Wagner-Envy in the Valley

Palo Alto’s venerable, but minuscule West Bay Opera (52nd season, annual budget under $500,000) is currently producing an ambitious doubleheader. But “ambition” may be insufficient to describe new General Director José Luis Moscovich’s plan for next May: six performances of Wagner’s The Flying Dutchman. I cannot prove the claim, but it’s possible the WBO will be the smallest company (outside Germany) ever to undertake the venture.

Opera San José already tackled the The Dutchman, just two years ago, and quite well at that. The Valley should have had its fill, considering the fact that both the San Francisco Symphony and San Francisco Opera produced the work within the past few years. Still, Palo Alto will have its own.

Casting Cavalleria/Pagliacci and bringing in a half dozen singers new to WBO, Moscovich also prepared for the Wagner: Gail Sullivan (Santuzza/Nedda) will sing Senta and Vincent Chambers (Turiddu/Canio), Erik. The Dutchman stage director will be David Ostwald. In a somewhat surprising comparison between the current production and the challenge of next May, Moscovich says: “My famous last words are that Cav/Pag is actually more challenging to put together (in terms of production).” Oh, and he still needs a Dutchman, a Daland, a Steersman, and a chorus …

José Luis Moscovich

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Girls Just Wanna Sing

In their 28 years, the San Francisco Girls Chorus has won three Grammy Awards, but Artistic Director Susan McMane’s charges are not about to rest on their laurels. SFGC opens its 29th season on Oct. 26, at Calvary Presbyterian Church, with a program celebrating 900 years of English choral music. “Music Fit for a Queen” will feature music ranging from medieval songs to contemporary English music, and from the sacred to the wit of Gilbert and Sullivan. On the program: John Tavener’s contemporary Glory to God for This Transient Life, inspired by Eastern Orthodox tradition and mysticism, and Benjamin Britten’s Missa Brevis, Op. 63.

San Francisco Girls Chorus

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Calling All Opera Companies

Our amazing list of the Bay Area’s 22 opera companies needs updating, and the addition of missing entries. Please send information to me at janosg@gmail.com.

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Los Angeles’ Musical Youth Culture

Once upon a time, all conductors were (or seemed to be) in their 70s, 80s, or beyond (I saw 94-year-old Leopold Stokowski conduct in London, although he did so while seated, tsk, tsk). But now, behold Esa-Pekka Salonen, who became music director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic at age 34, and Michael Tilson Thomas, who became principal guest conductor at 37. The orchestra recently engaged Gustavo Dudamel, 26, as the successor for Salonen, and last week, it hired Lionel Bringuier as assistant conductor. The winner of the age derby: Bringuier, who is 21.

Lionel Bringuier

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NYC Opera’s Future: Closer to the Present

Gérard Mortier, who will start running New York City Opera in 2009, will get rid of Butterfly’s and Bohème’s — he intends to devote his entire first season to 20th-century works. The company will present eight operas in 2009-2010 (down from the current 13), all of them in new stagings, with Stravinsky’s The Rake’s Progress as the opening work. Also on the schedule: Philip Glass’ Einstein on the Beach, John Adams’ Nixon in China, Britten’s Death in Venice, Messiaen’s Saint François d’Assise (in the Seventh Regiment Armory on Park Avenue), perhaps taking the super-expensive sets off the hands of the San Francisco Opera.

Messiaen’s San Francisco production

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Old First Concerts

Now under the direction of Kathy Barr, Old First Concerts continues to provide an attractive series of concerts at rock-bottom prices: $12-$15. Here are a few upcoming attractions:

• Nov. 2: “Piano Rarities” with Alexander Vaulin, piano; works by Grieg, Stenhammar, Tchaikovsky, and Sibelius.
• Nov. 9: “Duo Cantando” with Paula Dreyer, piano, Kelly Maulbetsch, cello, Sarah Jo Zaharako, violin; works by Piazzolla, Ravel, Fauré, and Ginastera.
• Nov. 11: Tori Stødle, piano; works by Grieg, Nordheim, and the premiere of Fantasi by Ketil Vea.
• Nov. 16: Ksenia Nosikova, piano; works by Tchaikovsky, Schumann, Auerbach, Clementi, and Liszt.
• Nov. 18: Luciano Chessa, piano, performing his Quadri da una città fantasma, with Shane Anderson, turntables, Terry Berlier, video; works by Chessa for piano, slate board, and three turntables; for piano and stuffed animals (this column has long been waiting for that); and the premiere of Chessa’s Louganis for piano and video.

Musical instrument of the future

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A Year of Anniversaries

The San Francisco Museum and Historical Society will present “Standing Ovations” at the Fairmont Hotel on Nov. 2 to honor local citizens, companies, and organizations. This year’s celebration will focus on seven San Francisco performing arts organizations marking anniversaries:

• San Francisco Ballet: 75 years
• San Francisco Opera Merola Program: 50 years
• San Francisco Film Society: 50 years
• American Conservatory Theater: 40 years
• Magic Theater: 40 years
• San Francisco Symphony Youth Orchestra: 25 years
• S.F. Jazz: 25 years

San Francisco Symphony Youth Orchestra

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MTT’s “Other Orchestra” Celebrates Two Decades

Michael Tilson Thomas and the New World Symphony opened the Miami Beach training orchestra’s 20th season last weekend at Lincoln Theater. Gil Shaham was soloist in the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto, and MTT conducted Richard Strauss’ Don Juan and Bernstein’s Fancy Free ballet suite.

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Auf Wiedersehen, Heinrich, We’ll Miss You …

It was an emotional, grand affair in the War Memorial Friday night: Donald Runnicles, the San Francisco Opera Orchestra and Chorus, and a near-full house saying goodbye to Tannhäuser with love and regret. When this seven-performance run began on Sept. 18, musically it was already something special.

But the house was then about one-third empty, and what came across was a combination of individual efforts. At Friday’s last performance, musical forces coalesced brilliantly, and the fans came in droves to hear (if not necessarily see) the opera again, and they brought with them neophytes to Wagner, or even to opera. There were excellent performances in this production before, but this time, the orchestra and chorus were breathing with the music, creating moments of quiet beauty, alternating with grand, sweeping climaxes.

The “Arrival of the Guests,” for example, built and built, inexorably, until an elemental explosion of sound, which was enhanced by the kind of participatory applause that’s part of the music — unlike a “not in Wagner you don’t” kind of interruption. It was an unavoidable response, the time to applaud, even into the music if it feels right, and to hell with conventions.

Petra Maria Schnitzer sang a vibrant, glorious Elisabeth, James Rutherford’s Wolfram was the best in the run. Both gave the rare, difficult, superior kind of performance: singing quietly, effortlessly. When that’s done in Wagner, and done this well, there is nothing better. Peter Seiffert, who was glorious in the title role at the Sunday matinee, sang well at the last outing, but a degree of effort was audible this time. Petra Lang, on the other hand, while still scooping and going flat now and then, provided a more formidable Venus than before.

Eric Halfvarson, who was handicapped previously by a cold, sang his sonorous best as the Landgrave. But, again, it was not the individual efforts that counted this time — it was the ensemble, the gestalt, and the whole of it that mattered, and did so with great force. Even the Tenor to Reckon With, Stefan Margita, who previously did a showstopper Walther (a tiny role, usually hardly noticed at all), used his remarkably clear and grandly projected voice this time to blend into the ensemble. (See Margita’s biggest showboating episode.)

Judging by Tannhäuser, David Gockley’s first Wagner here, his next big challenge, the Ring, has promise — particularly if the general director makes certain that choreographer Ron Howell is kept away from the city (or better yet, out of the country).

Petra Maria Schnitzer was Elisabeth: no more, alas

Photo by terrence McCarthy

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Brilliant Production for Masonic Nonsense

San Francisco Opera’s justly well-received new production of Mozart’s The Magic Flute would be so much more enjoyable if Emanuel Schikander’s antiquated, laborious, just plain silly spoken dialogue were reined in, or just jettisoned altogether. There are few productions of the work that keep the German dialogue, and even fewer that save (and savor) every darn word from 1791.

But otherwise, the Saturday premiere was spectacularly sung and visually enchanting. At the beginning, Donald Runnicles and the Opera Orchestra seemingly picked up where they left off in the War Memorial Friday night with a sizzling, superb Tannhäuser.

No, not that Mozart sounded like Wagner, not in the least, but the Overture had all the wonderful rightness of the night before. Then, in the long progression of first-class performances that followed on Saturday — those slowly moving dialogues, some awkward scene changes — the Opera Chorus gave a fine but bland performance (encased as the singers were in rigid costumes and even masks), and the conductor’s frequent preference for the stately over the arousing took something away from the overall cohesion and impact that made the final Tannhäuser an instant classic. All these obstacles, however, can be remedied, and Flute may yet have its total magic during the remaining eight performances, which run through Nov. 3.

