Gautier Capuçon
with the San Francisco Symphony
2013-05-29
Davies Symphony Hall
201 Van Ness, San Francisco, CA
8:00 PM, Wednesday, May 29, 2013

[8:00 PM lights down, standard announcements]

Antonín Dvorák (1841-1904): Cello Concerto in B minor, Op. 104, B. 191 (1895)

1. [8:m PM] Allegro
2. [8:m PM] Adagio, ma non troppo
3. [8:m PM] Finale: Allegro moderato - Andante - Allegro vivo
   [work ends 8:m PM]

? Possible GC solo encore?

[9:11 PM ready to go; 9:13 yah!]

Zoltán Kodály (1882-1967): Dances of Galánta (1933)
SFS Program Notes
[work ends 9:29 PM; pause about 4 min to reset the stage for the larger group needed for the next work]

Béla Viktor János Bartók (1881-1945): Suite from The Wooden Prince, Op. 13, Sz. 60 (1917)
SFS Program Notes

The work is written in three parts, performed contiguously:

Part One

1. [9:36 PM] Prelude
2. [9:m PM] Dance of the Princess in the Forest
3. [9:m PM] Dance of the Forest
4. [9:m PM] the Prince’s Work Song
5. [9:m PM] the Brook
6. [9:m PM] Dance of the Wooden Prince
   
   Part Two
   
   Part Three
7. [9:m PM] Postlude
   [10:02 ends]

• Gautier Capuçon: cello;
• Juraj Valcuha: conductor;
• symphony members vary by program, see the current list.

Running late due to martial arts conflicts, my own laggardness and a missed connection at BART, f#@k! Arrive at Civic Center station at 7:58 PM, dash up all four flights of stairs (and everything inbetween), making all haste to get to Davies Hall. Exiting BART, I am flummoxed to see a sea of people - graduates in crimson gowns and extended families dressed in all degree of finery fill the space outside: Oh no! it’s the annual HS graduation ceremonies at the Civic Auditorium. I dodge the wheel chair bound grannies and weave through the clumps of families arranging and rearranging for their pictures, threading my way to Davies, only to arrive a few minutes late. Damn!

The usher is kindly enough to seat me in an empty box at the side of the hall, but I am bummed nonetheless. GC is but a speck in the distance from this vantage point. Wretchedly, I do my best to enjoy the program, but I neglect to take notes about what happened in this set. Was there an encore from GC? Maybe…

I meet with TC at intermission and he ribs me about being late: “You can’t always count on the world operating on Randy time”. No sir, you can’t!

The second set opens with an energetic romp through Kodály’s Dances of Galánta – a fine way to lift my mood and help put the unpleasantry of the night behind me.

The show closes with The Wooden Prince, a one act ballet, scored by Béla Bartók around the same time as his more famous opera, Bluebeard’s Castle. I enjoyed hearing the work, and would like to see it again, but in context as a ballet.