Listening Ahead
Our Critics’ Choices of Upcoming Events in the Bay Area
for September 25 – October 8, 2007
Symphony
Mahler’s Song of the Earth
One of the S.F. Symphony’s best offerings in the fall is its first, Das Lied von der Erde, Gustav Mahler’s extraordinary symphony/song cycle. With Stuart Skelton and Mahler specialist Thomas Hampson joining Music Director Michael Tilson Thomas, this should be a performance worthy to stand alongside the other musical feats in the Symphony’s Mahler cycle. As an opener, the orchestra rolls out Mozart’s brilliant Symphony No. 34 in C Major.
Sept. 26-29, 8 p.m., Davies Symphony Hall, $25-$125, (415) 864-6000, www.sfsymphony.org. (M.Z.)
Symphony Silicon Valley
From the redwood forest to the gulf stream waters, lovers of Americana should be intrigued by the premiere of composer David Amram’s Variations on a Song by Woody Guthrie, leading off the season for Symphony Silicon Valley. Conductor Paul Polivnick will also direct the ever-fresh Sinfonietta by Leos Janáček, and the “Pastorale” Symphony by Ludwig van Beethoven.
Sept. 29, 8 p.m., Sept. 30, 2:30 p.m., California Theatre, San Jose, $35-$72, (408) 286-2600, www.symphonysiliconvalley.org. (J.D.)
Santa Rosa Symphony Jubilee
The Symphony celebrates its ruby jubilee with a special concert of love arias from favorite operas and selections from Bizet’s Carmen. Music Director Bruno Ferrandis conducts.
Sept. 30, 8 p.m., Wells Fargo Center for the Arts, Santa Rosa, $8-$80, (707) 546-8742, www.santarosasymphony.com. (M.Z.)
Napa Valley Symphony
The first classical concert of the Symphony’s 75th anniversary season features violinist Chloë Hanslip, who is making her Napa Valley debut at the age of 19. The program is full of fun: There’s Niccoló Paganini Violin Concerto No. 1, Rossini’s Overture to William Tell, Mussorgsky’s Night on Bald Mountain, and Dukas’ The Sorcerer’s Apprentice.
Oct. 6, 8 p.m., Oct. 7, 3 p.m., Lincoln Theater, Yountville, $25-$85, (707) 226-8742, www.napavalleysymphony.org. (C.G.)
Chloë Hanslip
The Battleship Potemkin
In the same month in which the San Francisco Symphony will sync Prokofiev’s score to a showing of Alexander Nevsky, the Marin Symphony and its music director, Alasdair Neale, along with the Mill Valley Film Festival, offer you the rarer opportunity to see Sergei Eisenstein’s The Battleship Potemkin (1925) combined with the music of Shostakovich. The score the Marin Symphony will play was created for the jubilee re-release of Eisenstein’s film in 1976. It was cobbled together from pieces of the composer’s symphonies (especially No. 11, The Year 1905). Is the resulting pastiche any better than Nikolai Kryuokov’s 1950 score for the film? Probably, but you be the judge.
Oct. 7, 9, 7:30 p.m., Marin Veteran’s Memorial Auditorium, San Rafael, $27-$65, (415) 479-8100, www.marinsymphony.org. (M.Z.)
Marin Symphony plays for fabled silent The Battleship Potemkin
Chamber Music
Ives Quartet
It can’t be all that often that Giuseppe Verdi’s E-minor Quartet finds itself the most familiar item on a program, but so it happens in the Ives Quartet’s enticing concerts of late September. The Verdi’s companions on the Italian-themed program are Frank Bridge’s 1905 First Quartet (written for a string quartet competition in Bologna) and Gian Francesco Malipiero’s 1920 First Quartet, subtitled “Rispetti e Strambotti.” The Malipiero is an exuberant, extravagantly colorful blast of a quartet, a piece whose obscurity is one of the quartet repertory’s persistent puzzles.
Sept. 28, 8 p.m., St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, Palo Alto; Sept. 30, 7 p.m., Le Petit Trianon Theater, San Jose; Oct. 7, 2 p.m., S.F. Conservatory of Music Concert Hall, San Francisco; (650) 224-7849/(415) 503-6275, $15-$25, www.ivesquartet.org. (M.D.T.)