This is the Peter Hall production, designed gloriously by Gerald Scarfe, directed here by Stanley M. Garner, which Los Angeles Opera originally presented in 1992. The impressive sets and phantasmagorical costumes in this run are “extensively refurbished,” meaning that they look new and spectacular. Scarfe’s stage pictures, integrating sets, and painterly projected backgrounds range from impressive to sensational. From the hilarious hybrid animals (crocoguin, giraffestrich, and so on) to the cleverly rotating elements of Masonic architecture, the visuals encompass the worlds of fairy tales and art.

Beyond acknowledging individual performances, casting credits go to General Director David Gockley and Runnicles, who are restoring the vocal splendor of the Adler era to San Francisco. In a large cast, amazingly without a weak link, there were some great standouts, including several notable local debuts.

Erika Miklósa’s Queen of the Night in the vocal stratosphere

Photo by Terrence McCarthy

Applause just wouldn’t stop, and rightly so, for the Queen of the Night’s Act 2 aria (”Der Hölle Rache”). Hungarian soprano Erika Miklósa not only nailed the impossibly demanding coloratura acrobatics, but she sang it beautifully, as well — a combination rarely heard. Vocal beauty and great musicality also characterized Dina Kuznetsova’s Pamina, a most attractive lyrical stage performance in a role often presented as a recital exercise.

An impressive Lensky in his 2004 San Francisco Onegin debut, Piotr Beczala seems born for Tamino: The voice is exactly of the right weight and timbre. The Polish tenor and British baritone Christopher Maltman (in his debut as Papageno) were first among cast-wide equals in exemplary German diction. Maltman’s mellow but powerful voice and stage presence in this challenging comic role made a major contribution.

Georg Zeppenfeld’s debut in the role of Sarastro, Philip Skinner’s last-minute substitution in the role of the Speaker, and Greg Fedderly’s green, Platée-like Monostatos were all splendid. A large group of Adler Fellows did exceptionally well: Elza van den Heever, Kendall Gladen, and Katherine Tier as the fashion-fantasy Three Ladies (still in need of producing a more even ensemble sound), Matthew O’Neill’s Priest, and Rhoslyn Jones’ lively Papagena all signified milestones along important career paths.

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 16th, 2007 at 12:13 pm and is filed under music news. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

Chamber Music

Talich Quartet

For many chamber-music listeners, the name is likely still associated with the much-lauded 1970s recordings of the Beethoven quartets, but the membership of the Talich Quartet turned over completely in the mid-to-late 1990s, and the current quartet is a much younger ensemble. A brasher and more impetuous one, too, to judge by recent recordings, but one in which the old Talich’s intelligence and subtlety persist in a sort of family likeness. (The current first violinist, Jan Talich Jr., is the son of the older quartet’s founder and violist.) The Music at Kohl program — of Mozart, Janáček, and Mendelssohn — ought to provide a good overview of what the ensemble can do.

Oct. 21, 7 p.m., Kohl Mansion, Burlingame, $20-$42, (650) 762-1130, www.musicatkohl.org. (M.D.T.)

Talich Quartet

Well-Matched Piano Quartets

Two beloved piano quartets are on the schedule for Trio Concertante’s appearance with pianist David Gross at Old First Concerts. Composed at the same time as Le nozze di Figaro, Mozart’s Piano Quartet in E-flat, K. 493, has the same sunny-yet-deeply-felt quality. Faurè’s Piano Quartet in C Minor, Op. 15, is a marvelous work, full of subtle harmonic changes and lovely melody. Faurè’s comeback from near-anonymity is a blessing for chamber music fans. Also on Trio Concertante’s program is a rarity from Ernö Dohnányi, The Serenade, Op. 10. Dohnányi’s Brahmsian music is often an unexpected highlight when it surfaces in concerts.

Oct. 28, 4 p.m., Old First Church, San Francisco, $15-$12, (415) 474-1608, www.oldfirstconcerts.org. (M.Z.)

Viva Italia!

The Left Coast Chamber Ensemble presents a tribute to the nonoperatic side of Italian music. Pieces by Berio, Scelsi, and Sciarrino share the bill with a new work by young composer Luca Antignani (winner of the 2005 Barlow Award), and the winner of LCCE’s Composition Contest, Bruno Ruviaro. Oh, and there’s a Vivaldi string trio, too.

Oct. 25, 8 p.m., Throckmorton Theater, Mill Valley; Oct. 29, 8 p.m., Green Room, San Francisco, $15-$20, (415) 642-8054, www.chambermusicpartn.org. (M.Z.)

Emerson Quartet

Even committed fans of the Brahms quartets (as I am) might find the upcoming San Francisco Performances program, consisting of all three, a tad strenuous. But if anyone can make it work, the Emerson Quartet likely can. The Emersons have the intellectual and physical stamina for the project, as well as a sound whose combination of heft and transparency suits Brahms well.

Oct. 28, 7 p.m., Herbst Theatre, San Francisco, $30-$45, (415) 398-6449, www.performances.org. (M.D.T.)

Emerson Quartet

Photo by Mitch Jenkins

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Contemporary

Empyrean Ensemble

Now celebrating its 20th season, the Empyrean Ensemble starts things off with an earth-shaking concert of sorts. With the same solid artistry, these veteran players of new music will perform “Fault Lines: New Works by California Composers.” As usual, there will be several never-heard-before pieces, as well as one by a composer who seems to be popping up on programs all over the Bay Area: You’ll see Edgard Varèse’s name twice, with his Octandre, and in Jonathan Russell’s tribute, Fanfare for Varèse.

Oct. 14, 8 p.m., Mondavi Center, UC Davis; Oct. 23, 7:30 p.m., Wahlberg Recital Hall, California State University, Fresno; $15-$20, (530) 752-0948, http://music.ucdavis.edu. (C.G.)

Composers Inc.

By nature, this presenter’s concerts are full of surprises. The compositions are not only fresh, but played by some of the finest musicians around. The season opener for Composers Inc. (now in its 24th season) features Dante De Silva’s Burlesca, Michael Djupstrom’s Walimai (winner of the 2007 Lee Ettelson Composer’s Award), Fred Lerdahl’s Marches, Martin Rokeach’s Fast Lane, as well as two works for solo piano: Jeffrey Miller’s Piano Preludes and John Thow’s Remebering Opus 109.

Oct. 16, 8 p.m., Green Room, War Memorial Veteran’s Building, (415) 512-0641, $30-$45 www.composersinc.org. (C.G.)

New-Music Mashup at Mills

The Mills College Music Department and the Center for Contemporary Music bring together a talented lineup of artists — Joan Jeanrenaud, Richard Worn, William Winant, Chris Brown, and Daniel Rosenboom — for a performance of works by CCM and CalArts composers. Get ready for some experimental, exploratory, (and sometimes electronic) works, such as Chris Brown’s Stupas for piano, vibraphone, and live computer processing and John Bischoff’s Edge Transit for cello, bass, piano, percussion, and electronics. Mark Trayle’s Placeholder is a bumpy ride over a binary surface — words are gathered, encoded, and displayed for playback, and in the words of the composer, “the joys of edge detection and state change are expressed through synthetic song.” There’s a new work by James Fei for, of all things, the Buchla Box; and among other works there’s David Rosenboom’s Zones of Coherence, which uses the trumpet (and interactive electronics) to articulate nature and the breath of life.

Oct. 21, 4 p.m., Lisser Music Hall, Mills College, (510) 430-2334, $30-$45 www.mills.edu. (C.G.)

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Recital

Not-Standard-Issue Haydn

Marc-André Hamelin is renowned for his supreme technical virtuosity and his authoritatively accurate performances of difficult works of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, such as Ives’ “Concord” Sonata. This concert, presented by San Francisco Performances, includes a Haydn sonata (in B minor, also included on his most recent recording) and Chopin’s B-Minor Sonata (No. 3). Although his playing of standard repertory classics inspires some divided critical opinion, there is no doubting his dedication to these works, or his musicality. The pianist’s success with densely written works comes from his ability to delicately reveal contrapuntal layers, his sharp eye for detail, and his thorough understanding of how each composer builds large-scale structures. It’s his interpretive skill, not his virtuosity, that places him among the great living pianists.

Oct. 23, 8 p.m., Herbst Theatre, San Francisco, $30-$49, (415) 398-6449, www.performances.org. (M.Z.)

