Alan Gilbert, incoming music director of the Santa Fe Opera (filling a
new position), popped by the San Francisco Symphony's Davies Hall tonight,
and covered the range from just a wee bit of opera (the "Bartered Bride"
overture), to Chopin (the first Piano Concerto, with the ever-surprising,
magnificent Horacio Gutierrez), to the US premiere of Swedish composer's
Per Anders Hillborg's facile, pleasant, and eminently forgettable
"Exquisite Corpse," to a super-Wagnerian reading of Scriabin's "The Poem
of Ecstasy." Through the varied program, Gilbert was consistently
excellent: precise, clear direction, but with great innate musicality,
and much passion.  The mutual high esteem between him and the musicians
is palpable, obvious.

After paying his dues as a violinist, violist, and conductor wherever
they'd let him conduct, Gilbert is on his way to a possible summit in
the world of opera, even while maintaining a prominent place in the
symphonic universe.  He is preparing for Santa Fe (where he will conduct
a new production of "Don Giovanni"), has just made his Zurich debut (with
Zemlinsky's "Der Kreidekreis"), even while making his debut with the
Chicago Symphony, returning to the Cleveland Orchestra (where he served
as assistant conductor in the mid-'90s), and appearing with the Royal
Stockholm Philharmonic, which he's been heading for two seasons now.

Gilbert will also make his New York Philharmonic debut this season, in
two programs, just missing the opportunity for a Guinness world record
entry of leading an orchestra in which the conductor's both parents play.
His father retired recently from the orchestra's first-violin section,
but Gilbert's mother, Yoko Takebe, *will* play - and that may be some
kind of record, after all.

Janos Gereben/SF
www.sfcv.org
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