I know this should technically go in the Noise blog, but I didn’t want it to get lost in our upcoming blizzard of SXSW coverage, so here goes …. I LOVE YUNDI LI!
Last night at Davies Hall, the SF Symphony accompanied this teen sensation in Franz Liszt’s Piano Concerto #1, and it was a storm of fiery pyrotechnics — fingers flew, strings broke, spirits soared, and everything sounded so beautifully complicated and romantic that, at the finale, the audience sprang to its feet and cheered (if you haven’t noticed, standing ovations in this town are very few and far between — too showy, maybe?)
Associate conductor James Gaffigan cut an archetypal “wild romantic conductor with wild romantic hair” figure (guess MTT was in Miami for the Winter Music Conference, heh), driving the symphony to ecstatic heights.