An ambitious start for Parnassus season
Symphony Parnassus, the chamber orchestra that he leads, offers consistently ambitious programs, which Paulson conducts on top of his day job as principal bassoonist of the San Francisco Symphony.
The orchestra’s new season begins with nothing less than a Mahlerian double-header, the deliciously Mozartean Fourth Symphony and the song cycle “Songs of a Wayfarer.”
To start things off, there’s Leonard Bernstein’s fizzy “Candide” Overture — a tricky piece on which many a performance has come to grief.