Marc-André Hamelin

Photo by Tina Foster

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Choral Music

Clerestory

The professional men’s chorus follows up on its stellar debut season last year with promises of riches to come. The program in October will loosely tie into the Appomattox premiere over at San Francisco Opera, with a concert of music from 19th- and 20th-century American composers, including Copland, Ives, and Rorem, as well as new arrangements Clerestory has done of Barber’s solo songs. Also included will be Civil War-era songs, Appalachian melodies, and Shaker and shape-note part-songs by William Billings and others.

Oct. 19, 8 p.m., St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, Berkeley; Oct. 21, 7 p.m., St. Mark’s Lutheran Church, San Francisco; $8-$15, www.clerestory.org. (M.B.)

Handel: For the Duke of Chandos

The California Bach Society takes to the other side of the street, presenting three of the magnificent anthems that Handel wrote in 1717-1718 for the Duke’s private chapel.

Oct. 19, 8 p.m., St. Gregory of Nyssa Episcopal Church, San Francisco; Oct. 20, 8 p.m., All Saints Episcopal Church, Palo Alto; Oct. 21, 4 p.m., St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, Berkeley; $10-$25, (415) 262-0272, www.calbach.org. (M.Z.)

Recalled to Life

Calling all lovers of Russian church music: If you missed the Sretensky Monastery Choir’s recent Bay Area visit (see review) you may redeem yourselves when the Russian Patriarchate Choir visits Berkeley under Cal Performances’ auspices. The male choir, founded by bass Anatoly Gridenko in 1983, led the way in rediscovering the music of Russian Orthodoxy in the waning years of the Soviet Union. Its story is fascinating and its sound, as evidenced by a number of recordings, is thrilling. But go hear them live.

Oct. 26, 8 p.m., First Congregational Church, Berkeley, $42, (510) 642-9988, www.calperfs.berkeley.edu. (M.Z.)

Evensong for All Hallows

Todd Jolly, music director of San Francisco Renaissance Voices, has a knack for entertaining and imaginative programming, and the group’s upcoming “All Hallows” concert is no exception. The Harp Trio Trillium joins SFRV for a concert of songs of death and sorrow, featuring Morley’s Dirge Anthems, Purcell’s Funeral Music for Queen Mary, and harp music from the British Isles. It’s likely there will a surprise or two in store, as well, and maybe costumes.

Oct. 27, 7:30 p.m., Seventh Avenue Presbyterian Church, San Francisco; Oct. 28, 7:30 p.m., All Saints Episcopal Church, Palo Alto; $12-$15, (415) 664-2543/(650) 322-4528, www.sfrv.org. (C.G.)

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Symphony

San Francisco Symphony

Kurt Masur guest conducts a concert that starts out white hot with Liszt’s Totentanz (The dance of death), based on the Gregorian plainchant melody Dies Irae, and one of the best demonstrations of the composer’s daring stylistic innovations as well as his obsession with death. Beethoven’s Choral Fantasy will seem lighthearted respite in comparison, before Prokofiev’s Alexander Nevsky, which was the score for Sergei Eisenstein’s 1938 propaganda film that was intended to raise the morale of the Russian populace in the likely event of a war with Germany. Nancy Maultsby (mezzo-soprano) and Louis Lortie (piano) are the guest artists.

Oct. 18, 19, 20, 8 p.m.; Oct. 21, 2 p.m.; Davies Symphony Hall, San Francisco, $35-$125, (415) 864-6000, www.sfsymphony.org. (C.G.)

Peninsula Symphony and the Eroica Trio

Mendelssohn’s brooding The Hebrides, Op. 26 (”Fingal’s Cave”) was inspired by the landscape of Scotland, and demonstrates the composers preference for the “darker” instruments, such as cellos, violas, bassoons, and clarinets. Here the Peninsula Symphony gives the music its “Scottish summer” feel as overcast skies, gray seas, and barren surroundings are clearly orchestrated into the music. Also on the program is Beethoven’s Concerto in C Major, Op. 56, as well as top-shelf guest artists the Eroica Trio. In keeping with their reputation for consistently having a ball while performing, the former Montalvo artists-in-residence are sure to have fun with Franck’s Symphony in D Minor.

Oct. 19, 8 p.m., San Mateo Performing Arts Center; Oct. 20, 8 p.m., Flint Center, Cupertino; $29-$34, (650) 941-5291, www.peninsulasymphony.org. (C.G.)

The Eroica Trio

Second-Generation Maestro

Conductor Philippe Jordan’s star is rising rapidly in the classical firmament. Already principal guest conductor at the Berlin Staatsoper, he was named last week to fill the post of music director at the Opera National de Paris, which has been empty since James Conlon left in 2004. The 33-year-old Jordan, son of the late Swiss conductor Armin Jordan, also bows at the Metropolitan Opera this year, with Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro. Bay Area audiences will have a chance to judge the young conductor’s talent for themselves when he takes the podium at the San Francisco Symphony for Strauss’ Alpine Symphony and Beethoven’s Third Piano Concerto, with Pierre-Laurent Aimard as soloist.

Oct. 26-27, 8 p.m., Davies Symphony Hall, San Francisco; Oct. 25, 8 p.m., Flint Center, Cupertino; $25-$125, (415) 864-6000, www.sfsymphony.org. (M.Z.)

University Symphony

In an interesting juxtaposition of old and new, Music Director David Milnes and University Symphony Orchestra Assistant Conductors Henry Shin and Alexander Kahn lead a program of works by Stravinsky, Bartók, Varèse, and Beethoven. Shin conducts Béla Bartók’s dancelike Divertimento for Strings, the last work of his premiered in Europe before he fled for America. Two works are directed by Kahn: Igor Stravinsky’s Symphonies of Wind Instruments, dedicated to the memory of composer Claude Debussy, and Octandre, a brief work by avant-garde composer Edgard Varèse. The second half of the program, under Milnes’ baton, is devoted to Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony.

Oct. 26, 27, 8 p.m., Hertz Hall, UC Berkeley, $4-$12, (510) 642-9988, www.music.berkeley.edu. (C.G.)

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Early Music

Music From Hamburg, 1607

Magnificat re-creates the musical celebration surrounding the rededication of St. Gertrude’s Chapel in Hamburg in the year 1607. With the aid of the Sex Chordae Consort of Viols, the Whole Noyse wind band, vocal soloists, two organists, and a theorbist, the group will perform a program that weaves together the full range of Lutheran music of the time, including a set of splendid polychoral motets.

Oct. 26, 8 p.m., All Saints Episcopal Church, Palo Alto; Oct. 27, 8 p.m., St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, Berkeley; Oct. 28, 4 p.m., St. Mark’s Lutheran Church, San Francisco; $12-$28, (415) 979-4500, www.magnificatbaroque.org. (M.Z.)

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Dance

Oakland Ballet Company

Ronn Guidi, or rather the Ronn Guidi Foundation for the Performing Arts, has resurrected the Oakland Ballet Company, which presented his Nutcracker last year. In its inaugural performance, with members of the Oakland East Bay Symphony conducted by Music Director Michael Morgan, the new company offers Bolero (Marc Wilde), Afternoon of a Faun (Vaslav Nijinsky), Trois Gymnopedies (Ronn Guidi), and Carnaval d’Aix (Guidi).

Oct. 20, 2 p.m. and 8 p.m., Paramount Theater, Oakland, $15-$50, (415) 370-9638, www.rgfpa.prg. (M.Z.)

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Opera

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, in October (see review). 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 is overtly political in its themes. Starting from the events leading up to the dramatic meeting of Generals 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. 18, 24, 7:30 p.m.; Oct. 20, 8 p.m.; War Memorial Opera House, San Francisco, $15-$225, (415) 864-3330, www.sfopera.com. (M.Z.)

West Bay Opera Stages Perennial Pair

Pietro Mascagni’s Cavalleria rusticana and Ruggero Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci have been performed together for over a century now, so that they have become a single word in the operatic lexicon: Cav/Pag. (See review.) These tales of hardscrabble life in southern Italy and Sicily lost their power to shock long ago, but in the right hands, the direct emotion of the music and the drama still grab you by the throat. José María Condemi’s production for West Bay Opera, conducted by José Luis Moscovich, seeks to continue that company’s record of strong, professional productions of the core repertory.

Oct. 19-21, 8 p.m. (Sunday at 2 p.m.), Lucie Stern Theatre, Palo Alto, $20-$50, (650) 424-9999, www.wbopera.org. (M.Z.)

Scott Six as Pagliaccio and Sharon Maxwell as Colombina

Photo by Otak Jump

The Magic Flute

San Francisco Opera has cast its new production of Mozart’s last opera with young stars (see review). Audiences will get to see Paul Beczala, fresh from last year’s Lensky, as Tamino. Pamina is sung by up-and-coming soprano Dina Kuznetsova. Erika Miklósa is the real veteran of the cast with 200 performances of the Queen of the Night under her belt. Christopher Maltman, baritone extraordinaire, takes on Papageno. If recent history is any guide, the production, borrowed from Los Angeles Opera, will dwell on the lighter side of things and leave the opera’s weightier issues to Mozart’s music, performed under the steadying hand of Music Director Donald Runnicles.

