A decent offering of Britten's "War Requiem" is a great musical experience
at any time, in any place, but an exceptional performance goes beyond
"just art."

Kurt Masur conducted the San Francisco Symphony tonight in a luminously
clear, impeccably shaped presentation.  It was a remarkable experience.

The orchestra - especially the brass and the Edwin Outwater-conducted
chamber orchestra - and Vance George's SF Symphony Chorus were all at
their very best, responding to Masur's direction with flawless balances
and a rock-steady flow of the music.  George's chorus, always impressive,
reached another milestone tonight, with a wonderful performance, from
whispered pianissimos to overwhelming (but never excessive) fortes.
Except for one English passage, the diction of full chorus was exemplary;
especially and spectacularly in the Latin portions.

The chorus fit gloriously into Masur's impeccable dynamics, which did
have one staging miscalculation to deal with, eventually overcome by
great individual efforts.

Davies Hall, an enormous space, doesn't work well for solo voices.
Worse yet, when the soloists are placed all the way upstage, as far from
the audience as physically possible, behind the full orchestra, what are
chances of hearing them?  (The off-stage children's choirs were even
more handicapped, but their role is more in the background anyway,
compared with the soloists, who are the protagonists of the work.)

Soprano Christine Brewer has plenty of volume and secure high notes, but
her voice is on the thin side; baritone William Stone sings with a limited
instrument - and yet both sang well, Brewer especially in passages where
her voice floated above the chorus, Stone in the great climactic final
duet.

Jerry Hadley, with his "specialty voice" that fits some works very well
(he is still remembered for his long-ago "Rake's Progress" with the SF
Opera) and some not at all, sang the crucial tenor role, Wilfred Owen's
poetry in English, interspersed with the Latin Requiem.  With touches
of both a cantor and Peter Pears' legendary original performance in the
work, Hadley controlled projection and diction admirably, and instilled
the text with conviction and passion.

The old saying about "there is always one in the crowd..." was literally
true tonight as one single cretin started applauding as the final note
of "Amen" died away, but Masur ignored the interruption, and everybody
else in the audience of 2,000 remained silent, so that the
offending/offensive party shut up too.

I hope the disruption will be edited out of the broadcast, to be heard
on KDFC-FM and www.kdfc.com on Nov.  5.  If you're in the area, the
Davies performances are repeated Friday, Saturday, Sunday.  The only
baseball conflict is on Saturday - the Giants are traveling to Anaheim
on Friday, and there will be no need for a seventh game on Sunday.

Janos Gereben/SF
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