The Left Coast Chamber Ensemble is unique among the Bay Area’s new-music-focused ensembles in spending a fair amount of time outside the 21st or even 20th centuries. LCCE programs typically juxtapose new, 20th-century, and yet older works playable with a particular clutch of four or five instrumentalists, the instrumentarium changing from program to program as each of the ensemble’s 12 players gets a lick in.

So Monday’s program in the Veterans Building’s Green Room, featuring music for clarinet, violin, cello, and (in two of three pieces) piano, was typical of the ensemble’s planning. Less typical was the identity of the oldest piece on the program: not something from the 18th or 19th centuries, but rather Olivier Messiaen’s 1940-41 Quatuor pour la Fin du temps (Quartet for the end of time). In the event, the Messiaen, still bewildering after all these years, dominated but didn’t quite overwhelm a tightly designed and compellingly played program.

Left Coast Chamber Ensemble

Messiaen occupies a peculiar place in the contemporary music world. Judging by the caliber of his reputation, he would seem scandalously underperformed. But in a new-music economy that favors chamber works and shortish orchestral ones, Messiaen wrote precious few of either. The major works are dauntingly large pieces either for solo keyboard (piano or organ) or for enormous forces, pieces whose frequency of performance is harshly constrained by performers’ (and audiences’) stamina, budget, or both. So we get occasional blockbuster productions like San Francisco Opera’s of Saint François d’Assise, and rare ventures like Christopher Taylor’s into the solo piano Vingt Regards sur l’enfant-Jésus — and not much else.

The one meaty chamber work we have is the Quatuor pour la Fin du temps, and that alone would guarantee it a reasonable number of performances. The piece’s remarkable backstory — it was written in a German prisoner-of-war camp, the scoring dictated by the instruments of three other musicians also interned there — doesn’t hurt, either.

But the piece’s real distinction is just that it sounds like nothing else on this earth. Come to the opening “Liturgie de Cristal” (Crystal liturgy) — all wandering piano chords and slithery cello-harmonic glissandi and bright clarinet trills and remote birdcalls picked out high up on the violin — with your ears full of common-currency music of the preceding decade, and your only reaction can be “What the hell? Where are we?”

Weird as Ever

On Monday night, despite sharing the program with the brand-spanking-new (Laurie San Martin’s Objets trouvés, receiving its premiere) and the “difficult” (Elliott Carter’s 1990 Con leggerezza pensosa), the Messiaen was as ineluctably weird as ever. The Left Coast players’ performance was dazzling in its ensemble tautness and its single-mindedness, but it was human brilliance, tinged with toil and with strain.

In the two marvelous string-and-piano paeans, the work’s fifth and eighth movements, cellist Tanya Tomkins and violinist Anna Presler respectively sustained their agonizingly long lines heroically. The great song never broke, but you were constantly, movingly aware of the effort that it took; it was, as Messiaen must have meant it to be, an image of the human attempting to encompass the divine.

In the third-movement “Abîme des Oiseaux” (Abyss of birds), by contrast, Jerome Simas’ clarinet seemed scarcely embodied, let alone human. The sound was clear, splendidly liquid, agile, mysterious, remote. Simas began the movement’s long-note crescendos so quietly that you first became aware of the pitch only to realize that it had already been sounding for some little time.

As for pianist Eric Zivian, whose bright-toned playing showered fistfuls of glittering notes on the second and fifth movements, and whose slow, serene pulse underlay the fifth and eighth, he was, as ever, alert to the music’s every gesture. (It would be fascinating to hear him tackle some of the solo piano music. I wonder if he has.)

Messiaen often leaves the four instruments to their own separate paths, as in that opening movement, but when they’re together, it’s with a vengeance. Presler’s, Tomkins’, and Simas’ taut, cheekily inflected performance of the fourth-movement “Intermèd” was scant preparation for the entire quartet’s blistering performance of the sixth, “Danse de la Fureur, pour le sept trompettes” (Dance of fury, for the seven trumpets), another of those things calculated to knock the unwary listener into the middle of next week.

