United States Various: Brass and percussion players of San Francisco Symphony / Brad Hogarth (conductor). Davies Symphony Hall, San Francisco, 11.1.2026. (HS)
Leave it to the irrepressible San Francisco brass players to extend the holiday season with a program postponed by a widespread power blackout in December. Fortunately, the popular annual pre-Christmas concert comprised only a few familiar carols, and what there was had unexpectedly deep roots, raising the evening’s efforts well above the usual yuletide fare.
Sixteen brass players (plus a few percussionists on some of the arrangements) dazzled with their virtuosity and chamber music-like sensitivity to music from the Baroque (Handel’s Royal Fireworks) to a twentieth-century film (Morricone’s ‘Love Theme’ from Cinema Paradiso). Principal trumpet Mark Inouye was responsible for several of the arrangements, each of which employed different combinations of personnel.
The most rewarding was Enrique Crespo’s ‘Bruckner Étude’. Crespo, a trombonist who founded the German Brass Quintet, merged highlights of the composer’s brass chorales into a satisfying, slow-moving kaleidoscope that showed off the ensemble’s warmth of sound and execution, assets that paid dividends in the many examples of legato music in the program.
Inouye also found ways to use these benefits in Stözel’s mellow ‘Bist du bei mir’ (a piece that found its way into the Bach family’s notebooks). Inouye’s understanding of brass instruments’ sonorities created a range of colors in the Royal Fireworks overture, including spectacular work on his own piccolo trumpet. The same deftness showed up in the program’s finale, a saucy brass-only version of the louche Scherzo from Shostakovich’s film score for Pirogov. the 1947 Soviet biopic.
The standout of the specifically Christmas material was Gustav Holst’s ‘Christmas Day’. Originally written for chorus, the piece layered several familiar carols contrapuntally, at one point fitting ‘The First Nowell’ against ‘God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen’. Anthony DiLorenzo’s joyful arrangement of the Cátalan carol ‘Fum, fum, fum’ (renamed ‘Fun, fum, fun’) was another delight. The Baroque pastoral treatment of Schiassi’s Christmas Symphony offered a number of traditional tunes that are no longer familiar but concluded the Baroque portion of the concert with charm.
The proceedings also served to introduce Diego Incertis Sánchez as the orchestra’s new principal horn. Previously principal horn of the London Symphony Orchestra and the Philharmonia Orchestra, Sánchez brought elegance to his solo on Morricone’s love theme.
Brad Hogarth has conducted these programs since the first one in 2016. Himself a trumpet player, he teaches conducting at San Francisco State University and just started as music director of the Juneau Symphony in Alaska. He held everything together crisply and let the musicians shine, even if he did not draw the most juice from the music.
The Carmen, for example, got a straightforward performance that hardly hinted at the fragrant aspects of Bizet’s opera score. A Danse bohème started too fast to reflect the necessary gaining of momentum, and a suite from Astor Piazzolla’s tango operetta, Maria de Buenos Aires, soared with the melodies but never quite caught the bite of the rhythms.
The encore, a beautifully orchestrated version of ‘Nimrod’ from Elgar’s Enigma Variations, fell short. Hogarth also downplayed the rising and falling dynamics, which not only make the piece so moving, they are what can distinguish it from the English church hymns that borrowed the tune. Nonetheless, the music sent the audience out into a chilly evening with warmth.
Harvey Steiman
Handel (arr. Sauer/Inouye) – from Royal Fireworks
Stölzel (arr. Inouye) – ‘Bist du bei mir’
Schiassi (arr. Hans-Joachim) – Christmas Symphony
Crespo – ‘Bruckner Étude’
Bizet (arr. Harvey) – excerpts from Carmen
Traditional (arr. DiLorenzo) – ‘Fum, Fum, Fun’
Piazzolla (arr. Verhelst) – Suite from Maria de Buenos Aires
Holst (arr. Haislip) – ‘Christmas Day’
Morricone – ‘Love Theme’ from Cinema Paradiso
Shostakovich (arr. Inouye) – Scherzo from Pirogov
(Encore) Elgar – ‘Nimrod’ from Enigma Variations