San Francisco Symphony offered a brief Wagnerian orgy just now — a 65 minute orchestral concoction made of bits of Rheingold, Walküre, Siegried and Gotterdammerung.
It began in the very darkened theater Davies Symphony Hall — six double basses drew the lowest depths of the Rhine, they were then joined, one-at-a-time, by four Wagner tubas {horns modified to produce darker tones} and four real horns, thus initiating the choirs of brass that came to define the by-now brightly lighted evening. A very substantial choir of horns, trumpets, trombones and a real tuba sat upstage left, facing us, leaving no doubt that it was to be a powerfully toned event.
The star of the show was 65-year-old Australian conductor Simone Young (lead photo), who debuted at Wagner’s Bayreuth in 2024, bringing new, vibrant life to Valentin Schwarz’s critically reviled 2022 Ring production. No stranger to the Ring, this acclaimed maestra had already conducted Rings at La Scala, Hamburg, Berlin and Vienna, leaving no doubt that she well knew the musical depths of the Wagner tetralogy.
In Bayreuth the maestra brought convincing musical cohesion to Mr. Schwarz’s dysfunctional modern family — no swords or monsters in sight, but powerful, abstract embodiment of their primordial forces.
Though in Bayreuth Ma. Young was hidden from the sight of the audience, here in San Francisco she was front and center stage, giving us a conducting show of amazing bravura — her impressive port de bras and balletic footwork embodied every orchestral impulse and every color evinced by Wagner’s stunning tone painting.
Showing that Wagner was a master painter was indeed the intention of this Simone Young imagined Ring suite. There was no perceivable narrative.
The Rheingold prelude evolved into a scene without voices as an unheard/unseen Alberich interacted with unheard/unseen Rhine maidens to admire the gold, its glitter painted by the trilling woodwinds. The music skipped all mention of Wotan’s ambition and the attendant family turmoil, to arrive at the shatteringly loud ascent into a musical Valhalla, with its four harps and full blast stratospheric trumpet tones magnificently produced by SFSymphony’s principal trumpeter Mark Inouye.
Die Walküre was represented by a very brisk “Ride of the Valkyries,” the maestra responding to the concert format of the performance rather than to a procedural staging of this complicated bit of scenography.
The program booklet announced the Siegfried Idyll, though Wagner in fact composed the Idyll six years before the opera Siegfried was premiered (1876), using much of the original Idyll material in the opera’s ensuing Siegried/Brunnhilda love duet. Originally composed for 13 players — flute, oboe, bassoon, trumpet [13 measure}, 2 clarinets, 2 horns and string quintet — Simone Young performed it with the full symphonic string complement. San Francisco Symphony’s principal woodwind players found its idyllic beauty in symphonically gorgeous voice.
The Götterdammerung moment began with Wagner’s painting of a glorious dawn, and the beauty of the Rhine Valley as Siegfried embarks on his Rhine Journey. The famed horn calls were magically rendered offstage by the Symphony’s new principal horn player Diego Incertis Sanchez (former principal horn of London’s Philharmonia Orchestra), Things became quite serious, somber and dramatic with Siegfried’s death and subsequent funeral music.
Skipping the clutter of who actually killed Siegfried, the maestra moved to the destruction of Valhalla, and Brünnhilde and her horse Grane’s immolation. Though Wagner asks for six harps there were only four, but there were indeed two sets of timpani, and a full time cymbalist. It was a massive, climatic event. Missing was the gravity of Wagner’s huge, weighty, and deeply human tale. The Epilogue had no meaning other than the abstract, musical allusion to a spectacular end to a, or to all civilization.
Wagner’s redemption did not find a convincing presence in the maestra’s flashy destruction.
The first half of this San Francisco Symphony evening featured Saint Saen’s popular first cello concerto (1872) performed with flashy panache by French cellist Gautier Capuçon. Mr. Capuçon did indeed create a narrative, his powerful bowing created a convincing, endless monologue of bouncing virtuoso gibberish — Mr. Capuçon has infinite nuance of tone that he uses with great flair. It was a spectacular account of Saint-Saens’ highly animated, one movement, though in three distinct sections, 20 minute work.
If there was poetry to be found in this symphonic evening, it came from the first work on the program, The Space Between Stars, a 2017 piece by Australian composer Ella Macens. Scored for a large and colorful orchestra Mlle. Macens wished to convey the energy and magic of the night sky, and explore the power she perceives it to hold. It is a tonal work interspersed with a few strangely complex chords to create an occasional spectral landscape, offering from time to time some effective microtone scoops as well. The 12 minute work never strayed too far from its broad pop style tunes — maybe you have to know Missy Higgins and Regina Spektor [Australian pop singers] to appreciate the subtleties.
Michael Milenski
Louise M. Davies Symphony Hall, San Francisco, April 18, 2026. No photos of the performance were offered. Lead photo is a 2010 portrait by Bertold Fabricius for the Hamburg State Opera.