Music News
Venezuela’s Musical Wonder
On Sunday, Nov. 4, Bay Area audiences can see and hear for themselves what has been a sensation in Lucerne, Edinburgh, London, and other major concert venues. The conductor and orchestra that have won accolades around Europe this summer are coming to Davies Hall: Gustavo Dudamel, 26, and the Simón Bolívar Youth Orchestra will perform Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 10, the “Symphonic Dances” from Bernstein’s West Side Story, and music from Latin America.
Now stop reading, and watch their encore in the Royal Albert Hall. Are you back, exhilarated, but wondering what Shostakovich would sound like from these “kids”? The answer is: superb! I’ve been watching Dudamel-Bolivar concerts on DVDs and listening to international broadcasts, and found consistent excellence going hand-in-hand with pizzazz and appealing personalities, in programming that ranges from Ravel and Bartók to Beethoven.
This admiration is widespread. Among Dudamel’s other fans are Claudio Abbado, Simon Rattle, and Esa-Pekka Salonen, who will yield his baton over the Los Angeles Philharmonic in two years, in yet another manifestation of the orchestra’s “youth culture.” (Add to that the Philharmonic’s significant International Youth Orchestra Festival, which begins a three-week run today, SoCal fires permitting.)
As to the larger picture, about Venezuela’s three-decade-long program of providing high-quality music education to all, that’s a story to take to heart and emulate. Josi Antonio Abreu’s “El Sistema” (”National Network of Youth and Children Orchestras of Venezuela”) has turned an astonishing number of young Venezuelans into classical musicians, transforming lives among underprivileged and at-risk youths in the process.
Example: Lennar Acosta, now a clarinetist in the Caracas Youth Orchestra and a tutor at the Simón Bolívar Conservatory, has been said in various news reports to have been arrested nine times for armed robbery and drug offenses before the Sistema offered him a clarinet. From a start of 11 children rehearsing in a parking garage, the program has grown into its current government-supported $29 million budget, employing 15,000 music teachers and operating 90 music schools, whose graduates may then be offered jobs by one of 30 professional symphony orchestras within Venezuela alone.
Gustavo Dudamel
Bates Named to California Symphony Program
Mason Bates has been selected as California Symphony’s 2007-2010 Young American Composer-in-Residence (YACR). He is the recipient of both the Rome Prize from the American Academy in Rome and the American Academy in Berlin Prize, and Bates composes for a wide variety of media, with a portfolio of orchestral, chamber, theatrical, and electronic works.
At age 30, Bates has already received eight orchestral commissions to date, including from the National Symphony, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Phoenix Symphony, Oakland Symphony, and Juilliard School. Among other upcoming engagements, the National Symphony under Leonard Slatkin will reprise his Liquid Interface next February at Carnegie Hall, with Bates performing live electronica in the percussion section.
A graduate of Columbia University and the Juilliard School, Bates is currently working on his doctorate at the UC Berkeley. He is also an accomplished DJ and electronica artist who mixes downtempo hip-hop, trip-hop, French house, and funk at venues in San Francisco, Berlin, and Rome.
California Symphony Music Director Barry Jekowsky started the YACR program in 1991 to bridge the gap between musical training and the reality of writing for an orchestra. Previous YACR participants are Kamran Ince (1992-1993), Christopher Theofanidis (1994-1996), Kevin Puts (1996-1999), Pierre Jalbert (1992-2002), and Kevin Beavers (2003-2005).
Mason Bates
Still Calling All Opera Companies
There was good response to the request in last week’s Music News for updating our published list of Bay Area opera companies. Thanks for information from West Bay Opera, Martinez Opera, Berkeley Opera, and to Operabobb for a list of additional entries, but the data bank we are trying to maintain (and publish) is good only when it’s complete. Please send information about your organization to me at Janosg@gmail.com.
Faithful Reader Helps with Coverage
Ann Gazenbeek, a self-confessed Classical Voice enthusiast, first called attention to a “miss” in our coverage, then helpfully provided information about some exciting South Bay events:
Seth Asarno (bandoneon), Aileen Chanco (piano), John Imholz (guitar), Julie Wind, Music at the Mission, and Music at Market combined forces to put on two concerts in San Jose and Fremont, on Oct. 19 and 20, giving the best performance of Astor Piazzolla’s music I ever heard outside of Buenos Aires.