New Esterházy Quartet
The journey has already begun (see review), but the New Esterházy Quartet’s two-year-long traversal of the complete string quartets of Joseph Haydn gets going in earnest this fall. The first program gives an idea of the variety about to be thrown our way: two of the jewel-like early quartet-divertimenti; an underplayed and masterly middle-period quartet (The Frog), in which Haydn manages to be intricate and whimsical at once; and his (justly popular) last completed quartet.
Sept. 29, 4 p.m., St. Mark’s Lutheran Church, San Francisco, $10-$25, mail@newesterhazy.org, www.newesterhazy.org. (M.D.T.)
New Esterházy Quartet
Recital
An Evening With Kiri Te Kanawa
After almost 40 years of packing opera houses worldwide, one of the grandest dames in opera is saying goodbye. Fans, many of whom have followed the New Zealand soprano since she made her debut at Covent Garden in 1971, can see Kanawa, now 63, one last time in her Bay Area farewell concert at the Marin Veterans Memorial Auditorium.
Sept. 29, 8 p.m., Marin Veterans Memorial Auditorium, San Rafael, $35-$120, (415) 499-6800, www.zvents.com. (C.G.)
Kiri Te Kanawa
Olga Borodina
This singer in the grand tradition brings her creamy mezzo-soprano and superb musical and vocal skills to Zellerbach Hall for a Cal Performances recital during the San Francisco Opera run of Saint-Saëns’ Samson and Delilah, which features Borodina in the title role. In her recital, Borodina will essay songs by Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninov, among other composers.
Sept. 30, 3 p.m., Zellerbach Hall, Berkeley, $36-$48, (510) 642-9988, www.calperfs.berkeley.edu. (L.H.)
William Porter
The organist specializes in historical performance practices. For an organist, that means improvisation, one of the skills that was, until comparatively recently, expected even from local church musicians. Porter has founded two Baroque music performance groups, performed at a number of festivals, and has been a church music director, in addition to holding a faculty position at the Rochester Eastman School of Music. So when he comes to San Francisco, courtesy of the local chapter of the American Guild of Organists, expect to hear a lot of the improvisational art in a variety of styles. Porter also plays Buxtehude’s Praeludium in F (BuxWV 145) and J.S. Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in F (BWV 540).
Sept. 30, 4 p.m., St. Mark’s Lutheran Church, San Francisco, free, (415) 928-7770, www.sfago.org. (M.Z.)
Opera
Samson and Delilah
Olga Borodina brings her voluptuous, Golden Age mezzo-soprano back to the War Memorial Opera House in a signature role: Delilah in Saint-Saëns’ opera. (See the review.) Clifton Forbis makes his San Francisco Opera debut as her paramour in this tale of love and betrayal. Owen Gradus, heard most recently as Leporello in this past summer’s hit Don Giovanni, returns as the Old Hebrew, with Juha Uusitalo as the High Priest of Dagon. Samson isn’t deep, but between the parade of great tunes and the lush sets by Douglas Schmidt, it’s plenty of fun and the perfect season opener. Patrick Summers conducts.
Sept. 25, 28, 8 p.m., War Memorial Opera House, San Francisco, $15-$275, (415) 864-3330, www.sfopera.com. (L.H.)
The set of Samson
Photo by Christian Steiner
Tannhäuser
Richard Wagner’s oft-revised fifth opera is one of his most dramatic and popular works. The score pulses with energy and is extraordinarily tuneful (not something you always associate with Wagner). If the leading tenor isn’t killed early on by the notoriously high tessitura of the role, Tannhäuser’s death scene is one of the most affecting in 19th-century opera. Peter Seiffert, who won a Grammy for his portrayal of the minstrel-knight in Daniel Barenboim’s 2004 recording, will make his San Francisco Opera debut in the role, with his wife, Petra Maria Schnitzer, as Elisabeth, and expert Wagnerian Donald Runnicles on the podium. Don’t expect the usual on stage, though: The production is being directed by the celebrated Graham Vick, founder of the trailblazing Birmingham Opera Company and a dedicated challenger of operatic tradition.
