Music News
Luisotti, the Phenom
YOUNTVILLE — Nicola Luisotti + Joshua Bell + the Prokofiev Violin Concerto No. 1 = a thrilling experience, and more fun than may be legal. It adds up to all that, and the beginning of a “constructive controversy” about conducting manners, one that I predict will rage for years in these regions.
The San Francisco Opera’s music-director designate made his symphonic debut in the area, 50 miles north of the city, at the Festival del Sole, conducting the Russian National Orchestra last week in Lincoln Theater. The program consisted of the Prokofiev concerto, his Symphony No. 5, Saint-Saëns’ Cello Concerto in A Minor, with Nina Kotova, and Marco Tutino’s “Scena Terza” from the ballet Riccardo III. (See the Classical Voice review of the concert.)
For this listener, everything receded into the background against the performance of the Violin Concerto. To begin with, it’s one of Prokofiev’s greatest works, written at age 25, almost a century ago — but it’s still fresh and innovative, surprising, rich, and endlessly repeatable.
Every time Bell performs, the expectation is impossibly high — and he easily surpasses it. I heard this concerto performed by some of the greatest Russian violinists, and a few might have been more “Russian,” but none was more effortlessly brilliant and musically involved than Bell in this performance.
But the purpose of this report is to try to convey the Luisotti Experience, definitely one of those “you should have been there” events. And, of course, you will be when Luisotti succeeds Donald Runnicles next year.
Nicola Luisotti and Joshua Bell in Lincoln Theater
Photo by J. Henry Fair
Luisotti’s only San Francisco exposure so far came in the sensational 2005 La Forza del Destino run; the excitement was all aural, with only occasional, incomplete glimpses of Luisotti in the pit. This time, he was up on the podium, unavoidable, mesmerizing, painting a huge smile on the faces of many in the audience — but not, of course, in the case of the Russian musicians who, however young, still bear the Soviet-regulation expression of professional severity, as if it hurts to perform music.
Let’s be honest: Most balletic conductors (and musicians in general) are a pain in the okole. (Probably unnecessary footnote: That’s the gluteus maximus.) The few exceptions are those from whom the music pours forth, inexorably. Leonard Bernstein was a prime example of “excusable leaping” (not for everyone, even in his case). But eventually, late in his career, those flamboyant movements became at times more theatrical than musical. Bernstein could be “real” and he could also appear as a poseur.
Now we have Luisotti, with a full-body conducting technique, a man totally alive and joyous, with a myriad expressions, most of them varieties of laughter. A happier conductor you will never see. And to go back to the Bernstein reference (as far as manners go, not necessarily comparing overall excellence), at this point in his skyrocketing career, Luisotti is completely sincere and real. Perhaps years from now, some of what he does will become routine. But as of now, you can neither take your eyes off him, nor do you want to (opinions will vary widely in this case).
Of course, it’s important what the music is and how it sounds, but Luisotti is great fun conducting anything. One example is Tutino’s piece, from the ballet Riccardo III. (This listener wonders: Exactly how did the title character dance?) Tutino, the artistic director of Bologna’s Teatro Comunale in attendance at the concert in Napa, has written many works (including “an operatic version” of Mike Nichols’ film Wit), but his name is not familiar in opera houses or concert halls. I can see why.
“Scena Terza” is big, dramatic, and — to me — utterly ridiculous music, a pasquinade of Respighi’s most bombastic works. The piece features a sinister two-note theme in the cellos and double bass that is repeated endlessly; a deafening drum ostinato; big, noisy, empty sounds — all of which are totally enjoyable when watching Luisotti put heart, soul, guts, and glory into this … thing. A great show, yes, but music below the level of Baron (ah, those jocular Brits) Andrew Lloyd Webber.
