Saturday, January 11, 2025

SF Symphony: James Gaffigan with Ray Chen


James Gaffigan
Photo copyright Miguel Lorenzo / courtesy of San Francisco Symphony

James Gaffigan, once an associate conductor of San Francisco Symphony, currently music director of the Komische Oper, Berlin, was back this week, leading a program of, really, pretty standard stuff and also chatting with Iris Kwok of SFCV. I went to the second of three performances last night, and you bet I was surprised: I was mostly bored.

What didn't bore me at all was the first work on the program, Missy Mazzoli's Sinfonia (for Orbiting Spheres), which was about ten minutes of purely gorgeous sound, rotating slowly around the orchestra and with a remarkable concluding sonority that included a bunch of harmonicas. Looking at the instrumentation, which called for one member of several sections to play harmonicas, I'll note that, perhaps respecting the sheer size of Davies, two members of each section played harmonicas.

I do not really get people's love of the Barber Violin Concerto, here well played by Ray Chen. It is kinda dull, with pretty moments. The last movement is extremely perky and ends abruptly. I was expecting something resembling a development and didn't get it. Back to the drawing board, Sam! Or maybe not; he's long gone. Chen's Bach encore was imaginatively and flexibly played; he's good.

The Prokofiev Fifth Symphony came across as noisy, musically incoherent (the composer's fault, I'd guess), and uninteresting (the conductor's fault, because I can certainly imagine it working a lot better in someone else's hands.

I'd definitely encourage you to read the interview with Iris Kwok, in which Gaffigan some interesting things and others that maybe he could have thought through a bit. Here he's talking, generally, about SFS's music director search (a job I'd guess he would be interested in:
This could be dangerous for an institution because then you’re just checking off boxes — we want an old European conductor, we want a young female conductor, or we want a person of color. Those things have nothing to do with what the institution needs artistically. For me, I don’t care what gender, what color skin, what nationality you are — you have to fit the mold as a musician first and foremost for the institution, and you need to have the same values and mission statement as the institution.

He's not wrong about having the same values and mission (a severe divergence is why we're losing Salonen) but also: representation really does matter. It would have been really wild if the Oakland Symphony had hired a white guy to succeed Michael Morgan, for example. I must also note that he's very clear that it's easy to find worthy music by women:

In Missy Mazzoli’s case, she’s a dreamer, and her music is always filled with fantasy. Her piece is abstract: about orbits, space, the way things come around and meet with one another again, how things get faster and accelerate with time. She just writes great stuff, whether it’s five or 10 minutes or a [longer] symphonic piece. As a conductor, I’m always looking for modern music. The funny thing is, all the artistic administrations are always like, “We need more female composers.” And I’m like, “There’s no problem finding them. There’s so many great female composers.” She got to the top very quickly because she’s a natural.

He's got some rightfully pointed things to say about American orchestras and their apparent love for European conductors versus Americans, and how he felt he had to have European credentials to eventually land a music director job here. I'm with him all the way on this: he doesn't say "this is ridiculous," because he can't, but it is. There is a lot of conducting talent in the United States, but how many of the major (and major-ish) orchestras are currently or recently led by U.S.-born music directors? The Baltimore Symphony (Jonathon Heyward, previously Marin Alsop); Buffalo Philharmonic (JoAnn Falletta; previously MTT); Metropolitan Opera (previously James Levine); SFS (previously MTT); Boston Symphony (previously James Levine); NY Philharmonic (previously Alan Gilbert, previously Lorin Maazel); St. Louis SO (previously David Robertson). How many others?

I'm reminded that last March, the NY Times ran an article (gift link) about why Americans have such a hard time getting hired at orchestras here. Mostly, they talked with, or were only able to quote, conductors! For crying out loud: talk to orchestra boards and CEOs about this. They're the ones hiring music directors. 

Elsewhere:

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