Francis told the tale of Berlioz’s obsessive flight from Rome

For the second week in a row the San Diego Symphony has won a battle in the eternal tug of war between higher and lower consciousness.

As I mentioned at an earlier date, we humans have a perception that consciousness or self-awareness is normal. In reality, consciousness/self-awareness is an apparition. Consciousness did not fall upon humanity fully formed but rather it developed over tens of thousands of years. The vast majority of our species's history is unconscious.

Not only is the pull of our past toward the unconscious. We are also unconscious for several hours everyday by way of sleep. These ideas are laid out in detail by Erich Neumann in his book, The History and Origins of Consciousness.

A concert such as that conducted by Rafael Payare and most recently by Michael Francis pulls us in the other direction. It pulls us towards greater consciousness and more self-awareness. How? With our two steady friends, truth and beauty.

The beauty of the concert with maestro Francis was self-evident. The truth of a concert is discerned more subtly.

There are the superficial truths of pitch, intensity, and rhythm but beyond that there are the truths of tone, character, and atmosphere. Those “beyond that” truths are purely subjective and often based on one’s self-awareness or lack thereof.

To my mind, the tone, character, and atmosphere of the musical performance was true — except for the infamous triangle solos during Franz Liszt’s Piano Concerto No. 1. No amount of philosophical gymnastics can make that work. However, the performance of the concerto as a whole was stupendous.

Pianist Rodolfo Leone played his part with a youthful athleticism which confirmed his status as a talent in the next generation of concert pianists. His encore of choice, Rachmaninoff’s Prelude in G Major, charmed the audience and balanced the mood of the auditorium before the intermission.

Before we get to intermission we need to talk about the opening piece of music on the program which was Felix Mendelssohn’s Hebrides Overture. This piece of music which invokes wind and sea has been superseded by more extensive treatments of the subject such as Wagner’s Flying Dutchman Overture and Vaughan Williams’s A Sea Symphony but Mendelssohn’s vision packs a punch. The excitement which coursed through the performance set the aforementioned tone for the rest of the concert.

Have you ever wanted to just murder someone? I’m not speaking rhetorically. I speaking of earnest, murderous, consideration.

Berlioz did. Maestro Francis told the tale of Berlioz’s obsessive flight from Rome back to France while disguised as a pistol wielding maid intent on murder. He failed. What Berlioz succeeded at was creating a chilling masterpiece for the ages which still feels fresh when performed with the aplomb of the revitalized San Diego Symphony under Francis.

The story which Berlioz weaves through the orchestra is the core of the human condition. We love, we lose, we die, and we witness the entire pageant because we are self-aware and for all we know, it’s all going to go up in flames in a “day of wrath” just as Berlioz predicts.