Is there anything in music up to that point to prepare you for this movement — a wild, rhythmically outré, wickedly irregular unison line for all four instruments that lashes to and fro like a living thing, doubling and redoubling on itself, for a harrowing six minutes without respite? The Left Coast players held on for dear life, and so did we.

With Thoughtful Lightness

In the context of the Messiaen, the Carter opener for once seemed a bagatelle. As it probably should: Surely the right analogue for all those little Carter chamber works of the ’80s and ’90s is the piano bagatelles of Beethoven’s late years, distillations of what had earlier been worked out at greater length and on a more forbidding scale. Con legerezza pensosa (With thoughtful lightness), for clarinet, violin, and cello, takes its title from a phrase of the writer Italo Calvino, but the phrase might have been designed as a subhead for the end of Carter’s still-expanding worklist.

(I suppose something written toward the beginning of the man’s ninth decade qualifies as “late Carter,” but at the rate the indefatigable centenarian is going, we may end up needing more than the customary three periods.)

The piece is brief, poised, intermittently busy, and now and then whimsical, as in its droll disappearing act of an ending. The Left Coast performance was remarkable for the clarity of its gestures and the attention the players gave to its many sudden stillnesses — where the three lines came momentarily together for a long note, there was always a feeling of securely achieved repose.

Laurie San Martin’s Objets trouvés (Found objects) was commissioned by Left Coast as a companion piece to the Messiaen, and the composer (who performed the older work as clarinetist in her UC Berkeley student days) consciously worked elements of it into her own writing. Not that there is much in the way of audible quotation of material — the references I caught were mostly textural and, to a lesser degree, harmonic, and were resemblances rather than identities.

The piece is in three movements, with elements of the second — a sort of vocalise for clarinet and then strings over slowly arpeggiated chords in the piano, the part of the work most immediately savoring of Messiaen — working their way into the finale, as well. The first movement has a thundering piano part confined mostly to the low register, and an urgent, wide-ranging unison string line, cut off suddenly at its height by a clarinet cadenza.
The clarinet, indeed, takes center stage more often than in the Messiaen. The tumultuous opening of the finale even briefly suggests an accompanied recitative, with the clarinet as singer, though soon enough all four instruments are off vigorously pursuing their own material. Harmonically, San Martin’s writing is open and forthright, with occasional glances France-ward (further back than Messiaen, sometimes — I was reminded in places of Milhaud or even Ravel).

Throughout, the scoring seems natural and well-balanced, which is no mean trick with these instrumental forces. Despite the obvious example of the Messiaen, the less-obvious one of Hindemith’s 1938 Quartet, and the onetime prominence of Tashi, the new-music clarinet/violin/cello/piano quartet formed in the early ’70s precisely to play the Messiaen, this scoring has nothing like the currency of the “Pierrot ensemble” (which adds a flute) in new-music circles, and I imagine it’s because the latter, pairing winds and strings, is simpler to score for. Objets trouvés shows that this needn’t be so. (Tashi, as it happens, has just reunited to play — what else? — the Quatuor pour le Fin du temps in honor of the Messiaen centenary. Time to send someone a score?)

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 20th, 2008 at 11:51 am 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.

Judging by the programming choices of many of our major musical institutions, choral music belongs strictly to the past. Fortunately, forward-thinking music lovers can always turn to Volti. Under founder and Music Director Robert Geary, the San Francisco-based ensemble is one of the Bay Area’s most consistent musical treasures, one that maintains high standards of excellence in the present while vigorously developing the repertoire of the future.

Sunday afternoon at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church in Berkeley, the group offered a splendid demonstration of its approach with a program combining works from its past seasons, recent Volti commissions, and a premiere of a work composed for its 2008 Choral Arts Laboratory. Conducted with care and precision by Geary, and sung to a tonal sheen by the 20-member chorus, the program closed the group’s season on a decidedly high note.

Titled “Past, Present, and Future Adventures,” the program included works by Ronald Caltabiano, William Hawley, Aaron J. Kernis, George Lam, Eric Moe, and Steven Stucky, and spanned nearly the entirety of Volti’s 29-year history, from the eldest entry, Hawley’s 1981 Two Motets, to the newest, Lam’s 2008 Words Become Unlatched. Each work received a polished, energized, fully committed performance.

