I have always liked the San Francisco Ballet Orchestra, although it's
clearly a distant third behind the city's Symphony and Opera orchestras.
Then something happened during the still-young 2001 season, and I heard
some exceptional playing in the background - but kept being distracted by
all that dancing, of course.  Still, Tuesday night, all my attention was on
the sound from the pit, as a red-hot performance of Prokofiev's "Prodigal
Son" began, and was sustained throughout.  The sound equaled many evenings
(if not all) when another orchestra occupies the same place:  that of the
San Francisco Opera.

On the podium:  Neal Stulberg, a youngish, self-effacing man without the
slightest interest in playing the Maestro.  All his attention is on the
orchestra, and he gets better results than just about anybody in my long
experience in the War Memorial - and that includes some very fine veteran
conductors, past and present.

Who is Stulberg? I had to dig around because I couldn't find anything on
the Ballet's Website.  From other sources, it appears that he is a pianist
as well, with conducting experience in many US cities, leading opera
performances in Long Beach, making his European debut in 1997, conducting
the Netherlands Radio Orchestra, and he is scheduled to lead the Dutch
premiere of Glass's "Akhnaten" in Rotterdam in October.  Perhaps he is
well-known elsewhere, but he is certainly a "new discovery" here.  He could
well turn out to be the best candidate to fill the Ballet's long-vacant
music director position, filled memorably for many years by the late Denis
deCoteau.

Janos Gereben/SF, CA
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