Note to David Gockley: Please raise the conductor’s platform in the pit when Luisotti arrives in the War Memorial. We should see more of him. (Full disclosure: Former S.F. Opera executive and current Lincoln Theater executive director Michael Savage told me he sent a note to Gockley with exactly the opposite request. I suppose there are many otherwise good folk who don’t want to be “distracted.” For me, and perhaps a few others, the conductor is part of the total opera experience, which already has so many components.)
Choral Society’s Big Show in Davies Hall
The San Francisco Choral Society will perform in Davies Hall on Aug. 3 and 4. The concert pairs Brahms’ German Requiem with the premiere of San Francisco composer Kirke Mechem’s opera Pride and Prejudice. (The group will perform only the first act.)
Robert Geary’s organization is mobilizing nine soloists, a chorus of 200, and an orchestra of 50. Sixteen high school students are invited to perform on scholarship, and SFCS is offering 500 tickets to high schools students.
Menlo: Chamber Music Community
In front of an overflow audience Monday night, the fifth annual season of a rich, complex festival of chamber music opened in Palo Alto, bringing young artists (see next News item) and world-famous musicians to the Peninsula. Music@Menlo, which takes place in Atherton’s Menlo School and Palo Alto’s St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, is “a community around chamber music,” says cofounder and director David Finkel.
The famed cellist — a member of the Emerson Quartet and director of other noted festivals in the past — started Music@Menlo in collaboration with his wife, the pianist Wu Han. It was her idea, back in 2003, to create a festival in the vicinity of Silicon Valley as a “musical startup.” (Hence the technology-mimicking “at” symbol in the event’s name.)
The couple, who are Aspen Music Festival regulars, have a busy year-round performing and recording schedule. But for the fifth year they have managed to engage artists and music scholars for the Music@Menlo festival — they’ve attracted music students from around the Bay Area and beyond to create unusual, fascinating programming; obtained the participation of National Public Radio to broadcast the concerts; and through the festival’s own ArtistLed label, published CDs of both educational advance material and recordings of each program.
The Moët Trio: Yuri Namkung, violin; Michael Mizrahi, piano;
Yves Dharamraj, cello — outside Menlo School’s Stent Auditorium
Photo by Tristan Cook
The community Finckel is talking about “is comprised of people who have known chamber music all their lives and those who come for the first time. They share similar excitement in listening, in engaging in the music. What was born five summers ago now thrives in this area, an idealistic cultural venture with its new, large fan base.”
The programs at Menlo combine great classic works, unusual pieces, and some contemporary music. This season’s theme is “Bridging the Ages,” focusing on subjects followed throughout music history. An example: nature. The program features composers from the 17th, 19th, and 20th century who use violins to imitate chickens, various instruments to reproduce the voices of whales, and the cello to depict Saint-Saëns’ swan.
“The bridge is the concept, common inspiration, the human element, curiosity that binds these programs together,” says Finckel. “However different the means of expression may be, the ‘message’ is the same.”
A particularly substantial program is “Death and Transfiguration,” with works that deal with the subject by Rachmaninov, Adolphe, Bach, and Schubert. Among participating artists are such local notables as violinists Jorja Fleezanis, Erin Keefe, Philip Setzer, and Ian and Joseph Swensen; pianists Wu Han and Gilbert Kalish; along with festival debuts by Inon Barnatan, Gary Graffman, and Kevin Murphy.
(Young) U.N. of Menlo
The Music@Menlo International Program is a veritable United Nations. One of the most attractive features of the festival is a mentoring/training/support program for young musicians, who come from all over the world. Supported by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and other organizations, the International Program includes instrumentalists in their 20s from Taiwan, Korea, Great Britain, Israel, Japan … and even the U.S. The program is reminiscent of the San Francisco Opera’s Adler Fellowship, while the festival provides young people music training that is similar to the Opera’s more basic Merola program. Participants get plenty of performance opportunities, while also providing the festival faithful with free concerts of great music and a chance to discover the stars of tomorrow.
