Music News
Miracle of Verbier in Your Home
The Verbier Festival is one of the world’s finest summer music events. High up in the Swiss Alps, Verbier requires a heap of travel to get to, then you must pay for accommodations (in a chalet, of course), pricey tickets … and the beer and fondue. Or, you can experience the festival in its entirety and for free — sitting at your computer, you can listen to any and all of the concerts performed over a two-week span (July 20 — Aug. 5), and watch them as well.
A high-speed Internet connection, a decent monitor, and speakers are required, of course. The festival archives will remain available through Aug. 31. Because of the high-quality of content available, user-demand is ferocious, so there are occasional server slowdowns and temporary outage.
With Martha Argerich, Thomas Quasthoff, Anne-Sophie Mutter, Hélène Grimaud, Julian Rachlin, Mischa Maisky, Lang Lang, Barbara Bonney, René Pape, Anoushka Shankar, and two dozen other major artists (even after Renée Fleming and James Levine withdrew), performances are on the same level as the surrounding mountain peaks. The amazing thing about the MediciArts.tv cast is that the audio and video quality is excellent and the interface is easy to figure out (even if you have to scroll through day-by-day to figure out the festival program, which doesn’t seem available on one list). Otherwise, on the medici-arts.tv Web site, there is a great deal of information at your fingertips while you listen or watch the performances.
Nelson Freire amd Martha Argerich
Do not miss, above all, the July 28 concert, Argerich’s recital (following the “Ghost Trio,” with Rachlin and Maisky), which is capped by her four-hand performances with Lang Lang. On the Web site, go to July 28, select the third concert from the top, and be astonished by the Argerich-Lang Lang partnership, which seems to approximate her unique communication with Nelson Freire. Who knew the temperamental veteran artist and the young Chinese pianist would get along so well? The famed Argerich-Freire duo is also available at Verbier — click on July 23, and behold the Bartók Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion. (To go back and forth during concerts, to skip or repeat, use the control bar near the bottom of the picture, which comes up when you point at it.)
MediciArts.tv may mean a new paradigm for the industry, as enjoying music for free on this level could easily cut into CD and DVD sales. Recording companies must fend for themselves, but at least the artists get paid, thanks to the large and generous group of sponsors. Warning: Once you start watching medici-arts.tv, chances are you will neglect other (sometimes urgent) things to do.
The Verbier Festival Orchestra on location
Hope Redux
Soprano Hope Briggs, whose San Franciso Opera dismissal after the dress rehearsal for Don Giovanni this summer created quite a stir, will be the soloist at the concert opening the Oakland East Bay Symphony’s 19th season.
Briggs will perform arias from operas by Wagner, Verdi, and Puccini at the Paramount Theatre concert on Nov. 9. The program also includes the suite from Leonard Bernsten’s ballet Fancy Free and Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5. The previously announced Sala: Symphonic Elegy for Orchestra by Latvian composer Peteris Vasks will be rescheduled for the following season.
Soprano Hope Briggs
Boys Just Wanna Have Music
Hard to believe, but the San Francisco Boys Chorus is about to turn 60. Still, it’s not an “old boys’ chorus” — the age range of chorus members is 5 to 18. San Francisco Opera Chorus Director Ian Robertson has been at the helm of the organization for the past 11 years, following this line of succession: Laura Kakis, Eugene Pierce, Phillip Hahn, Lou Magor, and William Ballard.
SFBC has truly thrived recently, with increased activities and ambitious travel plans. For example, the anniversary year will culminate in a gala concert next June, featuring newly commissioned works by alumni composers Eric Marty and Jeremy Faust. Then the chorus leaves on a tour of Southern France, including performances of works by Marc-Antoine Charpentier in Marseilles, Monaco, and Aix-en-Provence.
Ian Robertson conducts the S.F. Boys Chorus
This summer, SFBC has already participated in performances of Carmina burana at the Grand Teton Music Festival in Jackson Hole, Wyo., conducted by festival director (and S.F. Opera music director) Donald Runnicles. The boys also performed at a Spotlight Concert, of Charpentier’s Te Deum and Leoš Janáček’s Children’s Rhymes, with violist Paul Ehrlich and pianist Charles Calhoun.
