In the long history of riotous behavior at "new music" concerts, tonight's
San Francisco Symphony event was unique.  The shouting was *for* the music,
not against it.

I know that it's the 21st century already, but really!  Multiple curtain
calls, standing ovations, shouting and whistling...  for what? What would
make a thoroughly mixed (young, old, jeans and gowns) audience of 1,500
carry on like this? Try a program of John Cage's "Dance/4 Orchestras,"
David Del Tredici's "Adventures Underground," Henry Cowell's Piano
Concerto, and Edgar Varese's "Ameriques." My, oh my.

Citing and embodying Cage's "unquenchable sense of wonder," Michael Tilson
Thomas in five short years has commanded orchestra and audience loyalty
of extraordinary dimensions.  His troops are willingly follow him where
no large groups of listeners have gone before:  his "American Mavericks"
Festival just keeps rolling on.

No sandwiching of an occasional morsel between comforting layers of
the familiar, MTT concerts boldly go forth to entire programs of the new
and unusual.  And then comes the miracle:  somehow, against all odds, he
makes the audience *love* it.  Love is what's at work here, MTT's genuine,
powerful belief in the "mavericks," his Bernsteinesque presentations
(without his teacher's ego), the securing of best talent, not usually
associated with "this kind of thing" (Lauren Flanigan and Ursula Oppens
tonight), painstaking preparation, and brilliant performances.  It all
comes together and you have dear old, formerly often staid, Davies Hall
go nuts over tone clusters.

The Cage piece is performed by four separate orchestras -- Apo Hsu,
Alasdair Neale and Peter Grunberg conducting the three performing off-stage
-- MTT queuing the orchestras with his left hand (showing numbers) and
working the beat with his right.  With proper preparation of the audience
and a passionately excellent performance, the work by the man who
"preferred sound to music" actually came through, holding the audience
for 20 silent minutes, and releasing the first of the evening's "riots."

It's no good trying to describe Flanigan's performance in Del Tredici's
work (originally written for MTT when he was in Buffalo):  words cannot
do justice to her searing intensity, total involvement -- voice, body
and soul -- in conveying the lament of indignation and terror...  of a
mouse.  Not for a moment was it ridiculous (although often very, very
funny) as Flanagan spoke and sang "The Mouse's Tale" ("tail," Alice
thinks at first), her face and body twitching, becoming one with both Del
Tredici's youthfully (1971) brash music and the woebegone mouse itself,
through Lewis Carroll's text and Isaac Watts' poem.  Again, it's impossible
to explain how you can roll Salome and Electra into one and come up with a
credible swim in the pool of tears, climaxing in the mouse's "that...
that...  that." But if you were there, you'd know.

Intensity and physicality were also present in Oppens seeming climbing
inside the piano, her elbows and arms working the keyboard furiously in
the wonderful Cowell concerto.  Even with movements such as "Polyharmony,"
"Tone Cluster" and "Counter Rhythm," this work came across as the most
"conventional" of the evening.  The orchestra performance here -- as,
indeed, all evening long -- was phenomenal.

"Ameriques," performed during the subscription season just a couple of
weeks ago, is now owned by the MTT-SFS forces, securely, completely.  The
way they perform it, this is one of the most joyful noises onto the Lord of
Dance.

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