Through Nov. 3, times vary, War Memorial Opera House, San Francisco, $25-$200, (415) 864-3330, www.sfopera.com. (M.Z.)

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Chamber Orchestra

Russian Chamber Orchestra

The October Russian music festival continues at Noontime Concerts with the Russian Chamber Orchestra. Alexander Vereshagin conducts a musical lineup that will be new to most listeners, with the exception of Sibelius’ sad little Valse Triste, with Vereshagin on piano. It will be interesting to see what the group makes of Mikhail Glinka’s Valse Fantasy, Alexander Borodin’s Notturno, and the first movement of Alexander Scriabin’s Piano Concerto, Op. 20.

Oct. 24, noon, Old St. Mary’s Cathedral, San Francisco, $5, (415) 777-3211, www.noontimeconcerts.org. (C.G.)

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 16th, 2007 at 12:13 pm and is filed under listening ahead. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

For more than a decade, New Yorker classical-music critic Alex Ross has been showing readers why music composed in the last century — and last week — matters. Still safely under 40 and a fan of Radiohead, Bob Dylan, the Velvet Underground, and Björk, as well as Aaron Copland and John Adams, Ross has never succumbed to the institutional elitism, insularity, and conservatism that have pushed many potential listeners away.

Ross’ new book, The Rest Is Noise, published this month by Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, extends that broad perspective — in addition to his storyteller’s gift for the engaging anecdote, humor, and evocative description — to the 20th century’s kaleidoscopic, tumultuous non-pop-musical history. He’ll be discussing and reading from his book this week at events in San Francisco, Berkeley, and Marin (see below for more details).

Along with his erudite yet easily accessible New Yorker column, Ross has been a pioneer in staking out a claim in the classical music blogosphere; for the past three years, www.therestisnoise.com, originally conceived as an adjunct to the book, has showcased Ross’ sly humor and outtakes from his regular gig and the book.

“It turns out that my blog and others have filled this hunger for a national conversation about classical music, which is pretty much shut out of national magazines, and is generally shabbily treated in mainstream American culture — in contrast to 50 or 60 years ago when [Arturo] Toscanini and [Leonard] Bernstein were stars on radio and TV,” he says. “Now my blog seems to write itself — I get so many suggestions from readers, links to things that are kind of weird, and fascinating stories from all over.”

Context and Anecdote

Ross’ dual perspectives of journalist and historian equip him with an ideal view of our own messy artistic and social milieu. Although the shelf of 20th-century music histories is a long one, many of those books are written by academics for other scholars. Others, particularly those by European writers, tend to portray the story of music as an evolution toward greater freedom from tonality, pulse, and — not incidentally — audiences.

In this cramped view, musical development reaches its zenith in the unlistenable works of a few thorny European composers; world music, pop influences, and American composers are at best footnotes. Ross, a college history major, wanted “to take a step back and write in a broader way about the music and the century,” and The Rest Is Noise is replete with surprising insights gleaned from the literature, politics, and events of the time in which the music was composed.

“I felt there was an opening for a book that took on the subject in a much more general way — the personalities of composers, cultural and social context, the whole surrounding clamor of events in 20th-century music,” he told SFCV in an interview. “Whether you call it cultural history or intellectual history, I wanted to show where this music came from and how it hit the world.”

The book benefits from Ross’ ability, honed in his New Yorker column, to reach intellectually curious general readers without resorting to score excerpts, musical notation, or (many) Italian terms. “I’ve developed a way of negotiating this issue of how technical can you get,” he explains. “I find I can go into some detail about a particular musical moment as long as I don’t go on too long and as long as I choose language carefully. By accompanying a technical term with the right metaphor — like calling a cluster chord ‘forbiddingly dense’ — I can give people an immediate sense of what emotional heft is carried by, say, the Tristan chord.”

While always keeping the emotional significance of a work in view, he also supplies enough technical detail to give readers a sense of the significance of developments, such as the 12-tone method. As he notes, every genre, including sportswriting, has its technical language, and chroniclers are always engaged in a balancing act.

Along with his penchant for apposite metaphors and colorful, unexpected adjectives (no doubt developed during his years at The New York Times, whose critics seem to specialize in them), Ross knows a good illustrative anecdote can engage casual readers far more easily than even the most trenchant analysis. He puts the story back in music history. Each section of the book opens with a short narrative that allows Ross to illustrate a major theme of that period. For example, a 1906 encounter in Graz among Richard Strauss, Gustav Mahler, Arnold Schoenberg, and perhaps even Adolf Hitler provides the jumping-off point for a discussion of the end of Romanticism, the rise of modernism, atonality, and much else.

“There’s this amazing cast of characters — Hitler, Stalin, J. Edgar Hoover, the Kennedys, the Beatles, Lou Reed and the Velvet Underground,” that most influential of rock bands whose story is deeply tied up with the birth of minimalism. “If you just take the story of each of these representative composers and follow them from beginning to end, you move across an incredibly varied landscape,” Ross explains. “And that sends the message that this music was not off in a ghetto by itself, even though some may have tried to escape the surrounding reality.”

The book uses extended stories about composers — often those undervalued in some earlier histories such as Shostakovich, Britten, and Copland — to open the door to trenchant insights about many of the major issues arising in the music of the last century, especially the big one: How, in the collision of the impulses to venerate the past while seeking the future, the classical tradition diverged from popular taste. Although his own tastes span the range of accessibility from Adès to Adams, Ross doesn’t take the simple tack of just blaming modernism; in fact, he finds much of value in the music of Schoenberg, for example, while at the same time decrying the ideological stances that condemned composers like Copland, Britten, and Sibelius for being insufficiently inaccessible.

A Pop Sensibility

But Ross also understands that the story of the decline of classical music in the 20th century isn’t a simplistic tale with villainous, mustache-twirling “progressive” modernists vanquishing “conservative” populists. For instance, he notes, as has historian Joseph Horowitz, that the failure of the classical music establishment to support new American music between the two world wars, thanks to the rise of the cult of the conductor and worship of music’s Romantic era, left a vacuum in which listeners turned to the amazing pop music of the era to find something that spoke to contemporary concerns. If Ross has a philosophy, it’s anti-ideological.

The heroes of Ross’ book are those creative artists who engage with their societies, by choice or otherwise, as with Shostakovich’s long, shaky tiptoe along the line dividing official approval and the gulag. They not only come away with great material for music, but they also provide entertaining fodder for historians. Sometimes, Ross himself admits, he chose anecdotes for their sheer whimsicality and weirdness (Schoenberg and Stravinsky’s separate adventures in the New World, including barbecue restaurants and junior tennis, for example). They usually produce a much richer, better-rounded portrait of complex figures, such as Schoenberg, whom lesser histories reduce to caricature.

Such stories help demonstrate how music, like any art form, is always a product of its time and place. Composers weren’t “brains in a vat,” he says, and almost every time he introduces one, Ross tells us what the composer’s father did for a living. “It’s striking how many came from lower-middle-class backgrounds,” he says, citing Debussy, Schoenberg, Mahler, Janáček, and Copland. This tactic also combats the prevalent notion that “classical music is an elite art form populated by the rich.”

Ross hopes that his book, like his column, reaches beyond the cozy coterie of classical music mavens and out to the unwashed barbarians who dare to find art in the music of the Beatles or Björk. “In college, I discovered the noisier end of rock through the classical avant-garde and free jazz, which bore a close resemblance to the avant-garde end of rock,” he recalls. “[Pop music listeners] may be able to discover classical music along the same path but moving in the opposite direction.

“When I was writing the book, I very often had in mind people who’d grown up with pop music and developed a passion about some of the more out-of-the-way noncommercial areas of pop music and who might be curious about the 20th-century classical repertory that so often feeds into that music — from Duke Ellington taking an interest in Debussy and Ravel to Charlie Parker and Coltrane listening closely to Stravinsky to the Beatles putting Stockhausen on the cover of Sgt. Pepper’s and being influenced by his electronic collage procedures on their later, trippier songs, to bands of today such as Sonic Youth and Radiohead and Joanna Newsom, Sufjan Stevens, and Björk, who knew 20th-century music quite well and studied it in school. It’d be great if people picked up this book and followed that story back in time and found out where this music came from.”