The chorus was founded in 1948 by Madi Bacon to train boy singers for the San Francisco Opera. Today, more than 200 boys from five Bay Area counties and 120 public and private schools study at three campuses, in San Francisco, Oakland, and San Rafael.
Upcoming events include SFBC participation in the S.F. Opera production of Wagner’s Tannhäuser next month, open auditions for which will be held on Sept. 22 in San Francisco, San Rafael, and Oakland (applications are available); in October, chorus soloists will appear in the Opera production of The Magic Flute; the chorus will perform on Oct. 13 at Yerba Buena Park as part of the city of San Francisco’s Department of Children, Youth, and Family Festival; and on Dec. 15 in the “Sing in the New Year” winter concert at the Calvary Presbyterian Church.
S.F. Symphony Additions (Hurrah!)
When the San Francisco Symphony announced that single-ticket sales for the next season will be available online on Aug. 30 (and Sept. 4 at Davies Symphony Hall), the organization also disclosed some intriguing additions to the season, beyond the already published schedule.
Pianists Lang Lang and Leif Ove Andsnes will appear in Davies Hall — Lang Lang will perform Beethoven’s First and Fourth Piano Concertos on April 29 at a Pension Fund concert, conducted by James Gaffigan, and on April 27 Andsnes will offer a recital of music by Schubert, Grieg, and Debussy.
Lang Lang and Leif Ove Andsnes in the SFS lineup
Andsnes photo by Simon Fowler
Details of the Symphony’s four U.S. premieres have been announced: Michael Tilson Thomas will conduct Xenakis’ À l’île de Gorée Jan. 17-19; Roberto Minczuk leads the orchestra in Brazilian composer José de Almeida Prado’s Symphonic Variations on Nov. 8 and 10; and SFS Resident Conductor Benjamin Shwartz conducts two premieres by composer Mark-Anthony Turnage, Juno and The Torino Scale, June 5-7.
James Gaffigan will replace Yuri Temirkanov in subscription concerts May 1-3, in a program of Stravinsky’s transcription of Tchaikovsky’s “Bluebird pas de deux” from The Sleeping Beauty; Shostakovich’s Violin Concerto No. 1, with guest soloist Vadim Repin; and Rachmaninov’s Symphonic Dances, Op. 45.
The 2007 holiday concert season includes the Dec. 30-31 New Year’s Eve concerts, when Michael Feinstein joins the orchestra, under the direction of Gaffigan. The new SFS Chorus director, Ragnar Bohlin, makes his local conducting debut with Handel’s Messiah on Dec. 12 at the Flint Center in Cupertino, and at Davies Hall, Dec. 13-14, with soprano Camilla Tilling, mezzo Malena Ernman, tenor Shawn Mathey, and bass-baritone Patrick Carfizzi as soloists. On Dec. 20-21, the orchestra will accompany a screening of The Wizard of Oz in Davies Hall.
Amy Beach Mass on Lyric Chorus Program
The Aug. 25 program of the San Francisco Lyric Chorus, at Trinity Episcopal Church, will feature the 1891 Grand Mass in E-flat Major by Amy Beach, America’s first major woman composer. Also on the program: selections from John Blow’s 1684 Ode on St. Cecilia’s Day and Purcell’s Come Ye Sons of Art.
The Grand Mass is believed to be the first Mass composed by an American woman. Beach (1867-1944) was a child prodigy, said to sing 40 tunes in key by the age of 1. She started composing before she was 2. By age 4, she played the piano, and gave concerts by 7, presenting her own works along with those of Beethoven, Chopin, Handel, Mozart, and Schubert. Originally from Boston, she lived briefly in San Francisco when she was a teenager. When she married a Boston doctor in 1885, she ended her concert career, but continued to compose. After the death of her husband in 1910, she resumed her performances, toured Europe, and returned to the U.S. in 1914.
Beach was commissioned to write the opening work for San Francisco’s 1915 Panama Pacific International Exposition, the Panama Hymn. She continued performing and composing until her death in 1944. Considered the dean of American women composers, she wrote over 300 works during her career.