International Program Participants
It was one of these free afternoon Prelude concerts in Palo Alto that opened the festival on Monday. Pianist Inna Faliks (from Ukraine, now of Chicago, with an extensive international concert schedule), violinist Katie Hyun (originally from Korea, trained at Curtis and SUNY Stony Brook), violist Wei-Yang Andy Lin (from Taiwan and now studying at Juilliard), and cellist Yu-Wen Wang (from Taiwan, studying at Curtis) performed Beethoven’s Piano Quartet in E-flat Major, Op. 16.
Another Beethoven, the familiar “Archduke” Piano Trio in B-flat Major, Op. 97, followed, with Korean-born pianist Esther Park (a Gina Bachauer Competition winner at Juilliard in addition to a host of awards), violinist Jennifer Caine (trained in England, now active in the Pacific Northwest), and cellist Yotam Baruch (who played in an Israeli army quartet, and is a graduate of Peabody, now in a doctoral program at Indiana University).
First among equals is Park, who impressed the most. Her performance was passionate yet elegant, with an uncanny sense for both details and the big line. She listened to the other musicians with an intensity and devotion that is unusual among pianists, especially when performing a piano trio. Both self-effacing leader and true team player, Park should set an example to many veterans, who “go it alone” all too often.
A fascinating aspect of both performances was hearing the opposite of what a listener might expect from young musicians: Instead of Sturm und Drang, getting overexcited, or trying too hard, all was calm, self-confident, and mellow — to a fault (the opening Allegro of the “Archduke” could have used more energy). The free Prelude performances will continue throughout the festival, which ends on Aug. 10.
Esther Park, Inna Faliks, Andy Lin, and Arianna Warsaw-Fan
Monday’s performers appear again, in addition to the other program participants: violist Brenton Caldwell from Texas; Israeli cellist Adiel Shmit and violinist Arianna Warsaw-Fan from Juilliard; and violinist Shanshan Yao, who is studying at Curtis and originally from Shanghai. Look for Park on July 29, in the Mendelssohn Andante and Allegro brillant, Op. 92; on Aug. 3 with Faliks in the Chopin Cello Sonata in G Minor, Op. 65; on Aug. 9 with Wang in the Haydn Piano Trio in G Major; and on Aug. 10 in the Dvořák Piano Quartet in E-flat Major, Op. 87. They work hard, these young ones.
Kohl Mansion at Quarter Century
Burlingame’s Music at Kohl Mansion will mark its 25th year with a season of seven Sunday evening chamber music concerts, three family concerts, and other events. Patricia Kristof Moy, the program’s executive director, announced that pianist Garrick Ohlsson will be the honorary chair of the season.
From Oct. 21 through April 13, Kohl Mansion concerts will feature Prague’s Talich Quartet; the ensemble known as the San Francisco Symphony Friends (pianist Peter Grunberg, hornist Robert Ward, violinist Victor Romasevich, violist Yuen Jie Liu, and cellist Michelle Djokic); the Ying, Rossetti, Jupiter, and Borealis String Quartets; and the Triple Helix Piano Trio.
A holiday concert, on Dec. 16, will spotlight San Francisco’s FOG Trio (Ohlsson, violinist Jorja Fleezanis, and cellist Michael Grebanier).
Glassworks
On his 70th birthday, Philip Glass will be well-celebrated in the Bay Area, with events small and great — the most important, of course, is the San Francisco Opera’s premiere presentation of Glass’ Appomattox, Oct. 24-25.
The first candle on the cake will be the Aug. 11 performance of Glass’ Symphony No. 8 at the Cabrillo Music Festival’s 45th season, conducted by Marin Alsop. Next, on Sept. 28, Glass performs a recital with cellist Wendy Sutter at San Francisco Performances, featuring the local premiere of Glass’ Songs and Poems for Cello.
After the beginning of the Appomattox run on Oct. 5, Stanford Lively Arts opens its 2007-2008 season on Oct. 9 with the West Coast premiere of Book of Longing, Glass’ music based on the poetry and images of Leonard Cohen.