State of the Art

In fact, Ross believes that younger fans and musicians from the classical and pop traditions are starting to find common ground. Commendably determined to escape Manhattan-centrism, Ross has investigated various European music scenes and recently took off on a journey through America to assess the state of regional orchestras. And in the current, fervid online conversation about the health of classical music, he comes down on the optimistic side.

“People have been predicting the demise of classical music for decades now,” Ross says. “In a way it depends on where you are. Some of the orchestras really are in a serious state, facing falling audiences. Others seem to be thriving — the L.A. Philharmonic is doing amazing things and getting a great response. On major labels, classical music is much diminished but all these indie labels are growing by leaps and bounds.

“Young musicians are coming up who are alert and imaginative and feel a great urge to communicate their love of the music, but they don’t feel a sense of entitlement that some earlier generations have had,” he says. “They’re used to growing up in a culture that generally pays very little attention to classical music, but they don’t see it as a crisis; they see it as a challenge: How can we engage with this culture? And they’re coming up with these fantastic ideas.” He cites Michigan’s Grand Valley State University New Music Ensemble, which has worked with Steve Reich, played his music at the composer’s home base in New York, and used the Internet creatively to reach surprisingly large audiences.

“Smaller-scale organizations, string quartets, and new-music ensembles — there’s so much happening across the country, more than ever in a way, but it’s not being talked about on a national level,” Ross insists. “So the Internet has allowed this conversation to happen without editors passing judgment on whether classical music is of interest to the 18-24 male demographic.

“These kinds of things are springing up everywhere. With the Internet now, people can become informed and listen to samples in way that would have been difficult a few years ago. With the right kind of canny outreach, you can find the hidden audience that is present even in relatively small cities.”

The Rest Is Noise suggests that the salvation of ambitious music may lie in this kind of technologically assisted, healthy diversity — through avoiding the ideological extremes of the last century, and embracing the eclecticism that has always inspired creative artists. “Everyone needs to have a spirit of adventure and be open to the really multifarious nature of the art form right now,” Ross says, “and not try to define it and put it in a box.”

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 16th, 2007 at 12:13 pm and is filed under feature. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

Is there anyone in the Bay Area consistently putting together cooler programs than Nicole Paiement? Saturday’s season-opening BluePrint concert, by the San Francisco Conservatory’s New Music Ensemble and various guest artists under Paiement’s direction, was typical of her programming since BluePrint was launched six years ago. That is to say, its design was ingenious and thought-provoking in a way that we are in danger of coming to regard as routine from her. In a region awash in new-music ensembles of various stripes, I can’t think of another that ranges so widely and profitably through the musical landscape as Paiement and her musicians do, nor one that so reliably draws interesting connections between its various finds.

This BluePrint season is titled “Mind the Gap,” and the concerts each explore a particular “gap” between music and something else. On Saturday at the San Francisco Conservatory’s Concert Hall, the something else was the other senses, and the program — called “Synesthesia” — focused on pieces in some way referencing or putting sound to the visual.

The evident germ of the program — the piece to which everything else seemed connected, in one way or another — was Jay Lyon’s Voyelles, begun in 1998 and reaching its current form only last year. Voyelles sets a sonnet of the same title by Arthur Rimbaud. It’s a bewildering poem that apostrophizes the five vowels and attaches to each a color and a series of vivid, often disturbing, images. (Here’s the vowel a, for example, in the program’s translation: “A, black corset hairy with bursting flies / That buzz around cruel stinks, / Gulfs of darkness …”)

Lyon gives the French text to two singers and a speaker, backed by an ensemble of flute, piano, synthesizer, five strings, electric bass, and drum set. In front of all this was a hip-hop MC, WiseProof Avataré, who overlaid a rapid-fire, virtuosically rhymed English-language gloss on the original text. The commentary, WiseProof’s own in collaboration with the composer, was a hoot. I loved the drawled “Pardon my French!” at one point, as well as the finger-to-the-lips “Shhh!” where Rimbaud mentions “Silences.”

So captivating was the hip-hop layer of the piece that it was difficult to get a sense of the rest of it. The instrumental component is built over a strong groove, with occasional high lines from violins or flute. The singers and speaker are not in sync with one another, each interjecting words or phrases at irregular intervals, and I could not tell whether everyone in fact uttered all of the text. Each vowel’s section is built on a different collection of pitches, harmonically pungent for the darker images and more open in sound for others. The concluding o — “supreme Trumpet full of strange discords, / Silences crossed by Worlds and by Angels” — brought out ecstatic outpourings from singers and high instruments and a flush of brilliant sound from the keyboards.

The program notes make no mention of this, but Lyon revealed in his preconcert talk that the hip-hop layer of Voyelles was actually an afterthought, added after the piece was composed and indeed already recorded. Evidently, on listening to the recording, Lyon found the words too sparse and belatedly recognized the work as a rap manqué. This is not something you’d have guessed from Saturday’s performance, in which the MC’s role put everything else in the shade. There is altogether too much going on in Voyelles to be caught in one hearing; the piece seems designed, like hip-hop, for repeated listening. I wish Paiement had put it twice on this shortish program. (It ended the first half, and a reprise after intermission would have been more than welcome.)

Illuminating Soprano, for a Change

From this centerpiece, the rest of the program took its various bearings. Britten’s early song cycle Les Illuminations, which ended the concert, was obviously there courtesy of Rimbaud, whose verse it sets. It’s a dazzling piece, crammed with ideas and scored with Britten’s usual savvy when writing for strings. Tenors, following the example of Peter Pears, have taken over the cycle of late, but it was originally meant for soprano voice.

It was a great pleasure, then, to hear it for once up the octave, and as well sung as it was Saturday by soprano Ambur Braid. I can’t vouch for her French (though it seemed articulate and well-enunciated to me), but the firmness of her tone and the confidence with which she negotiated Britten’s wide-ranging, often elaborate vocal line were a delight.

The Conservatory’s New Music Ensemble, expanded in size for the occasion to the scale of a respectable string orchestra, accompanied confidently under Paiement’s direction, even if it lacked the last degree of abandon. (The program doesn’t credit the concertmaster, which is a shame, since his graceful and sensuous accounts of the many violin solo passages were among the high points of the performance.)

Other parts of the program expanded, in one way or another, on the idea of synesthesia. Tan Dun’s 1986 Eight Colors, for string quartet, comprised eight short sketches, some of the movement titles directly mentioning colors (”Pink Actress,” “Black Dance”), others not (”Drum and Gong,” “Cloudiness”). The composer writes that the string-playing techniques as well as the musical material derive from Peking Opera. There are slow glissandos, slap pizzicatos, static and slowly shifting textures. One oft-recurring element is a long note begun with little bow pressure and then squeezed ever harder until the pitch cracks and breaks.

Despite the brevity of the sections, the work felt overlong, the sparse material not quite justifying the span over which it was spread. The lighting crew attempted to add variety, changing the illumination of the quartet movement by movement (lowering the lights way down for the static “Zen,” for example). The performance, polished and obviously attentive, was by Conservatory students Claude Halter and Stephanie Bibbo, violins; Alexa Beattie, viola; and Charles Akert, cello.

Sonic Flutter-By

Kaija Saariaho’s 2000 Sept Papillons (Seven butterflies) drew an amazing array of tremulous, fluttering effects out of Conservatory faculty cellist Jean-Michel Fonteneau’s solitary instrument. The butterflies of Saariaho’s imagination are large, colorful, sometimes alarming. The pieces portray them not only in sound, but also visually, in the complicated gymnastics the music demands of the cellist’s left hand. (Fonteneau’s hand — trembling between two widely spaced harmonics, thumb flying from top to bottom string and back again, fingers whirring on the fingerboard without bow or pizzicato — fluttered most captivatingly.) The technical challenges are enormous, but never gratuitous. Fonteneau was adept at getting Saariaho’s complex mixtures of harmonics, “natural” notes, and left-hand pizzicatos to speak clearly within a single phrase.

Philip Glass’ 1981 Facades, an outtake from the much-lauded score to the film Koyaanisqatsi, came with more explicit visual accompaniment, in the shape of a digital-video essay by Elliot Anderson. The video used what I took to be photographic stills looking up the walls of various buildings toward the sky. (In one, a flying hawk appeared, silhouetted against the blue.) These images, cut into angular shapes, seemed to rotate and interpenetrate one another in three dimensions, continually turning in on themselves in the manner of a gigantic kaleidoscope.

It was fascinating to watch, and it is fair to say that Glass’ music did its part by not hogging the attention. Facades gives lyrical lines to oboe and alto sax (Benjamin Opie and Jonathan Russell on Saturday), over a typical undulating Glassian background laid down by five strings and synthesizer. The music did little but step nervously away from its oppressively stable A minor and then back again, until it seemed to lack the will even to venture so far. As a standalone piece, I think it would have been insufferable; as accompaniment to Anderson’s work, it was oddly apt.

