Potential Humdrum Hums / Mark Alburger

Richard Strauss, Sergei Rachmaninoff, Ludwig van Beethoven. Not exactly headliners to light my new-music fire, as we settled down to potential sonambulance for the opening of the Marin Symphony at Veterans Memorial Auditorium. But, then again, in their respective days, these guys did not make their money by putting their audiences to sleep. And on October 3 -- anywhere from roughly 60 to 180 years after said composers' respective deaths -- conductor Alasdair Neal, piano soloist Joyce Yang, and the gang proved that dead men can still dance, in a persuasive and mostly-professional program that stirred hearts and heads.

"Dead Can Dance" was not inappropriate for Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini (Introduction and 24 Variations), since Rachmaninoff partly based his arguably-most-wonderful-of-his compositions not only on the Faustian virtuoso violinist Niccolo but also the notorious Thomas of Celano "Dies Irae" ("Day of Wrath") medieval sequence. Keyboardist Yang put her all into this fiery and voluptuous music, highlighting the notion that, contrary to even the composer's (and certainly his critics') perception, this is not particularly unprogressive music. While solidly rooted in the romantic tradition, there is no way this can really be perceived as a merely 19th-century (rather than 20th) endeavor -- in a heightened, self-concious neoromanticism that is over-the-top lush, surreal, skeletal, and even jazzy through its various incarnations. Pianist, director, and orchestra made the most of every moment.

And Strauss. Again, a self-aware, coyly manipulative con where the composer seems at once hip and square. Strauss's anachronistic waltzes are, as in Maurice Ravel, too good to be true, and archly erotic. The Marin Symphony shined in sumptuous strings and holistic horn playing that healed what ailed ye.

OK, so that was a little much. But so is the music.

And what can be said of Beethoven? The Sympony No. 5 is a defining cliche of classical music, its place on the cusp of romanticism unquestioned. But what is old now was new then in so many ways, and Neal captured some of that excitement, where an exposition must be repeated, a trombone must be wailed, and a piccolo must piercing over the top of the texture. This was early 19th-century head-banging music, and even the old (but living) guys in this current audience responded with their own rhythmic shakings of the arms and tapping of the toes.

It was surprisingly refreshing and exciting.

Bernstein Bounce / Mark Alburger

The Democratic and Republican National Conventions both provided "bounce" for their respective nominees Barack Obama and John McCain. Similarly, the opening gala of the 2008-2009 season, on September 3 at Davies Hall, proved likewise for candidates Michael Tilson Thomas and the San Francisco Symphony, in a bouncy program that featured music by Leonard Bernstein, Sergei Rachmaninoff, and Leo Delibes.

The compositional front runner was unquestionably Bernstein's popular Symphonic Dances from "West Side Story", a perennial favorite that reminds us of just how important this composer and this work are and were to the American scene. Even a quick google can make a telling comparison, in terms of number of internet citations as of today (September 9):

Leonard Bernstein 2,870,000
Aaron Copland 1,110,000

West Side Story 5,130,000
Appalachian Spring 209,000

Certainly Bernstein's West Side Story would trounce Copland's Appalachian Spring (possibly the most-referenced American work in criticism, programming, and textbooks) in any musical Electoral College. And what Thomas and the Symphony reminded us was that WSS is appropriate not only for gala and pops concerts, but for any place and time, as a composition of beauty, depth, and energy. If the composer received assistance in its orchestration (by top orchestrators Sid Ramin and Irwin Kostal), surely this points simply to Broadway deadlines, as, ironically, the work sounds as quintessentially Bernsteinian as anything Lenny ever wrote.

Styled as a series of nine attacca numbers, the Symphonic Dances feature much, yet not all, of the most arresting sections of the musical, as the entire evening's entertainment clearly has engaging music to burn (such memorable pieces as America, Maria, and Officer Krupke never make it out of the caucuses, for instance). What survives -- Prologue, Somewhere, Scherzo, Mambo, Cha-Cha, Meeting Scene, Cool Fugue, Rumble, and Finale -- makes for festive suite that proved the high point of the proceedings.

Also a contender was the Piano Concerto No. 3 of Rachmaninoff, with Yefim Bronfman on the docket. While not as immediately engaging as this fine conservative composer's second essay in the genre, the work certainly has its advocates, such as both the conductor and the soloist, who both blazed their way through blizzards of notes on this balmy night. If the work meanders a bit, there is much pleasure in the wanderings, and the finale evokes a romp along with the best of them.

The opener opened with Delibes's Cortege de Bacchus from Sylvia, featuring heroic brass fanfares and resonant string passage work.

Unlike the political rallies, however, the opener failed to provide us with any contemporary notions of diversity beyond the expected male European-American dominance. And, while the performers were certainly lively, the composers were, as is so often the case, all dead -- casting programming Music Director Thomas in an aesthetic position way to the right of a musical Sarah Palin.