Thursday, January 29, 2009

SFS in OC

Tim Mangan of the Orange County Register reports on a visit by our local band:
The San Francisco Symphony, sometimes considered second-tier, doesn't have a particularly distinctive tone. Wednesday, the string section performed with a nice unity and sheen, even a kind of mellowness. It is not a heavy sound, and sometimes it lacked a little bite. The healthy brass section could sometimes overwhelm it, and Tilson Thomas allowed it to.
And here I've been blaming Davies for most of the balance problems.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Granted, it was their first time in our new hall.

Lisa Hirsch said...

It's a clue, though. In Davies, the orchestral sound was different from the usual for James Conlon, as I recall it, better.

Axel Feldheim said...

I have to say that I think this Orange County reviewer really nailed it with MTT & our symphony. MTT likes a lot of sound, & he lets the brass blast away without balancing them in order to achieve this. The reviewer also caught on to MTT's swinging back & forth when he doesn't have anything to add. I heard the Copland film music during a subscription concert, & I agree that it was the best-conducted work on that particular program.

Lisa Hirsch said...

Thanks for that. I just got tickets to a bunch of SFS concerts, and will take note of what he does. I've got programs he's conducting, plus Gaffigan, Ashkenazy (zzzzz, but I could not miss Belshazzar's Feast!), Masur....