BluePrint has moved up in scale from last year’s season-opener, which was in the Conservatory’s smaller Recital Hall, and Saturday’s sizable audience looked as though the word about the series’ quality has gotten out beyond the Conservatory-student crowd. I hope that the Conservatory’s new Civic Center home encourages more Bay Area music-lovers to think of the SFCM as a concert-presenter, and not only as a school. There are great musical goings-on at the Conservatory, and BluePrint continues to be one of them.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 16th, 2007 at 12:10 pm and is filed under review, contemporary music. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

You haven’t lived fully until hearing opera in a small Italian town — the smaller the better. Forget the niceties of production values and flawless performances; instead, you can revel in the most essential component of the genre: passion.

The good news is that there is no need for long-distance travel. You get unbridled, sweeping, rousing operatic passion right in the heart of Silicon Valley. West Bay Opera, 52, the West Coast’s second-oldest company (after San Francisco, 84), is presenting some new and young talent in two of opera’s most heated potboilers. The Cav/Pag doubleheader — Mascagni’s 1890 Cavalleria Rusticana and Leoncavallo’s 1892 Pagliacci — seethes with love, betrayal, revenge, murder, and music to match.

In West Bay Opera’s tiny Lucie Stern Theater, an overwhelming, manic performance paced an overall fine musical performance from a small, galant orchestra under General Director José Luis Moscovich’s baton. The powerful star turn came from one of a half dozen singers making their debut: Gail Sullivan, in the role of Santuzza.

Gail Sullivan as Santuzza

All photos by Otak Jump

Instead of portraying a woman hurt by her faithless lover (Vincent Chambers, making a promising, sweet-voiced debut as Turiddu), the soprano gripped the audience with an outsize vocal and dramatic presence of stunning intensity. No lost soul, this Santuzza is a veritable Electra, in search of vengeance from the get-go. So great is the intensity of Sullivan’s vocal performance that instead of just sticking out of the ensemble, it lifts the entire production. (It was a relief to learn from the program notes that offstage Sullivan has a lighter side. With experience in European opera houses, she has written a guide for auditioning singers, titled Kein’ Angst, Baby!, the Australian edition presumably called No Worries.)

Vincent Chambers as Turiddu and Gail Sullivan as Santuzza

Sullivan and Sharon Maxwell alternate as Santuzza and Nedda in Pagliacci. At Sunday’s performance, Maxwell’s vocal performance built well to the climactic final scene, but dramatically, her awkward hand-waving made her look more authentic as the commedia dell’arte Colombina. Debuts in Pagliacci include David Hodgson as Tonio (singing a vital, robust Prologue) and the fresh-voiced Scott Six as Canio, singing up a storm. Cathleen Candia’s Lola in Cavalleria is an impressively simple, effective performance. (The alternate cast Lola is Raeka Shehabi-Yaghmai, whom I haven’t heard since her promising San Francisco Conservatory days; she too must be right for the role.)

Scott Six as Pagliaccio and Sharon Maxwell as Colombina

Both operas are directed by José Maria Condemi and designed by Jean-Francois Revon, who overcame obvious budget problems with talent and imagination. The Cavalleria set is simple and functional, giving the feel of a Sicilian village; there is a “working model” of a big truck that serves as the platform for the Pagliacci show. Condemi is moving the chorus (which sounds better than in any previous WBO show I’ve heard) in intriguing, functional formations. The director’s only misstep is the horizontal love scene in Pagliacci, more hilarious than amorous.

Special credit to the 27-member orchestra squeezed into the makeshift pit. It played through a few wrong notes and imbalances for an impressive total performance, peaking in the right places, the right way. Tina Anderson is concertmaster, Janet Lynch-Gillespie principal viola, Janet Withharm principal cello, and woodwind principals include Michelle Caimotto (flute), Peter Lemberg (oboe — the entire “section”), Karen Sremac (clarinet), and Alice Benjamin (bassoon).

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 16th, 2007 at 12:09 pm and is filed under review, opera. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

You would think that Dennis Russell Davies has his hands full this October, conducting Philip Glass’ Appomattox at the San Francisco Opera. But Thursday night, he headed down the street to the Herbst Theatre and lent his versatility and musicianship to a piano duo performance with his keyboard partner Maki Namekawa, in a benefit for the Other Minds Festival. Each of these formidable players is a deeply musical, probing explorer at the keyboard. The duo, formed in 2003 and based in Germany, apparently does most of its concertizing there. We’re fortunate that Davies’ conducting duties led to this program, for these pianists perform with energy and a flawless sense of ensemble.

Davies and Namekawa opened the program with music by the ubiquitous (at least this month) Glass, who was present to hear the duo’s adaptation of six scenes from Les enfants terribles, his 1996 opera based on the Cocteau film. There is fine writing here and some lovely surprises, such as the gradually darkening, impressionistic harmonies and quality of suspended time in the second movement, “The Bedroom.”

Davies and Namekawa showed an easy command of the music’s motoric rhythms and deftly handled the changing textures and balances through each movement. When new motifs arose from within the music’s repeating patterns, Namekawa in particular varied her tone and touch to create a feeling of surprise. Still, much of the music, especially the Overture, cries out for the third piano of Glass’ original score, and six movements seems to be about the limit of this music’s effectiveness in the two-piano medium.

Shining a Light on a Young Composer

The freshest music on the program came from young San Francisco composer Adam Fong. Sunlight moved propulsively from its first notes, beginning with low-register chords for Davies and high single-note lines for Namekawa. This opening set in motion a process in which the players, moving in opposite directions, gradually traversed the keyboards. Each part is full of kinetic ideas, and the quasi-indeterminate structure produced surprising harmonies and an evolving and engaging array of composite patterns.

The duo then moved to four-hands arrangements, in an exquisite performance of three selections from György Kurtág’s transcriptions of Bach chorales, Bach-Transkriptionen. Each piece was shaped beautifully, and the playing captured both the deeply spiritual nature of the music and the fine sensibility of Kurtág’s piano writing. Davies produced gorgeous, slightly blurred colors through the low-register fugal writing of the second work, “Aus tiefer Not schrei ich zu dir” (In deep need, I cry out to you). The extraordinary organlike timbres of the third selection, “O Lamm gottes, unschuldig”(O lamb of God, unsoiled), had a transporting effect. The duos unity of phrasing and shared depth of expression were exemplary.

It was exciting to have Chen Yi back in the Bay Area for the U.S. premiere of her China West Suite, a welcome addition to the composer’s body of work. Drawing on folk songs of the Meng, Zang, and Miao peoples, Chen’s work shows a brilliant feel for the dissonant implications of the folk music she quotes. The often rapid variations between the original material and her own extensions of it were handled seamlessly. Her approach reached a high point in the third movement, “Zang Songs,” as fleet, highly decorated piano lines overlapped, grabbing fragments and flashes of the folk material amid her contemporary language. Her piano writing was both challenging and idiomatic, and Namekawa and Davies, for whom the work was written, responded with clear enjoyment.

A second U.S. premiere, also written for Davies-Namekawa, was the veteran Austrian composer Balduin Sulzer’s Dialogue for Two Pianos. This work didn’t have the striking originality of much of the other music, and brought Prokofiev to mind at times with its mild dissonances and dance rhythms. But it still had much to recommend it. Namekawa revealed a wonderful palette of tone colors in the more lyrical passages, and the piece provided a showcase for the duo’s keen sense of interplay and unity.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 16th, 2007 at 12:08 pm and is filed under review, contemporary music. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

Those inclined to universalize have often pointed to the nearly uninterrupted performance tradition and seemingly unending appeal of Bach as evidence of his greatness. As part of her three-day Bach Festival, Canadian pianist Angela Hewitt was joined at Berkeley’s First Congregational Church last Thursday by German cellist Daniel Müller-Schott. The concert included all three of Bach’s Gamba Sonatas, plus one of the solo suites for cello and a keyboard partita. Their performance revealed yet another of the many faces of Bach, one that is well-suited to a contemporary audience.

Disclosure: As a cellist, I was trained by Robert Sayre, who had been a student of Piatigorsky at the Curtis Institute in the early 1940s. The Bach whom I first became acquainted with was Romantic Bach. That Bach loved continuous vibrato, hated the use of open strings, and generally favored an extremely legato line. I broke up with Romantic Bach when I became attracted to his distant cousin, Historically Informed Performance Bach. HIP Bach seduced me with his Gamba Sonatas, so much so that I actually gave up the cello for the viola da gamba. Not knowing much about what happened to Bach in the intervening years, I was quite surprised at the approach taken by Hewitt and Müller-Schott.

