Listening Ahead
Our Critics’ Choices of Upcoming Events in the Bay Area
for May 13 – 26, 2008
Recital
Lynn Harrell’s Suite Tooth
Lynn Harrell, the great cellist, has recorded the complete Bach Cello Suites, of course. But that’s no reason not to hear him do the set in live performance. If you’re a Bach afficionado, you know that the suites feature some of Bach’s most inventive music. So why not submerge yourself in them over two evenings?
May 22, 7:30 p.m.; May 23, 8 p.m., Grace Cathedral, $25-$40, (415) 788-7353, www.gracecathedral.org. (M.Z.)
Lynn Harrell
Symphony
Aimez-vous Brahms?
Surely that was a rhetorical question in Françoise Sagan’s book title. To quote another, slightly modified, classic: “Nobody doesn’t like Brahms.” And yet, the San Francisco Symphony, after many Beethoven festivals (a pretty good composer, that), has just reached the point of honoring the Great Man of Hamburg with a festival of his own, albeit a short one. There are three programs scheduled between May 8 and 24, as follows: Program I: Piano Concerto No. 2 (with Leif Ove Andsnes) and Symphony No. 4. Program II: Variations on a Theme by Haydn, Serenade No. 2 in A Major, and Piano Concerto No. 1 with Yefim Bronfman. Program III: Geistliches Lied, Four Songs for Women’s Chorus, Two Horns, and Harp, and Ein deutsches Requiem (A German Requiem) with soprano Laura Claycomb and baritone Matthias Goerne.
Program II: May 15, 8 p.m., May 16, 8 p.m., May 17, 8 p.m.; Program III: May 21-24, 8 p.m.; All concerts at Davies Symphony Hall, except May 16, at the Flint Center in Cupertino. $25-$125, (415) 864-6000, www.sfsymphony.org. (J.G.)
American Masterworks Series
The Oakland East Bay Symphony presents Follies, the drama about a theatre scheduled for demolition during a reunion of the musical revue, The Weismann Follies, where the reunion isn’t only between cast members, but also between characters old and young selves. The featured dancers are Joy Gim and Joral Schmalle of the Oakland Ballet, as well as The Golden Follies. Guest stars include Academy Award winner Rita Moreno, Val Diamond, Sharon McNight, Sheri Greenawald, Melody Moore, and Trente Morant. And the singers are Tami Dahbura, Ben Jones, Mindy Lym, Christian Nova, Katy Stephan, Clark Sterling, Darla Wigginton, Greg Zema, as well as members of Berkeley Broadway Singers. Michael Morgan will conduct the fast-paced, high-energy Las Vegas-style revue that taps its way through Sondheim’s score of patriotic songs made for high heels, sequins, and sass.
May 16, 8 p.m.; May 18 2 p.m.; Paramount Theatre, Oakland, $25-$70, (510) 444-0801, www.oebs.org. (C.G.)
Brahms for Chorus
The San Francisco Symphony winds up its Brahms Fest with performances of the composer’s beloved German Requiem. Soloists Mathias Goerne and Laura Claycomb join the Symphony Chorus and the orchestra under Michael Tilson Thomas. The program also contains four of Brahms’ pieces for women’s chorus, and the “spiritual song,” Geistliches Lied.
May 21-24, 8 p.m., (415) 864-6000, Davies Symphony Hall, $35-$125, www.sfsymphony.org,. (M.Z.)
Chamber Music
Laurel Ensemble
The crackerjack, glamorous, all-female Laurel Ensemble are offering two May concerts featuring Maurice Ravel’s Introduction and Allegro for harp, flute, clarinet, and string quartet; the East Bay premiere of a work James Cohn wrote for the Ensemble, and Brahms’ Quintet for clarinet and string quartet. Violinist Jennifer Ho and harpist Wendy Tamis join the ladies.
May 20, 8 p.m., Berkeley City Club; May 21, 8 p.m., 142 Throckmorton Theatre; $15-$20, (415) 632-1292, www.laurelensemble.org. (C.G.)
Jennifer Ho and Wendy Tamis
Silver Crowden
The Crowden Music Center celebrates its 25th Anniversary by bringing together distinguished artists with close connections to Crowden, to perform works by Bach, Bloch, Brahms, and Schubert. Young students will premiere In Memory of Anne, commissioned by Crowden graduate Matthew Cmiel (’03). More than 100 professional musicians — including such notables as David Abel, George Cleve, Diedre Cooper, Bonnie Hampton, Paul Hersh, Emil Miland, Donald Runnicles, Bejamin Simon, and Julie Steinberg — will take the stage, as well as the Crowden School Orchestra. Crowden faculty, alumni, and friends will join for the now-traditional grand finale, Leroy Anderson’s Fiddle-Faddle. A “Meet the Artists” reception follows, at the Bancroft Hotel.
May 24 7 p.m., UC Berkeley’s Hertz Hall, Berkeley, $10-$25, (510) 559-6910, www.crowden.org. (C.G.)