Sept. 26, 29, Oct. 3, 12, 7 p.m.; Oct. 7, 1 p.m.; War Memorial Opera House, San Francisco, $25-$200, (415) 864-3330, www.sfopera.com. (M.Z.)
Il rè pastore
At 19, Mozart was already an experienced opera composer. This lovely serenata, composed in 1775 for the visit of the Archduke Maximilian Franz to Salzburg, is the crowning work of his apprenticeship. Its pastoral mood is enhanced with a number of felicitous characterizations, and it overflows with musical invention. While the shepherd-king Aminta’s rondo, “L’amerò, sarò costante” (I will love her and be constant), with its seductive violin obbligato, has been recorded on several Mozart recital discs, there are plenty of other treasures lying hidden in this rarely performed score. Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra has already performed the piece to great acclaim at New York’s Mostly Mozart Festival in 2003, and its revival here (see review) features a first-rate cast, including Lisa Saffer as Aminta and Heidi Grant Murphy as Elisa.
Sept. 27, 8 p.m., Herbst Theatre, San Francisco; Sept. 28, 8 p.m., First United Methodist Church, Palo Alto; $30-$72, (415) 392-4400, www.philarmonia.org. (M.Z.)
Lisa Saffer and Heidi Grant Murphy
Tales of Hoffmann
It’s common theatrical practice to cast the four villains in Offenbach’s Tales of Hoffmann with one bass. In its new production, San Francisco Lyric Opera returns to Offenbach’s original idea, as Shawnette Sulker takes on all three of the love-interest characters opposite Richard Byrne’s Hoffmann and Roberto Gomez as the hero’s tormenters. It remains to be seen whether SFLO will take advantage of the editions of the opera published over the past 30 years, which present options closer to Offenbach’s (unfinished) score than the traditional one, first published in 1907, long after the composer’s death.
Sept. 28, 29, 7:30 p.m., Florence Gould Theater, Palace of the Legion of Honor, San Francisco, $18-$32, (415) 668-1521, www.sflyricopera.org. (M.Z.)
Sweeney Todd
Stephen Sondheim denies that he writes operas, but we can’t think of a better word to describe ACT’s production of Sweeney Todd. Demon Barber takes the stage with the touring company for John Doyle’s recent Broadway production, in which the cast was also the (on stage) orchestra. The production was roundly hailed as a masterpiece in New York, and here’s our chance to see it. David Hess and Judy Kaye star as Sweeney Todd and Mrs. Lovett.
Through Sept. 30, times vary, $20-$80, ACT Theater, San Francisco, (415) 749-2ACT, www.act-sf.org. (L.H.)
Appomattox
Although he has left the resolutely avant-garde phase of his career behind, Philip Glass remains a vital and fascinating opera composer. San Francisco Opera premieres his 22nd opera, Appomattox, Oct. 5. This is Glass’ second work with a libretto by English playwright Christopher Hampton and, like their first collaboration in 2005, Waiting for the Barbarians, Appomattox will be overtly political in its themes. Starting from the events leading up to the dramatic meeting of Lee and Grant, the opera traces the impact of racism and the end of the Civil War on the next 100 years of American history.
Oct. 5, 16, 20, 8 p.m.; Oct. 10, 18, 24, 7:30 p.m.; Oct. 14, 2 p.m.; War Memorial Opera House, San Francisco, $15-$225, (415) 864-3330, www.sfopera.com. (M.Z.)
Turn of the Screw
This Benjamin Britten opera is commonly agreed to have the composer’s most tautly constructed score. It is one of his richest, as well, with the colorfully orchestrated, gamelan-influenced world of the ghostly servant, Peter Quint, set against the twisty, unsettled chromatic lines of the Governess and her charges, Miles and Flora. Director Tom Dean and Oakland Opera Theater are resetting the action of this cryptic opera from the Essex country house of Bly to “a remote Louisiana plantation.” But in this most interior of operas, it will be up to Anja Strauss, as the Governess, and her costars to bring the opera’s shattering climax alive.
Oct. 5-14, 8 p.m. (Sunday at 2 p.m.), Oakland Metro Opera House, Oakland, $25, (510) 763-1146, www.oaklandopera.org. (M.Z.)