On Oct. 11, the Other Minds organization presents a benefit concert with pianists Dennis Russell Davies (conductor for Appomattox) and Maki Namekawa, performing works for two pianos by Glass and others. The composer will participate in a preperformance discussion with the performers and Other Minds Artistic Director Charles Amirkhanian. On Oct. 13, the San Francisco Conservatory of Music’s BluePrint Project opens its 2007-2008 series with a concert titled “Synesthesia: Bridging the Senses,” featuring Glass’ Facades, with digital projections by local video artist Elliot Anderson.
Invitation to African-American Singers
The San Francisco Opera Chorus is holding auditions for African-American tenors, baritones, and basses to perform in the premiere production of Philip Glass’ Appomattox. The auditions are by invitation only — requests are to be made by calling (415) 565-3205 or e-mailing ahughes@sfopera.com — and will be held at the Opera House, on July 27 at 5 p.m.
Singers chosen at the auditions will represent one of the Civil War regiments of African-American Union soldiers (reminiscent of the regiment depicted in the film Glory), as well as other roles in the production.
What Makes Opera Expensive
The Vienna State Opera is going on a tour of South Korea, and opera fans there are stunned by ticket prices — for concert performances, not fully staged ones. The real stunner to me is that the Korean organizers disclosed the cost. If an American organization has ever done this, I don’t know about it.
Here are excerpts from
Korean classical music fans were delighted when it was announced that the Vienna State Opera (Wiener Staatsoper), one of the world’s most reputed opera companies with a 138-year-old history, would come to Seoul for the first time, Sept. 19-20. However, jaws dropped when the price for VIP tickets became known: 450,000 won, or about $492. [For a rough estimate of the dollar equivalent in future references in this story, drop three zeros from won figures.]
While it is the first time for the world-class opera to visit Seoul, its staging of Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro will not be presented in a full-fledged style, but rather in the form of an opera concertante — which means the costumes, stage settings, as well as acting of the singers will be minimized — to “focus purely on music.”
Nevertheless, the VIP seats and the next R-class seats, priced at 350,000 won, take up more than half of the total seats. Seats in the S, A, and B class are priced at 250,000, 150,000, and 80,000 won, respectively. Student chair seats are available at 30,000 won.
As one anonymous classical music fan complained in an online forum, if a couple plans to go to the concert with VIP seats, with dinner and transportation it will easily reach 1 million won ($1,000). “Why not just book a plane ticket to Austria with that sum of money?” the fan complained.
As criticism mounted, Credia, a local performing arts company organizing the Vienna State Opera’s concerts there, made an unusual move by making public the balance sheet of the scheduled performance.
According to the company, it costs about 1.1 billion won ($1.2 million) to organize the concerts, with 900 million ($983,537) alone going to the Vienna State Opera, including tax. In addition, about 80 million won is necessary to cover the expenses of about 110 orchestra and opera members, who come to Korea for four days. Then there is 30 million won to pay to the Seoul Arts Center for renting the concert hall, and 80 million won for advertisements.
Without corporate sponsors, at least 1.3 billion won of ticket sales must be achieved, considering about 15 percent to 20 percent deduction of credit card fees, reservation fees, or value added tax. That would mean selling out 4,800 seats at the concert hall of the Seoul Arts Center with an average price of 270,000 won, which is impossible to do, the company says.
“This is not a popular big-scale opera held at an Olympic stadium or outdoors,” Credia said in a statement. “We decided to invite the Vienna State Opera because it’s worth introducing its appeal to domestic audiences despite possible losses on our side.”
Former S.F. Symphony music director Seiji Ozawa
leads the Vienna State Opera on tour.
Janos Gereben (janosg@gmail.com) is a regular contributor to San Francisco Classical Voice.
©2007 By Janos Gereben, all rights reserved.