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The San Francisco Symphony performs a program of works by Maurice Ravel, Jimmy L\u00f3pez, Alberto Ginastera and Joaqu\u00edn Turina at Davies Symphony Hall on Friday, May 29, 2026.<\/p>\n
Kristen Loken\/San Francisco Symphony<\/p>\n
For all its rambunctious pleasures, the San Francisco Symphony\u2019s \u201cRavel & Music of the Americas\u201d<\/a> came wrapped in a curious conceptual muddle.<\/p>\n The \u201cRavel\u201d part was clear, and so was the \u201cAmericas,\u201d but a problem arose from combining the two.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cRavel & Music of the Americas\u201d: San Francisco Symphony. 7:30 p.m. Saturday, May 30. $55-$155. Davies Symphony Hall, 201 Van Ness Ave., S.F. 415-864-6000.\u00a0www.sfsymphony.org<\/a>\u00a0<\/p>\n That tension ran through the Friday, May 29, performance at Davies Symphony Hall, which stretched from South America to Paris. The main issue was that half the music on the program was woven from musical visions of Spain, a genre of its own in the 20th century. By the concert\u2019s end, the program showed not so much Ravel and the Americas as the capaciousness of a \u201cSpanish\u201d style meant to capture it all.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n Composers like Maurice Ravel, the concert\u2019s headliner, seized on the European desire to hear a version of the Iberian Peninsula that is all sunshine and bullfighting. The resulting musical style, complete with dances and flamenco gestures, effectively exoticized Spain, transforming France\u2019s next-door neighbor into an escapist, faraway land.<\/p>\n So this concert raised awkward questions about music\u2019s capacity, honest or not, for national flavors. No matter how you play these pieces\u2014 and there can be no better performance than the Symphony\u2019s on Friday night \u2014 the music is tinted with fantasy.<\/p>\n Conductor Miguel Harth-Bedoya leads the San Francisco Symphony in \u201cRavel & Music of the Americas\u201d on Friday, May 29, 2026, at Davies Symphony Hall.<\/p>\n Kristen Loken\/San Francisco Symphony<\/p>\n The Symphony\u2019s thrilling performance of these works under the baton of Peruvian conductor Miguel Harth-Bedoya mostly made this programmatic problem a moot point. But amid the colors and nuance, audiences must be forgiven for believing the fantasy is real.<\/p>\n San Francisco Chronicle Logo<\/p>\n Make us a Preferred Source to get more of our news when you search.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Add Preferred Source<\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n On the American side, there was Alberto Ginastera, an Argentine composer who retained an interest in preserving national themes. In his \u201cEstancia Suite\u201d (1941) \u2014 a selection of dances from the ballet of the same name \u2014 each dance is built out of thumping, syncopated rhythmic phrases.\u00a0<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n Aside from a languid flute solo in the second dance, \u201cDanza del trigo,\u201d the piece could be called, without much exaggeration, a concerto for timpani. The timpani underline nearly every passage and frequently lead the orchestra in call-and-response duets. Principal timpani Edward Stephan<\/a> attacked the music with fire and strength, galvanizing the dance with wild energy.<\/p>\n A similar musical rhetoric animates Spanish composer Joaqu\u00edn Turina\u2019s \u201cDanzas fant\u00e1sticas\u201d (1919), a set of dances inspired by Jos\u00e9 M\u00e1s\u2019s 1918 novel \u201cLa org\u00eda.\u201d The three dances draw on material from the Basque Country and Andalusia, including guitar-like interludes and flamenco melodies.\u00a0<\/p>\n Harth-Bedoya smoothed out this music, trading bombastic climaxes for a lyrical and free orchestral voice. The final dance, while it didn\u2019t quite live up to its title (\u201cOrgy\u201d), contained a gentle middle section that emphasized Harth-Bedoya\u2019s penchant for this music\u2019s hesitating, even coy, motion.<\/p>\n Composer Jimmy L\u00f3pez, left, and conductor Miguel Harth-Bedoya with the San Francisco Symphony in \u201cRavel & Music of the Americas\u201d on Friday, May 29, 2026, at Davies Symphony Hall.<\/p>\n Kristen Loken\/San Francisco Symphony<\/p>\n The Peruvian American composer Jimmy L\u00f3pez, whose music is a regular presence at Davies, was represented by his trombone concerto \u201cShift,\u201d which stood on its own. In its U.S. premiere, the work embellished the already expansive sonic vocabulary of the program.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
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