After a very long week I could do little more than lay around in Huntington Park on Nob Hill today but tonight I caught the F Train to Davies Symphony Hall to see Michael Tilson Thomas conduct the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra in an all Brahms concert. Lief Ove Andsnes played the Second Piano Concerto and the second half was Brahms’s Fourth Symphony.
It was a great concert, despite sitting next to a head nodder and occasional hummer (!) who had an odour that suggested he had just had the Forty Clove Garlic Chicken at the Stinking Rose. MTT conducted the symphony without the score which allowed him the freedom for some truly balletic gestures; sometimes it looked like he was fencing with the violas.
Interesting to know that you get hummers and nodders in “civilised” parts of the world too.
Recently the Israel Phil was in Mumbai, with Zubin Mehta conducting (Mumbai laps up everything that ZM brings. I mean this in the nicest sense).
I had to almost physically restain the woman next to me who began to sing the first main tune, 1st movt Schubert 9 symphony “Laa-la-la-Laa-la-Laaaa…!” along with the orchestra!
ZM can be balletic too. Loves the limelight. But gets the job done, as the Americans say! 🙂