Since they were performing on what we now call “modern” instruments — that is, a concert grand piano and a “modern” (really Romantic) cello — I was predisposed to thinking that I might meet Romantic Bach once again. Maybe I missed him. Instead, I met a Bach quite unfamiliar to me. Rather than take full advantage of her concert grand, Hewitt played very lightly, with almost no pedaling. Her articulation was extremely short and sharp for the most part, as if she might be playing a harpsichord.

Müller-Schott rarely used vibrato; in fact, I have heard gamba players use more. His long notes were characterized by a messa di voce technique familiar to acquaintances of HIP Bach. Their tempos were generally on the quick side, and they made little use of the rubato and rallentando that were hallmarks of Romantic Bach.

Another Side of Bach

In other words, Hewitt and Müller-Schott presented the audience with Thoroughly Modern Bach. Combining some of the axioms of historically informed performance (”thou shalt not begin a trill from the main note,” whether or not that’s true) with 20th-century tendencies toward quicker tempos and a healthy dose of modernist purity, Hewitt and Müller-Schott’s Bach embodied the concerns and trends of performance practice in the early 21st century.

Perhaps the most pleasing part of the performance was Hewitt’s incredible sense of rhythm. This was most clear in the Partita No. 4 in D Major. Although her fundamental rhythm was absolutely metronomic, she was wonderfully flexible within the beat. It was just the right amount of stretching against a beat hierarchy, making her performance most satisfying.

Her interpretation of the Allemande was particularly engaging, with just a hint of wistfulness and beautifully long legato lines. It made me think that maybe the shadow of Romantic Bach still lives on. Hewitt’s jaunty rhythms also provided a fresh take on the last movement of Gamba Sonata No. 2 in D Major.

Müller-Schott gave a generally fine reading of the Suite No. 2 in D Minor. His performance was clean, crisp, and precise. Although there was not enough struggle for my taste, and he often took a tempo so fast that it obscured the underlying rhythms of the dance, he was ultimately convincing.

Hewitt and Müller-Schott are both extremely gifted soloists. I just wished that Hewitt had brought out a little bit more of her soloist’s nature when accompanying Müller-Schott in the sonatas. The three sonatas that Bach wrote for viola da gamba and keyboard are unusual in that they include a completely written-out keyboard part instead of the bare-bones framework of a basso continuo line. Treated as an obbligato instrument, the keyboard is thus just as important as the gamba, maybe more so. Hewitt seemed to approach the pieces as if she were playing pure accompaniment. It must have been a conscious choice to subdue the voice of her instrument, especially in the bass.

This tendency was perhaps most noticeable in the Adagio of Sonata No. 3 in G Minor. But first, I have to make a further disclosure — it was with this movement that HIP Bach won me. The keyboard part in this movement is incredibly simple, with only two voices. A third simple voice is provided by the bowed stringed instrument, thus creating a delicate, three-voice texture. When a texture is so delicate, it is easily destroyed. Usually, this movement goes wrong because one voice sounds too loudly; in this case, the bass voice was not strong enough.

In the end, this is all a matter of taste. Thoroughly Modern Bach has a certain appeal, particularly when presented by two such fine musicians as Hewitt and Müller-Schott. But a small part of me does miss Romantic Bach.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 16th, 2007 at 12:07 pm and is filed under review, early music. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

San Francisco Opera has a winner in its production of Mozart’s final opera, The Magic Flute. The performance Saturday night, both musically and dramatically, was splendid. The production, created by Gerald Scarfe for Los Angeles Opera in 1992, is indeed magical, featuring a pyramid that can morph into many structures, a fabulous snake, a beguiling collection of hybrid animals (such as a giraffestrich on stilts and toe shoes), and quasi-Egyptian iconic lions.

New costumes and sets replaced those that have worn out over 15 years, and the lighting and sound effects keep track of the weather artfully, creating night and day, thunder and lightning as required. Mozart and Conductor Donald Runnicles set just the right tone for the opera in the overture, alternating thoughtful, uplifting themes with exuberant cascades of sixteenth notes.

The story: Sarastro, priest of an order devoted to Wisdom, Reason, and Nature, has kidnapped Pamina (for her own good) from her mother, the Queen of the Night. In the ensuing custody battle, the Queen of the Night enlists the aid of the prince, Tamino, to whom she gives a magic flute that will help him to find and rescue Pamina. She sends the bird catcher Papageno to assist Tamino, giving him some chimes that will come in handy in a crisis.

Piotr Beczala as Tamino

All photos by Terrence McCarthy

Piotr Beczala has just the right kind of tenor voice for Tamino — strong, secure, sweet, and infused with heartfelt emotion. From his first gorgeous outpouring of love, as he gazed at Pamina’s picture (”Dies Bildnis ist bezaubernd schön / This portrait is bewitchingly beautiful”), you knew he was the man for the job.

Tamino is a prince, capable of selfless action, lofty thoughts, and enlightened leadership. Papageno is more of a hobbit, content with the pleasures of food, drink, and family life. Tamino will show himself fit to become a follower of Sarastro and gain Pamina’s love. The most that can be hoped for Papageno is that he will become honest. He provides comic relief in this high-stakes story, and represents the ordinary human condition.

An Expertly Comic Papageno

Christopher Maltman, fantastically feathered, was a terrific Papageno and a master of comic timing, alternately swaggering and cowering. His strong baritone anchored several ensembles, and his command of the lyrics was stellar. His reward for being generally good-hearted was a feathery Papagena, Rhoslyn Jones, who starred in a spectacular costume change.

Christopher Maltman as Papageno

Dina Kuznetsova, an outstanding Pamina, is blessed with a beautiful sound and an expressive sensibility. When Tamino, under a vow of silence, refused to speak to her, she sang a melting “Ach, ich fühl’s” (Oh, I feel all is lost), lamenting his seeming indifference and seeing nothing but death left to her. And when that misunderstanding was cleared up, she convincingly joined Tamino in his final tests. As Pamina shows the rather misogynous Order that she is worthy of Tamino, so did Kuznetsova show herself to be Beczala’s equal as a singer.

Dina Kuznetsova as Pamina and Erika Miklósa as Queen of the Night

Few sopranos can sing the two stratospheric and wide-ranging arias given to the Queen of the Night, and fewer still can sing them well. Erika Miklósa is one of this select company, and got the biggest ovations of the evening. Her entrance in the first act, floating down from the ceiling, was magical, but placed her far back on the stage. She was perfectly audible but sounded far away. Fortunately, her second act aria blazed out splendidly from the front of the stage.

Sarastro also has wide-ranging arias, plumbing the depths of the bass voice. Georg Zeppenfeld has the range for the role. His voice is not really potent, but his singing of “In diesem heil’gen Hallen” (In these sacred halls) was eloquent. I don’t know why he and the Speaker (Philip Skinner in this performance) had to be made up with such gray faces. Somehow they looked more subhuman than superhuman.

Greg Fedderly as Monosantos

Greg Fedderly, outrageously costumed as the would-be rapist Monostatos who is supposed to be Pamina’s custodian, provided expert comic scenes, along with Papageno. The three ladies who serve the Queen were excellently sung by Elza van den Heever, Kendall Gladen, and Katharine Tier. The three boys who accompanied Tamino and saved Pamina traveled in a marvelous, bird-shaped flying boat and sang in tight, well-tuned ensemble. They were Christopher Borglum, Zachary Marius Pedersen, and John Ribeiro-Broomhead.

Everybody Shake on It

Most productions of The Magic Flute have a problem deciding what to do with the chorus of priests and members of the Order, and this one is only partially successful at solving it. Chorus members were costumed in masks and exotic headdresses (Masonic Egyptians?), and each and every one shook hands with Sarastro during their long entrance in Act 2. (If it was a Secret Handshake, that wasn’t evident.) But the chorus sang Mozart’s lovely music beautifully, so never mind.

Georg Zeppenfeld as Sarastro

If ever you could argue that opera should be performed in the language of the audience, The Magic Flute would support the argument, considering the frequent use of spoken lines. But the cast for this performance sang and spoke their German lines clearly, possibly better on balance than they might have done in English. And of course there are supertitles.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 16th, 2007 at 12:06 pm and is filed under review, opera. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

Stanford’s Dinkelspiel Auditorium is not a large hall, but the St. Lawrence String Quartet played there on Sunday afternoon with a sense of intimacy worthy of a far smaller venue. Not that it couldn’t be heard, or anything like that. The nearly full audience hung on every note. But the quartet proved that there are other ways to provide an exciting and moving chamber music concert than by letting all the stops out.