Early Music
Hopkinson Smith
One of the world’s great lutenists and a founding member of Jordi Savall’s Hespèrion XX comes to the Bay Area with a San Francisco Early Music Society program divided between the music of John Dowland and that of Francesco da Milano, a renowned 16th-century instrumentalist. Included on the program are Smith’s own improvisations on dances from Francesco’s Fantasias.
Sept. 28, 8 p.m., First Lutheran Church, Palo Alto; Sept. 29, 8 p.m., St. John’s Presbyterian Church, Berkeley; Sept. 30, 3 p.m., St. John the Evangelist Episcopal Church, San Francisco; $22-$25, (510) 528-1725, www.sfems.org. (M.Z.)
Hopkinson Smith
Photo by Naoya Ikegami
William Boyce’s Solomon
Tame by today’s standards, Boyce’s opera about the delights of love was considered racy and erotic in its day, and second in popularity only to Handel’s Messiah … only to be deemed “unsuitable” entertainment because of its subject matter a generation later. This beautiful example of English-Baroque opera comes to life with soprano Susan Gundunas as “She” and tenor Corey Head as “He,” with singers from the San Francisco Renaissance Voices as the chorus.
Sept. 29, 7:30 p.m., Seventh Avenue Performances, (415) 664-4523; Oct. 7, 8 p.m., Old First Church, (415) 474-1608; San Francisco, $12-$15, www.sfrv.org. (C.G.)
Events
Voltaire and the French Enlightenment
Go back to school with two days of lectures, discussions, and musical examples about the Enlightenment at Humanities West. On Saturday at 2 p.m., San Francisco Opera Musical Administrator Kip Cranna will discuss opera and the Enlightenment, preceded by Katherine Heater, David Morris, and David Wilson playing a suite from Rameau.
Oct. 5, 8 p.m., Oct. 6, 10 a.m., Herbst Theatre, San Francisco, $25-$200, (415) 391-9700, www.humanitieswest.org. (M.B.)
Chamber Orchestra
Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg
You may have seen the violinist in the Academy Award-nominated documentary film about her life titled Speaking in Strings. Now’s your chance to see her live, performing as guest-concertmaster in a series of concerts with the New Century Chamber Orchestra all over the Bay. Celebrated as one of the most original and fearless artists on the concert stage today, she has a unique, nonconformist playing style, and has mastered a wide-range of repertoire. On the program: A Fritz Kreisler showpiece, Bach’s beloved Violin Concerto No. 1 in A Minor, Mendelssohn’s String Symphony No. 10, and Tchaikovsky’s Serenade for Strings.
Sept. 26, 8 p.m., St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, Palo Alto; Sept. 27, 8 p.m., St. John’s Presbyterian Church, Berkeley; Sept. 29, 8 p.m., Herbst Theatre, San Francisco; Sept. 30, 5 p.m., Osher Marin JCC, San Rafael; $28-$42, (415) 357-1111, www.ncco.org. (C.G.)
Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg
S.F. Conservatory Orchestra
The Conservatory Orchestra is capable of astonishingly polished and technically secure performances. In their upcoming concert, under Andrew Mogrelia, they tackle Mahler’s “Titan” Symphony (No. 1 in D Major), and soprano Kali Wilson is the soloist in Barber’s Andromache’s Farewell. Wagner’s popular Tannhäuser Overture kicks off the program.
Sept. 29, 8 p.m., S.F. Conservatory Concert Hall, $15-$20, (415) 503-6275, www.sfcm.edu. (M.Z.)
Contemporary
Philip Glass’ 70th Birthday Party
Last year, minimalist Steve Reich turned 70, and now it’s Glass’ turn. The composer is being feted around the Bay Area this year. The party kicked off in August with the Cabrillo Festival’s performance of Glass’ Eighth Symphony (see review). Glass will appear in person and on the piano at San Francisco Performances on Sept. 28 along with Bang on a Can cellist Wendy Sutter, playing a rare recital of a range of chamber works. The celebration peaks with the blockbuster premiere of his new opera Appomattox on Oct. 5 (see item below). Then on Oct. 9 through Stanford Lively Arts is the West Coast premiere of his new song cycle, Book of Longing, already dubbed “audacious,” for multiple singers and ensemble and with lyrics by the renowned, and famously depressed, folk musician Leonard Cohen. And the party rolls on at Stanford with Alarm Will Sound on Nov. 30. Glass has moved far beyond mindless minimalism, as these concerts should attest.
