Music News
Del Sole to Shine Again
Napa’s Festival del Sole has scheduled its third season for July 12-20. Presented by the Del Sole Foundation for the Arts and Humanities, the festival once again will bring renowned soloists to Napa, but it will be more locally based than before, featuring musicians from the San Francisco Opera and the Napa Valley Symphony, in addition to those from the Dallas Symphony and UBS Verbier Chamber Orchestra. The Russian National Orchestra served the festival for the first two seasons.
Returning soloists include violinists Joshua Bell and Dmitry Sitkovetsky, and pianists Jean-Yves Thibaudet and Conrad Tao, 13. Artists making their festival debut include pianists André Watts and Simone Dinnerstein, oboist Alexei Ogrintchouk, soprano Measha Brueggergosman, and mezzos Elina Garanca and Jill Grove. Detailed program information will be soon available on the festival’s Web site.
Founded (and originally funded) by IMG Artists’ Barrett Wissman, the festival began in Cortona, Italy. This year, in addition to Napa it is extended to Singapore. Major local sponsors are Calistoga Ranch, Auberge Resorts, Bouchaine Vineyards, and Napa Valley Vintners. Chief philanthropic support comes from the Ann and Gordon Getty Foundation, Tatiana and Gerret Copeland, Athena and Timothy Blackburn, Dede Wilsey, the Koret Foundation, Bank of America, and Maria Manetti Farrow, among many others.
Festival Del Sole Artistic Director Nina Kotova
Netrebko Pregnancy: Good Timing for S.F. Opera
Had San Francisco Opera General Director David Gockley engaged the most famous Merolina of today, Anna Netrebko, to sing any sooner than in the summer of 2009, we would have been out of luck. As it is, there is a chance the frequently canceling Netrebko may not appear. An Associated Press story on Monday says the soprano has announced her pregnancy, and engagement to Uruguayan baritone Erwin Schrott. The 36-year-old soprano is expecting this fall — withdrawing from the scheduled October Met Lucia di Lammermoor performances, but confirming her January engagements in New York — so the July 2009 San Francisco Traviata is, well, possible.
Anna Netrebko
Wolff to Berkeley Symphony
With Kent Nagano de facto ending his direction of the Berkeley Symphony — leaving a single appearance as conductor next year — the time has come for guest conductors/successor-aspirants for the job of music director. First up: Hugh Wolff, on Feb. 21, at Zellerbach Hall. The program — in the manner of Nagano’s contemporary fashion — includes the West Coast premiere of Aaron Jay Kernis’ Overture in Feet & Meters, Osvaldo Golijov’s Night of the Flying Horses, Shostakovich’s From Jewish Folk Poetry, and Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7. (Try to catch a concert like that across the Bay, in the San Francisco Symphony’s Temple to the Tried-and-True.)
Both Golijov and Shostakovich deal with the plight of Jews in mid-20th century Europe; the works will be sung in Yiddish, by soprano Heidi Melton and mezzo Katherine Tier, current and former Adler Fellows, respectively. Overture in Feet & Meters is an orchestral adaptation of the first movement of Kernis’ String Quartet No. 2, for which he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize. The composer has described the work as a “kaleidoscope,” inspired by Renaissance and Baroque dance forms.
Wolff, 54, who began his career as assistant conductor at the National Symphony Orchestra, under Mstislav Rostropovich, has served as music director of the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra, the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, and, most recently, as principal conductor of the Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra.
Wolff will also conduct the next “Under Construction” concert, on Sunday, Feb. 24, at the First Congregational Church of Berkeley. This rehearsal-and-performance event of new works will present David Graves’ Insecurity and Other Agencies of Government, Sue-Hye Kim’s Creatio, and Elizabeth Lim’s Windfall. (Try to catch a concert like … oh, never mind.)
Hugh Wolff
Musical Valentine, With Hope Briggs
Soprano Hope Briggs is featured in a San Francisco Chamber Orchestra Valentine’s Day concert on Feb. 17 at Herbst Theatre. Participants in “Hope Briggs and Friends, a Musical Valentine” include 15-year-old Holly Stell (singing the Lakme “Flower Duet” with Briggs), violinist Dawn Harms, and jazz vocalist Jamie Davis.
Hope Briggs
Requiem for You: Art After Life
A company based in Salzburg now provides a new kind of business service: an individually tailored Requiem Mass for your funeral. The firm represents a network of composers, librettists, and musicians who will write a requiem in advance, capturing the client’s personality and accommodating preferences for balance among vocal, instrumental, and textual components. The styles available include Baroque, Classical, Romantic, jazz, or Broadway musical, with text in German, Latin, or English.
In addition to composing the piece, Requiem for You can also produce a recording, using a team of freelance artists, orchestras, and recording studios, once again honoring the client’s personal tastes in the CD cover art. The company can arrange a performance of the requiem, using anything from an audio presentation of the recorded version to a live performance with orchestra and choir. Prices range from $30,000 to $600,000.
As to the viability of a business in that price range, a Merrill Lynch study says there are some 9,500,000 millionaires in the world today.
S.F. Concert Chorale Doings
The San Francisco Concert Chorale
Photo by Eric Hooten
In its 35th season, John Emory Bush’s San Francisco Concert Chorale has Plans with a capital P:
- Honolulu concerts, March 29-30, in collaboration with the Timothy Carney’s Hawai’i Vocal Arts Ensemble, of Chaminade College
- The same collaboration presented at All Saint’s Episcopal Church in Palo Alto (April 4) and Mission Dolores (April 5)
- Bach’s B Minor Mass, first the subject of a lecture-demonstration by Stuttgart’s and the Oregon Bach Festival’s Helmuth Rilling (on May 10 at Trinity Church), and then a performance at the Mission Dolores Basilica (May 31)
Hawai’i Vocal Arts Ensemble
Janos Gereben (janosg@gmail.com) is a regular contributor to San Francisco Classical Voice.
©2008 By Janos Gereben, all rights reserved.