San Francisco Lyric Chorus
Young Musicians Program Graduation
Robert Commanday reports:
Sunday afternoon at UC Berkeley’s Hertz Hall was like the splendid radio classical-music talent show From the Top, but absent its engaging host Christopher O’Riley. This was the last of three Young Musicians Program graduation concerts by some of its 86 students — ensembles of all kinds, choral and instrumental, and many soloists. In several cases, it was inspiring to hear the talent, and what these young musicians have been helped to make of it. For insiders, who know what these young people have overcome, how music has saved their lives, given them hope and a future, it was thrilling and an emotional kick — and in a couple of instances, heart-wrenching.
The Young Musicians Program, exclusively for students in grades 4 through 11 from low-income families, offers complete scholarships, providing instruments, books, music, classes, breakfast, lunch, and transportation. Up to 50 teachers do a great job, judging by Sunday’s performances. Alejandro Guan led off with a clear, crisp Bach Prelude Fugue in D, followed by an utterly musical, college-scholarship-worthy performance of Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto No. 1. Evelyn Granera was the expressive, phrase-shaping soloist, accompanied by Eboni Garrett-Bluford.
There was a fine, mature performance of Chopin’s Variation on Rossini’s “Non piu Mesta” (La Cenerentola), by a flutist with lovely tone, Elena Pinderhughes. A slender blond mezzo soprano, Kendra Dodd, was poised and expressively way beyond her years (perhaps 16). Her voice was properly praised by the opera master sitting next to me as “a natural.” She sang from Barber’s Vanessa and Rodgers-Hammerstein’s Carousel, accompanied by Garrett-Bluford and then her coach, David Tigner.
Kendra Dodd
Dodd was the strength of the first-half finale in — would you believe — the Final Trio and Duet from Der Rosenkavalier? Sure, she, Nicole Raynor, and Courtney Knott were 10 years away from really realizing this sunset dream of a work, but it was well-done and touching all the same. James Meredith, faculty pianist, supported sensitively with Strauss’ lustrous score. Other good entries were performances of the Andante from Schubert’s Piano Trio in E-flat, the Allegro from Beethoven’s String Quartet, Op. 18, No. 4, and Asuka Yanai, violinist in Sarsate’s Zigeunerweisen showpiece, and LaDene Otsuki, the faculty pianist. And that was just the first half.
Everyone of conscience talks about fine social programs, nodding approvingly at the newspaper stories, and clucking over the need for more action to help and save disadvantaged youth. How many actually do anything about it? If more people showed up to be exposed to stirring demonstrations like this, there would be no lack or shortage of support, and the number of youths helped to rise above their environment, the talents found and developed, would be doubled.
L.A. (Re)Embraces MTT
“Michael Tilson Thomas has had a troubled history with the [Los Angeles] Philharmonic,” according to The Los Angeles Times review of MTT’s concerts in Hollywood Bowl last week, his first in 22 years. “He grew up with the orchestra. He was long estranged after what proved a difficult period as principal guest conductor in the ’80s. He is now, to some degree, a competitor. But his week at the Bowl proved that you can take the Angeleno out of L.A. but you can’t take this town out of Tilson Thomas.”
The San Francisco Symphony music director conducted the Philharmonic in a program of American music, including Copland’s Lincoln Portrait, narrated by Gore Vidal, “an old-school inspirational orator and patriot calling for a return to first principles. And Tilson Thomas conducted with an attachment to American standards that had its own this-is-what-made-us-great message.”
Of MTT’s performance of the Beethoven Symphony N. 9, the Times review said “he has returned to his hometown a master.” The Bernstein Symphonic Dances from West Side Story brought a verdict of “marvelous detail … inner voices … Wagnerian overtones … lush, sensual sound.” Seven of Copland’s Old American Songs were performed by baritone Thomas Hampson “with happy hamminess.”
The review also speaks of MTT developing “with the San Franciscans for the last dozen years … a unique style of conducting that leaves room for individuality from soloists and from players in the orchestra while still maintaining overall discipline.”
Janos Gereben (janosg@gmail.com) is a regular contributor to San Francisco Classical Voice.
©2007 By Janos Gereben, all rights reserved.