Sept. 28, 8 p.m., Herbst Theatre, San Francisco, $30-$45, (415) 392-2545, www.performances.org. (M.B., L.H., and D.B.)
Sarah Cahill and Joseph Kubera
Celebrating their 10th year of performing together as a team, the bicoastal duo of Sarah Cahill and Joseph Kubera perform recent four-hand works, written for them by maverick Bay Area composers Terry Riley and Ingram Marshall. The pianists will load the bases with solo compositions: Kubera will introduce a new work written for him by the innovative composer Michael Byron, and Cahill hits it out of the park with Annie Gosfield’s Brooklyn, October 5, 1941, using baseballs and a baseball mitt on and in the piano, as well as Chester Biscardi’s In Time’s Unfolding.
Sept. 28, 8 p.m., Old First Church, San Francisco, (415) 474-1608, $12-$15 www.oldfirstconcerts.org. (C.G.)
Sarah Cahill and Joseph Kubera
Mills Performing Group
The Mills Performing Group is made up of a number of experienced new-music musicians. They will not flinch from Charles Wuorinen’s Bearbeitungen über das Glogauer Liederbuch (Arrangements from the Glogauer songbook), or Aaron Copland’s Sextet, two highly intellectual works of “traditional” musical modernism. The group also presents Roscoe Mitchell’s White Tiger Disguise, with mezzo-soprano Lynne Morrow (of Pacific Mozart Ensemble fame), and Zeena Parkins’ Between the Whiles, for electric harp and electronics, with the composer as soloist.
Sept. 29, 8 p.m., Lisser Hall, Mills College, Oakland, $6-$12, (510) 430-2296, www.mills.edu. (M.Z.)
ADORNO Ensemble
Seeing stars? You will in more ways than one at the ADORNO ensembles’ season opener, “Heaven and Earth,” an evening that brings together music and stargazing. The featured works are by Taiwanese composer Yu Hui Chang, from Brandeis University, who will discuss her major new composition for percussion, Binge Delirium, as well as Isang Yun Together, Zhou Long Ding, and Melissa Hui’s Still. If that’s not enough star wattage, you can view Jupiter and its moons with handmade telescopes by the Sidewalk Astronomers, and discover Chinese astronomy in the galleries with astronomer Kenneth Frank, while mingling over cocktails.
Oct. 4, 7 and 8 p.m., San Francisco Asian Art Museum, (415) 474-1608, free (with museum admission), www.adornoensemble.org. (C.G.)
David Bratman is a librarian who lives with his lawfully wedded soprano and a wall full of symphony recordings.
Mickey Butts (www.mickeybutts.com) is executive director and editor of San Francisco Classical Voice. His writing has appeared in Salon, Food & Wine, Portfolio.com, The Industry Standard, Wired, Parenting, Sunset, The Nation, and The San Francisco Chronicle. As a professional singer, he has performed with such groups as Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra, Mark Morris Dance Group, Artists' Vocal Ensemble (AVE), and Pacific Collegium.
Jeff Dunn is a freelance critic with a B.A. in music and a Ph.D. in geologic education. A composer of piano and vocal music, he is a member of the National Association of Composers, USA, and serves on the boards of Composers, Inc. and New Music Bay Area.
Catherine Getches is managing editor of San Francisco Classical Voice. Her writing has appeared in publications such as The Washington Post, San Francisco Chronicle, Los Angeles Times, Salon.
Lisa Hirsch is a technical writer. She studied music at Brandeis and SUNY/Stony Brook.
Michelle Dulak Thomson is a violinist and violist who has written about music for Strings, Stagebill, Early Music America, and The New York Times.
Michael Zwiebach holds a Ph.D. in music history from UC Berkeley.
©2007 By David Bratman, Mickey Butts, Jeff Dunn, Catherine Getches, Lisa Hirsch, Michelle Dulak Thomson, Michael Zwiebach, all rights reserved.