It is classical music, by classical musicians, but, what an eye and ear-opener. I am an avid classical music lover, and depend on SFCV for guidance (in keeping up with what’s around) and your great reviews. This kind of fell through the cracks and I accidentally heard of it and took a chance, not knowing what to expect. Well, it just blew me away (not easy to do).
I had heard Menachem Pressler and Ian Swensen in Brahms’ Quartet No. 1 in G Minor the night before, and I was still swooning over that euphoric experience, but this was still a real revelation to me. I think young people would react to Piazzolla almost as they would to a rock star.
Aileen Chanco
Tosca (the Café, Not the Opera) A-Dancing
An intriguing San Francisco landmark is about to be … danced. American Conservatory Theater Artistic Director Carey Perloff and San Francisco Ballet’s Val Caniparoli are creating a “movement-theater piece” titled The Tosca Project for workshop performances at the Yerba Buena Center Forum, Oct. 26-28.
The cast features a rich amalgam of dancers and actors: Sabina Alleman, Peter Anderson, Kara Davis, Muriel Maffre, Pascal Molat, Marc Morozumi, Jekyns Pelaez, Stephanie Saunders, James Simonse, Ching Valdes-Aran, and Gregory Wallace.
The title refers to the famed North Beach nightspot, named after Puccini’s opera. Tosca Café, having maintained its 1920s look for the past eight decades, still sports brandy-spiked cappuccino made with Ghirardelli chocolate, and the regular appearance of celebrities and the young crowd, along with such local notables as Francis Ford Coppola.
What’s the origin of this new choreographic celebration of a bar? It comes from two artists with long, distinguished histories of creating multimedia works. During her years at the head of ACT Perloff has produced many performances integrating music and drama. Caniparoli’s prolific, innovative choreography includes such brilliant ballets as Lambarena, set to African tribal music and Bach cantatas and partitas.
Carey Perloff
The idea of a movement-theater collaboration came before selection of the subject. Perloff was looking for something “in American culture that provides context for people to gather together,” when she experienced the “Tosca atmosphere” — “It was dark inside the bar, with the sun streaming in the front window, and the ghosts of that place were tangible … The surprise was looking around the bar and suddenly seeing the piece so clearly before my eyes in that magical setting,” Perloff says. In a “visceral way,” the café is “rooted in this particular place in the history of this town.”
Although the Ballet itself is not participating in the project, the cast includes such stars of the company as Allemann, from Switzerland, an SFB principal from 1988 to 1999; Maffre, the French ballerina, who has just retired from SFB after 17 years as a principal dancer; Molat, also from France, who has been an SFB principal dancer since 2003; and Kara Davies, an acclaimed artist with numerous contemporary-dance companies and a founding member of KUNST-STOFF, and Janice Garrett & Dancers.
Among the actors, Anderson, from Canada, had the lead role in the San Francisco and touring productions of The Overcoat, Wallace is an ACT associate artist and core acting company member, seen in many leading roles in the Geary Theater.
Rehearsal with Muriel Maffre and Gregory Wallace
Photo by Kevin Berne
West Bay’s Dutchman “Tradition”
We made a big deal last week about West Bay Opera’s plan to present Wagner’s The Flying Dutchman next year, but here comes former WBO board member Stephanie Smith with a relevant trip down memory lane:
West Bay Opera produced a fantastic Dutchman in 1986. Imaginative projections and lighting created images of ominous foreboding that are still fresh in the memories of those who saw the production. Several San Francisco Opera Chorus members were featured: William Pickersgill and Valery Portnov alternated as Daland, Ross Halper was the Steersman, and Monte Pederson sang a moving portrayal of the Dutchman that has never been bettered anywhere, in my opinion.
The small Lucie Stern Theater in Palo Alto allows the beauty of the voice to be easily heard and the action on stage is readily accessible from all seats. The talented conductor was Samuel Cristler, a fine musician and former member of the S.F. Opera cello section.
Monte Pederson went on to sing the Dutchman in several European houses and sometime later was called to fill in for an ailing Jose van Dam in San Francisco. We had seen the dramatic dark and angry interpretation by van Dam the previous week and went back to see Pederson’s debut in the role with his home company — it was a given that choristers were never considered suitable for principal roles but Monte now had a career as soloist abroad. His interpretation was more nuanced, his Dutchman suffering, troubled, and in pain rather than just angry, and Monte’s warm bass-baritone, while not a huge sound, traveled to the far reaches of the Opera House without strain.
It was truly heartbreaking that the love of Senta was not enough to save him. I have never felt such pity for the mysterious doomed Dutchman. I usually find him kind of scary. Sadly, a few years later, Monte Pederson died in his early forties, but the memory of his Dutchman will last as long as those who heard him are alive.