Contemporary
Stefano Scodanibbio and sfSound
Composers such as Ferneyhough, Frith, Sciarrino, and Xenakis have written works for composer and contrabassist Stefano Scodanibbio. Now, in collaboration with sfSound, the Istituto Italiano di Cultura (Luciano Chessa’s festival dedicated to Italian music) celebrates spring with a program of Scondanibbio’s compositions for solos, duos, and ensembles. In addition to a group improvisation led by Scodanibbio, the concert includes My New Address for solo violin performed by Graeme Jennings; Mas lugares, based on Monteverdi’s madrigals and performed by a string quartet (Jennings, Erik Ulman, Ellen Ruth Rose and Monica Scot); and the American premiere of Labore Navigacionis for two pianos, performed by Christopher Jones and Ann Yi. The program concludes with the American premiere of And Roll for solo double bass, performed by the composer.
May 18, 4 p.m., Old First Church, San Francisco, $12-$15, (415) 474-1608, www.oldfirstconcerts.org. (C.G.)
Stefano Scodanibbio
Photo by Alfredo Tabocchini
Opera
Madama Butterfly
A year and a half ago, Martinez Opera gave its first, full opera production, La traviata, and they did all right. They’re back with another crowd-pleaser, Puccini’s Madama Butterfly (see review). Olga Chernisheva, who holds down the title role, received a good notice from SFCV for her Manon Lescaut at West Bay Opera (February 2006), and she is partnered by Daniel Holmes, who has a busy schedule with regional American companies. The reliable John Minagro sings Sharpless. Will this fledgling company show improvement? Stay tuned.
May 17, 7:30 p.m., Alhambra Performing Arts Center, Martinez, $25-$50, (925) 372-6617, www.mtzo.com. (M.Z.)
Tale of Redemption
Wagner wrote his remarkable The Flying Dutchman in seven weeks of concentrated labor, in 1841, and always considered it his real artistic awakening. Accustomed as we are to later Wagner, the opera may not seem so revolutionary, but its sea-drenched orchestral music, and the emotionally searching main numbers reveal the composer’s vivid dramatic imagination at every step. West Bay Opera provides a chance to see this energetic, youthful work close-up, in a production by David Ostwald, conducted by José Luis Moscovich. Watch out for the two excellent leading ladies, Paula Goodman Wilder and Gail Sullivan, who will sing Senta. Her ballad in the opera’s second scene is the dramatic crux of the whole opera.
May 23, 24, 30, 31, 8 p.m.; May 25, June 1, 2 p.m., Lucie Stern Theater, Palo Alto, $20-$50, (650) 424-9999, www.wbopera.org. (M.Z.)
Choral
Chanticleer
What better way to celebrate its debut 30 years ago in the Mission Dolores than with nine concerts of Mission-era music in missions up and down the Camino Real between San Francisco and San Luis Obispo? Knowing this all-male chorus, these performances will be well worth their price in gas getting there.
May 15-29, times and locations vary, $22-$44, (415) 392-4400, www.chanticleer.org. (C.G.)
Songs of Hope and Wonder
Musae, the 12-voice women’s vocal ensemble, closes its fourth season with three concerts that explore Anglo- and African-American folk traditions, featuring shape-note and Shaker hymns, African-American spirituals, and songs from Scotland, Wales, and Ireland. This is the first foray for the “ladies of song” into the history and practices of sacred harp and shape-note singing —the uniquely American genres featuring four-part, a cappella hymns, odes, and anthems. Among the works on the program are Wondrous Love, Sweet By and By, and Joan Szymko’s arrangement of Amazing Grace. The journey into American history continues with spirituals such as Nobody Knows the Trouble I See and Wade in the Water. Celtic melodies, Stephen Hatfield’s arrangement of the Scottish Ballad Geordie (or How the Lady Ann Saved Her Man), and Ryan James Brandau’s setting of An Irish Blessing round out the lineup.
May 17, 8 p.m., St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, Berkeley; May 18, 4 p.m., St. Luke’s Episcopal, San Francisco; May 21, 8 p.m., Old St. Hilary’s Landmark, Tiburon; $15-$25, (415) 637-1334, www.musae.org. (C.G.)
Musae
New Music from Volti
Volti, Robert Geary’s constantly surprising, not-the-usual choral group ends its season with more premieres and pieces composed within the last 20 years. Among those are a premiere by George Lam, Eric Moe’s O, the Flesh is Hot, Steven Stucky’s Cradle Songs, Ronald Caltabiano’s Metaphor, Two Motets, by William Hawley, and part of Aaron Jay Kernis’ Ecstatic Meditations. If you’re interested in contemporary classical, you have to check out Volti.
May 17, 8 p.m., St. Gregory of Nyssa Church, San Francisco; May 18, 4 p.m., St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, Berkeley; $8-$20, (415) 771-3352, www.voltisf.org. (M.Z.)
Chora Nova
Paul Flight directs Chora Nova in Brahms’ A German Requiem, in the composer’s own arrangement for two pianos. The soloists are soprano Rita Lilly and baritone Jeffrey Fields, and the pianists are Nalini Ghuman and Lino Rivera.
May 24, 8 p.m., First Congretional Church of Berkeley, $10-$18, (415) 392-4400, www.choranova.org. (C.G.)
Janos Gereben (janosg@gmail.com) is a regular contributor to San Francisco Classical Voice.
Catherine Getches is managing editor of San Francisco Classical Voice. Her writing has appeared in publications such as The Washington Post, San Francisco Chronicle, Los Angeles Times, Salon.
Michael Zwiebach holds a Ph.D. in music history from UC Berkeley.
©2008 By Janos Gereben, Catherine Getches, Michael Zwiebach, all rights reserved.