Until and unless you hear a definitive performance of "General William
Booth Enters Into Heaven," you cannot really know what *American opera*
could (and should) be.

This is unrestrained, abandoned musical drama with a uniquely, inimitably
American sound-and-feel.  It is Charles Ives coming home, almost a century
late.

Stunning as it was, the work was but a small fragment in the richest of
rich evenings centering around an apotheosis of Ives at tonight's San
Francisco Symphony concert in Davies Hall, conducted by Michael Tilson
Thomas and featuring Thomas Hampson, Vance George's SFS Chorus, and Sharon
J.  Paul's SF Girls Chorus.

Full disclosure: I was, at one time, horrified by Ives as much as the next
man.  Long after I had Bartok for breakfast and Shostakovich for lunch, I
was still puzzled and, yes, irritated by Ives.  Then slowly I began to
*hear* him, a process vastly speeded by the arrival of MTT in San
Francisco.  His very first concert as the new music director of the SFS
four years ago featured Ives -- and it was a stunner.  Apparently, Ives
demands the kind of unconditional, extravagant love MTT and Hampson feel
for him.  And then -- and only then -- the Ivesian heaven opens up and
delivers, as at tonight's "American Journey with Charles Ives," exciting,
joyous, intriguing, exuberant, surprising, vital, passionate, breathtaking
music.

The hour-long "Journey" (being recorded for a BMG/RCA CD) opened with
"From the Steeples and the Mountains," the orchestra's musicians placed
throughout cavernous Davies Hall for a "total immersion" overture.
Hampson, who appears and sounds supremely at ease with what poses
impossible vocal demands for others, sang the dreamlike "The Things Our
Fathers Loved" and the riotously funny and nostalgic "Two Memories."
The superb Girls Chorus made "The Pond" shimmer and challenge, invite
and enchant.

The "grownup" chorus, one of the nation's best, had a ball with "The Circus
Band," after the sublime "The Housatonic at Stockbridge," played by the
orchestra in a white heat, ditto for "Putnam's Camp" (to be replaced by
"Three Places in New England" at two of the three upcoming repetitions of
the concert (Oct.  1, 2, and 3).

Hampson has performed "In Flanders Fields" a number of times locally,
but this was the first time he sang the orchestral version (by David Del
Tredici).  Another orchestration (by Lou Harrison) featured the chorus in
the grotesque and amazing "They Are There!," a "war song march." MTT moved
from the podium to the piano for a number of song, most prominently the
affecting "Serenity." The two choruses combined for "Psalm 100" and
"William Booth."

An impossibly, magically hushed "The Unanswered Question" closed the Ives
segment, which came at the end of an already eventful and grand concert.

Sibelius' Seventh Symphony was the opener, the most "sincere" work of
the composer whose sincerity has been both his blessing and his curse
(that's why he is regularly "rediscovered" and played copiously and then
ignored again).  MTT, whose Mahler has been a wonderful surprise for local
audiences, now exhibited an affinity for the Finnish composer that is just
as impressive and welcome.  In the opening Adagio, the strings played as
if they were all on loan from Berlin or Vienna.  The continuous, 20-minute
work is a single tone poem, and until near the very end, the performance
was impeccable -- and then the magic broke, just in time for what Michael
Steinberg describes as "a fierce gripping of C major, a sudden and
violently dissonant crescendo that is cut off with terrifying finality"...
the "closing of the coffin lid" (Colin Davis) which ended Sibelius' work,
in 1926, three decades before his death.

Connecting the Sibelius and the Ives collection, was the world premiere of
the orchestral version of MTT's own "Three Songs to Poems by Walt Whitman,"
sung by Hampson with only a portion of the freedom and excellence he
exhibited in the Ives songs -- even though these songs were written for
him, and he has performed them before (the piano version) in Europe.

Writing about his father (Ted Tomaszewski), MTT quoted Bernstein's
description of his music as "Brahms songs by Jewish cowboys" and it was
clearly a case of like-father-like-son: Tilson Thomas Tomaszewski's
first song, "Who Goes There?" is a (wild) West Side Story, a jazzy, brash,
shouting work, true to the chest-pounding text by Walter (as he was before
turning 26) Whitman: "I know I am solid and sound/To me the converging
objects of the universe perpetually flow/All, all are written to me and I
must get what the writing means."

"At Ship's Helm" is contemplative (text and music), "We Two Boys Together
Clinging" (from "Calamus") sounds very "modern," but the music does not
match the free-wheeling, off-the-wall language of the poem.

There were two concerts for the price of one tonight: the Sibelius and
MTT's songs constituted a good one; the Ives half virtually wiped out the
memory of what went on before.

Janos Gereben/SF
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