Magic Flute From and for the Young
The San Francisco Opera’s family performances of Mozart’s The Magic Flute, Oct. 27 and Nov. 3, will feature the company’s new production in an abbreviated form with young singers, including current and past Adler Fellows, in leading roles.
Tenor Chad Freeburg will make his local debut in the role of Tamino. Pamina is Ji Young Yang (replacing the originally scheduled Melody Moore), Papageno is Daniel Belcher, the Queen of the Night is Svetlana Nikitenko, Sarastro is Jeremy Galyon, Papagena is Rhoslyn Jones, and Monostatos is Matthew O’Neill. Conductor Alya Joffe and stage director Yuval Sharon will both make their San Francisco debut.
Tickets for the family performances are priced $20-$80 for adults, and $10-$40 for children and students age 18 and under.
Jenufa at Los Angeles Opera
From Our Own Correspondent, Lisa Hirsch, at the Oct. 11 performance of Jenufa:
Olivier Tambosi’s production of Janáček’s Jenufa, a hit at the Metropolitan Opera in 2003 and 2007, has come to Los Angeles Opera, bringing with it some of the stars of the Met production, including Jorma Silvasti and, making her Los Angeles Opera debut, Karita Mattila in the title role.
The production is strongly directed, but has a couple of unnecessary physical oddities. The set, designed by Frank Philipp Schlössmann, consists of a steeply raked stage flanked by two stage-height wooden walls pointing at 45 degree angles toward the back of the stage.
In the first and third acts, located near Steva’s mill, you can see a field in the distance. In the third act, at the Kostelnicka’s cottage, the walls almost meet, but the stage is dominated by a gigantic gray … what? Is it a mummified woolly mammoth? An enormous stone bird’s nest? A teratoma? Presumably it’s intended to stand for the elephant in the room, Jenufa’s secret pregnancy, which motivates all of the actions in the opera. Strangely, the third-act set had rocks strewn all around the stage — there were none during the first act — perhaps representing the disintegration of the object from the second act, and the disintegration of so many human relationships in the opera.
Given the extraordinarily strong cast and James Conlon’s sharp and brilliantly paced conducting, the opera would have worked perfectly well, played on a bare stage. It’s too bad that the set, especially for Act 2, was intermittently distracting.
Kim Begley and Jorma Silvasti sang Laca and Steva, respectively. Silvasti replaced the originally scheduled Joseph Kaiser, who had been released from his contract to take over some Met performances for an indisposed singer. Both are strong actors, Silvasti the spoiled and swaggering favored child, and Begley tenderhearted and affecting. Silvasti has the more beautiful voice, but given their strengths, it would be fascinating to see them swap roles within a single run of the opera. Elizabeth Bishop sang strongly as Grandmother Burya, doting on Steva and making quite clear her part in the destructive family dynamics that lead to the central tragedy.
Perhaps the most remarkable performance was that of Czech soprano Eva Urbanova as the proud and tortured Kostelnicka, whose fear of being shamed and fear for Jenufa lead her to drown Jenufa and Steva’s infant. It’s all too easy for a singer to play her as a one-dimensional villain, as Kathryn Harries did at San Francisco Opera a few years ago. Urbanova’s Kostelnicka is complex, subtle, tragic, driven by her love for Jenufa as much as by her fear and pride. Her voice has a distinct Slavic edge and only at piano sounded truly beautiful, but she sings this music with stupendous dynamic control and a huge range of colors.
Karita Mattila as Jenufa
And thus to Mattila, who has a reasonable claim to be the world’s greatest living soprano. Her spun-silver soprano has just the right vocal character for Janáček’s heroines, and she matches Urbanova’s sterling control. And yet she was not quite right for the part, her majestic singing and physical presence more suitable for a queen than for a village girl. She might as well have been singing Wagner’s Elisabeth or Elsa, not a naive 20-year-old.
The direction exaggerated her physical weakness in Act 2, while her singing remained that of a powerhouse. In the last scene in the opera, the 25 feet between Mattila and Begley made her Jenufa seem aloof, not forgiving. Mattila, always a pleasure to listen to or to watch, was less dramatically convincing than Patricia Racette in San Francisco, who more persuasively caught the character’s innocence and complexity in simplicity.
Janos Gereben (janosg@gmail.com) is a regular contributor to San Francisco Classical Voice.
©2007 By Janos Gereben, all rights reserved.