Incredible! Last night’s performance of Cage’s Song Book was truly a Maverick Production and Experience. There were so many moving parts and right when you thought everything could be exhausted, something new was brought to view. A once in a lifetime experience! The Orchestral half of the program was just as inspiring, Bravo again!

Great Performance! I was thrilled to hear each of these works for the very first time. Many times, with works I have never heard before, I find the initial listening not enough to know the whole piece or to understand it, but with the fine performances by the soloists and San Francisco Symphony, they made these works a successful experience on the first listen, Bravo!!

Absolutely wonderful! It was fantastic to see a very inspiring performance of these quartets. I’ve seen many performances of these pieces and none have been more exciting and musically fulfilling than the Hagen’s performance last night. Great quartet and truly great music!

The Hamburg Orchestra sounded great, especially the passages with the horn solo which remains my favorite part of the entire piece.

The video component was interesting and I noticed some allusions to Catholicism which may have been on purpose to address the composer’s faith (The Last Supper), but overall I was wishing for something more coherent. While I could discern some kind of plot that did not make much sense to me, there were a number of images that just did not seem to connect (Old-aged people eating, the destruction of a car, let alone three individuals wearing enormously big animal heads). I agree with most who have commented, the video was a distraction and I was frustrated. I have generally been very harsh with music with video installations, as the installation never seems to follow the music in the way I expect it to (at least the ones I’ve seen), but perhaps it is beyond my comprehension, maybe that is the point…

The music on the other hand was quite beautiful and filled with the noticeable birdsong transcriptions common to the composer, maybe too much so. I particularity enjoyed how the texture would resolve into a simple triad after moments of dissonance. Overall an interesting presentation.

Rather than calling this a performance, I feel “Experience” would do justice to what I felt from Einstein on the Beach. Although the work spanned some four and half hours, amazingly I felt the work flowed very quickly. Throughout the work I took small glances at my watch and to my surprise, time seemed to move very quickly (at least my perception of it had been totally skewed by the setup and repetitive nature of the music and stage direction), 30 minutes would pass, than an hour, even though the motions on stage were developing excruciatingly slow. This is quite a marvel, given the subject of the work and its musings on speed and time.

Overall the whole spectacle of it all was very enjoyable. The scenery, lighting and choreography were very stunning.