Suite's 'Dance of the Sugarplum Fairy' by Tchaikovsky) helps to make the movement sound pretty despite its mood.
The second movement - 'Allegro', or happy - jumps in with an almost manic energy and races along, violin bows stabbing the air like swords in a Lord-of-the-Rings battle. This may be an apt analogy, as this piece calls for an unusual rearrangement of the orchestra that effectively creates two dueling string sections on either side of a grand piano (please don't stab the piano player). The sound is engaging and intriguing, with a spunky keyboard part and much plucking of strings from the violins, basses, and harp.
The third movement, played 'Adagio', returns you to greyness. The ethereal chords and unusual bent tones from the kettledrums suggest a weird dream, the kind that makes you wonder what was in last night's dinner.
When I looked down at my program and saw 'Allegro molto' for the final movement, I began feeling around for a seat belt. Another wild, melodic ride ensued, carried by the strings and spiced by cymbal and kettledrum. The movement is described as a country dance, and Maestro Tilson Thomas reminded me (forgive me here) of a huge dancing grasshopper, his long limbs and tuxedo tails flying. A final crescendo built into a sudden, almost unexpected ending. Spectacular! It was a long, arduous piece of music, and an intermission followed. This was entirely unde rstandable, as the musicians must have been drained. I certainly was.
The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, originally conceived under President Eisenhower, was dedicated in 1964 by Congress after Kennedy's death the previous November. The Center's Grand Foyer contains a seven-foot-high bronze bust of JFK and a new interactive information system that teaches visitors about his life and legacy.
The Center contains several performing-arts venues: its 2,441 seat concert hall was renovated in 1997, and the 2,200 seat opera house will close for a year-long renovation after this December's Kennedy Center Honors gala. Next to the opera house is the 1,100 seat Eisenhower Theater, and up on the Terrace Level are two smaller venues. On display everywhere are gifts from around the world: Italian marble walls, Norwegian chandeliers, art works from numerous countries. The entire Center was intended to be a living memorial to JFK, who believed that the quality of a nation's civilization is reflected in the vitality of its performing arts.
Carl Ruggles was a Twentieth-Century American composer who created only eight musical works. His 'Evocations' is a work of four very short movements. Hang on, and don't blink. Instead of ending with huge flourishes, the music tends to build to an enormous climax followed by a subdued ending that recalls the initial theme. This work has complex overlapping minor chords similar in mood to Bartok's piece, but this work struck me as more bombastic, arrogant, and dramatic. I loved it.
I first heard the San Francisco Symphony at their home in the Davies Symphony Hall as a teenager in 1983. Though not a classical music fan then, I was captivated by the palpable vibrations emanating from a single cello all the way up to the cheap seats. Anyone with good speakers can blissfully rupture his eardrums with rock music; to truly appreciate classical, you have to hear it live.
'Ein Heldenleben' ("a hero's life"), a tone poem by Richard Strauss, plays like a symphony without the breaks between movements. This piece contains abrupt shifts in tempo and intensity like the previous one, but the overall feeling is of a long, sweeping epic that flows from one mood to another. The music describes the Hero's experiences, and today's performance took us from happiness to restless brooding to romance to ecstatic triumph in battle and back to serenity in time for the ending. I was glad to hear more of the flutes, clarinets, and oboes than I had in the previous pieces. This work also featured brilliant solo violin by concertmaster Alexander Barantschik in a section depicting flirtation between the Hero and his love interest. The whole piece was played masterfully, and the audience couldn't get enough.
After returning for three or four bows, Maestro Tilson Thomas must have decided he'd better play something as an encore or we'd never let the Symphony leave. He treated us to the short prelude from the Third Act of Wagner's opera Lohengrin - "the part they didn't play at your wedding," announced the conductor. It was a rollicking piece that seemed to allow the entire orchestra, and especially the marvelous horn section, to have a little fun. My hands hurt from applauding.
The Kennedy Center was under renovation outside as well as inside, with an improved access drive and additional parking under construction. The Center is reached by free shuttle bus from the Metro station at George Washington University in Foggy Bottom. The Metro, of course, takes you easily to all points in Washington and out to the surrounding suburbs. I completed my Capital experience by staying at the beautiful Renaissance Mayflower Hotel, at 1127 Connecticut Avenue NW. The staff there, from the valets who retrieved my misplaced cell phone from my parked car to the bellman who made sure my room temperature was just-so, took care of me in grand style. I spent the evening listening to the pianist in the dark, elegant lounge while reliving the day's performance.10001263O
Needless to say, our nation's capital has a lot to see when it comes to American history and the culture that has developed from it. Today, with an always-fresh variety of performances by local artists and such distinguished visitors as the San Francisco Symphony, WPAS is making sure that the performing arts are an ongoing part of that culture.
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Reviewed October 12, 2002 by Rob LaGrone, Las Vegas Entertainment and Travel Correspondent. Read about Maxim Vengerov - Old Soul Violinist - at the San Francisco Symphony.
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