St. Lawrence String Quartet

Start with the fact that Geoff Nuttall, the quartet’s intense and demonstrative leader, was cast in two of the three works as the second violinist. If he’s done this before, it was not at any concert I’ve attended. Some quartets, like the Emerson or the Orion, make a point of having their two violinists regularly switch roles. But most keep their players in the same seats. The St. Lawrence Quartet is doing something different, perhaps as an experiment. In parts of Beethoven’s Quartet in A Minor, Op. 132, Nuttall seemed almost to be gritting his teeth as he tried to fit in to the more self-effacing second violin role. Yet even in Haydn’s Quartet in C Major, Op. 54, No. 2, where he was first violin, Nuttall’s solos went for a much smaller, humbler sound than his characteristic ebullient style.

The performers’ approach was apparent from the beginning of the piece. Haydn’s first movement opening theme is interrupted by long pauses, which, as often with Haydn, are the most important moments in the work. The St. Lawrence players came to these silences with an intriguing hesitancy, as if they were about to surprise even themselves with what was coming next.

When the opening theme returns later in the movement, the first violin fills those pauses with tiny three-note motifs, and here Nuttall was at his most restrained, violating the silence with the smallest sound possible.

Meanwhile, Scott St. John, whom I once described as “a born second violinist,” which I intended as a compliment, was trying out as first violinist in the Beethoven. He has a relatively deeper tone than Nuttall’s, and he plays in a more restrained fashion. His solos in this work were part of the ensemble; he made no attempt to turn them into self-expressive showpieces.

Late Beethoven quartets are generally treated as large, fearsome monsters. To most critics, they’re all about their large, serious movements, and Op. 132 has, as its centerpiece, perhaps the largest and most solemn of them all. The shorter, lighter movements interleaved among them are considered almost embarrassments.

Another Take on Ludwig

The St. Lawrence turned this view of Beethoven inside out. The players found the “inner Op. 18″ in Op. 132. (The six Haydnesque quartets of Op. 18 were Beethoven’s earliest works in the genre.) Here the lighter side of the work carried weight. There can never have been a lighter, more charming performance of the trio in the quartet’s second movement, its Mozartean cadences gently floating down. Even the rough sforzandos in viola and cello that abruptly break it off were gently handled.

The third movement, that central Adagio, is a hymn of thanksgiving for the composer’s recovery from a serious illness. The hymn alternates with Andante episodes labeled “Neue Kraft fühlend,” which in this performance could be colloquially translated as “I’m feeling much better today.” These episodes made for sunny shafts in the solemn hymn, like the breaking of a fever. Silent pauses in the tiny fourth-movement march were treated as spots to stop and look around, as in the Haydn. Even the finale, in many hands a thunderous furiant, was light and gentle here, though also full of energy. Christopher Costanza’s cello did not strain for its high-pitched theme.

The Haydn and the Beethoven came before intermission. Afterward came something entirely different: John’s Book of Alleged Dances for string quartet plus prerecorded loops of prepared piano (serving as a rhythm percussion track for six of the 10 movements), by John Adams, who was present at the concert. It has nothing in common with Haydn and Beethoven except one key thing: a sense of humor. The movements have whimsical titles like “Toot Nipple” (an allusion to an E. Annie Proulx story) and “Alligator Escalator.”

Restrained from the deep sonority and harmonic resonance that characterizes his work with orchestra, Adams here exposes more of his minimalist roots. The string parts are often repeated loops as static as the prepared piano parts. Most of the movements end, in classic minimalist style, abruptly, even comically, with no harmonic resolution because there was never any harmonic movement to resolve.

What makes this piece work, if it is to work at all, is for the players to groove to the rhythm, whether accompanying the rhythm track or by themselves in the movements without one. They did well in the slow swing rhythm of “Rag the Bone” and in what the composer calls the “dry bones and hardscrapple attacks,” rather like a Shostakovich scherzo, of “Stubble Crotchet.” This last was violist Lesley Robertson’s finest moment.

Other parts were not so successful. Adams wrote the work in 1994 for the Kronos Quartet, and tailored the work for its particular style. The St. Lawrence, less ironbound performers than the Kronos, showed energy and skill in the “Dogjam” hoedown but didn’t really cut loose there. And Costanza was unconvincing in the song of a budding teenage girl in the “Pavane: She’s So Fine.”

Overall, though, this concert was a sterling exhibit of subtlety and charm in chamber music.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 16th, 2007 at 12:06 pm and is filed under review, chamber music. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

One great performance, one disappointment, and one bore were offered on last week’s San Francisco Symphony program. At least, that’s how it came across on Thursday’s matinee opening in Davies Symphony Hall. Still in all, that made for a .500 batting average for the afternoon.

Guest conductor Roberto Abbado, nephew of Claudio Abbado, proved his usual able self in a program consisting of Luca Francesconi’s Cobalt, Scarlet: Two Colors of Dawn (2000), Chopin’s Second Piano Concerto in F Minor, Op. 21, and Saint-Saëns Symphony No. 3 in C Minor, Op.78 (”Organ”). The young Argentinean pianist Ingrid Fliter was making her S.F. Symphony debut in the Chopin concerto, while organist Jonathan Dimmock lent his obbligato support to Saint-Saëns’ symphony.

The word from critics is that Fliter could well be the world’s next superstar pianist. And indeed, she came into Davies with a caboodle of prizes under her belt, from Argentina, Italy, and Poland. Young, blond, and slender, she cuts a fine figure at the piano, which helps in these days of youth worship. She has loads of technique, but she was obviously nervous on Thursday, fidgeting with the piano stool and dusting off the keyboard several times before beginning.

That nervousness also manifested itself in some rhythmically unstable playing, especially during fast passagework. She tended, for example, to squeeze fast triplets or dart ahead by a hair when playing them.

Fliter’s timbres were bright, cleanly articulate, and a tad loud, given the reduced orchestra. Her finest playing appeared in the famous slow movement, one of Chopin’s most melting romances, although she tended to use old-style, swooning rubato of the “Never let a cadence pass unmarked” school, a la Lang Lang. Fliter’s performance was not at all bad, only less impressive than I had anticipated.

Elegance and Heft

The glory of the afternoon turned out to be Abbado’s fine interpretation of the Saint-Saëns Third Symphony. I once heard conductor Jean Martinon call it “the goosebump symphony,” and the thrills were certainly all in place at this performance. Abbado had the orchestra playing at its most subtle and elegant self, and his tempo selections were right on the button.

There are places in the piece where Saint-Saëns’ scoring can cause sonic problems, particularly amid the lower brass instruments. For this symphony to work, the trombones and tuba must banish all thoughts of marching-band timbre and transform themselves into a solid, velvety, lustrous richness, like another organ. There’s no more beautiful sound within an orchestra if that comes to pass, as it did on Thursday. Here was bravura playing that proved very moving. New principal trombonist Paul Welcomer, in particular, deserves praise for his revelatory slow movement solo, which simply couldn’t be better or more lovingly played.

Organist Dimmock achieved beautiful balance in the middle movements. The one flaw came with the salvo he fired off in his first major entrance to open the finale. It wasn’t as loud as the Blue Angels, but it leaned in that direction. Sure the score calls for full organ, but it doesn’t call for throwing in the kitchen sink, the bath tub, and the rolled-up carpet with it. Except for that bit, Dimmock was appropriately grand throughout the piece.

It was good to hear that big organ, draped across the rear of the hall like a giant lavaliere, sounded again. It is played so seldom and I can only wonder why. True, it is used sparingly in most orchestral repertory, but the organ literature is rich with masterpieces, which we virtually never hear. I can’t understand why the Symphony doesn’t present an occasional virtuoso organist on its Great Performers series.

Bland Color

The 25 minutes of Cobalt, Scarlet: Two Colors of Dawn, Francesconi’s tone poem on the transformation of dark night into daylight, was the first, and likely last, performance of the work locally. It calls for an immense orchestra, including 49 percussion instruments in the hands of seven percussionists. These were divided into five groups across the back of the stage, as were the double basses to the right and left of the orchestra. The composer drew an assortment of extraordinary colors from the expanded sections. He does orchestrate well.

Francesconi (b. 1956) studied with Azio Corghi in his native Milan, Karlheinz Stockhausen in Rome, and Luciano Berio at the Tanglewood Festival. He has also worked at IRCAM, the acoustical and electronic music center in Paris. But sonic glitter aside, his music was little more than a string of clichés from the 1960s. Individual, quiet tinkles and a few scales formed the materials for the night section, while obstinate ostinatos of no notable interest dominated the toccatalike second section. Most of the time, the piece sounded like run-of-the-mill background music for a suspense or action movie. What a waste of time, considering all the fine Italian 20th-century music out there.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 16th, 2007 at 12:05 pm and is filed under review, symphony. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.