Not Perfect but Plenty Powerful

By Marcus Overton | May 4, 2015 |

San Diego Opera concluded its 2015 season on Saturday, April 25, with two performances of “El Pasado Nunca Se Termina” (The Past Is Never Finished) created by the same artistic team responsible for “Cruzar la Cara de la Luna” in company’s 2013 season . . .

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San Diego Symphony’s Scottish Fling Opens Season

By Marcus Overton | October 14, 2014 |

San Diego Symphony Music Director Jahja Ling celebrated his tenth anniversary with the orchestra by completing a musical circle: he duplicated his inaugural concert from 2004, a program of Scottish-themed works by Mendelssohn, Bruch and the contemporary Peter Maxwell Davies . . .

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Tchaikovsky’s Third or Thayer’s Second?

By Marcus Overton | May 3, 2014 |

The San Diego Symphony titled last Friday evening’s Jacobs Masterworks program “Tchaikovsky’s Third Symphony”, but when the audience rose to its feet in wonderfully noisy acclamation just before intermission, it was pretty clear that they had spontaneously re-named the evening “Jeff Thayer’s Second”, to honor the San Diego Symphony’s concertmaster for his impressive performance of one of the monuments of the violin repertoire, Béla Bartók’s Violin Concerto No. 2…

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Dohnányi, Historical Seating, Produce a Riveting Beethoven Fifth

By Marcus Overton | April 29, 2014 |

If the four-note thunderclap – da-da-da-DUM – that opens Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony does indeed evoke Fate knocking on our door, that fearsome presence arrived at Copley Symphony Hall in a hurry last Friday evening. Conductor Christoph von Dohnányi, leading the piece without a score before him, launched the first movement with a brisk tempo that riveted both players and audience. I have rarely seen – or heard – the San Diego Symphony playing with so much concentrated clarity as it displayed in the opening pages of what may well be the most famous piece of music in the Western world…

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