With the opening work, Stucky’s 1996 Cradle Songs, Volti’s voices made a thrilling first impression. The composer’s settings of three folk lullabies elicited a pure, silken ensemble sound from the group, beginning with the hypnotic Brazilian song “Rouxinol do Pico Preto,” followed by the gently insinuating Polish Christmas song “Lulajze, Jezuniu” and the lively, lilting “Buy Baby Ribbon” (from Trinidad and Tobago).

For sheer sonic beauty, though, the afternoon’s high point came in two excerpts from Kernis’ 1998 Ecstatic Meditations. The composer incorporates texts by the 13th-century mystic Mechthild of Magdeburg, whose writings, as the title suggests, blend faith, poetry, and sensuality in a fertile marriage. Kernis matched them with braided vocal lines, pulsing dance rhythms, and, in the second setting, a startling depiction of an intimate dance with God. The work calls for a spirited performance, and Geary and his singers delivered gloriously.

Rippling Sonic Possibilities

Geary continued to explore the sonic possibilities in Hawley’s Two Motets. The composer’s setting of two Roman texts — “Mosella,” by Ausonius, and “Te Vigilans Oculis,” by Petronius Arbiter — is for double chorus, with the four voices of each group further divided into two. The settings are quite different: “Mosella,” composed in major mode, depicts the colors and rippling patterns of the Mosel River, while “Te vigilans oculis,” which shifts to the minor, describes a lover alone at night. Yet Hawley links them handsomely with long, luxuriant phrases. Geary and the singers, positioned around the perimeter of the church, rendered them transcendent.

More brilliant text-setting was to come, in Caltabiano’s 1993 Metaphor, a trio of short settings by William Blake (”The Fly”), John Donne (”The Flea”), and Walt Whitman (”A Noiseless Patient Spider”). In each, the chorus evokes natural activity — a buzzing canon for the persistent fly, a graceful interweaving of vocal lines for the flea, the industrious casting of “filament, filament, out of itself” for the spider. Geary conducted briskly, and the singers made each one sound wonderfully distinct.

Moe’s O the Flesh Is Hot but the Heart Is Cold (a 2005 Volti commission) proved likewise evocative, with a densely constructed setting of text from Matthea Harvey’s prose-poem “Baked Alaska, a Theory of” from Sad Little Breathing Machine. This is a fairy tale for a contemporary audience, with the title phrase sung as a country song, and the moral of the story, “Love, love, love,” woven in gleaming strands of sound. Volti sang it with obvious relish.

Representing the newest end of the spectrum was Lam’s Words Become Unlatched, a set of seven madrigals Volti commissioned for its Choral Arts Laboratory this year, and being premiered on this program. Lam and his collaborator, poet Benjamin Rogers, built a mosaic from fragments of sound and text, with relationships as the dominant theme — “two latch onto each other out of desire,” it begins.

The chorus delivered the message in eloquent spoken, as well as sung, episodes; tenor Michael Eisenberg stepped out of the group to supply a violin solo. Words Become Unlatched seems intended to recall the chatterings of a conflicted brain. And while Rogers’ texts proved aptly incomprehensible, Lam’s cut-crystal score rang with clarity.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 20th, 2008 at 11:50 am and is filed under review, choral 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.

Sondheim at the Symphony

In Buddy’s eyes
I don’t get older.
So life is ducky
And time goes flying
And I’m so lucky
I feel like crying

From Michael Morgan’s thundering, Wagnerian-sized orchestra to Tami Dahbura’s whisper-quiet, heartbreaking delivery of “In Buddy’s Eyes,” the Sunday matinee of Follies in Oakland’s ornate Paramount Theatre was an affair to remember. The large, enthusiastic audience responded with waves of applause at this American Masterworks Series concert — yet another successful example of Morgan’s consistent advocacy for American music.

Next to Passion, A Little Night Music, Pacific Overtures, and Sweeney Todd, Follies is Stephen Sondheim’s most “operatic” musical. It’s hard to say what differentiates the dramma per musica of opera from the play-with-music of a musical, but if we accept Sondheim’s own (questionable) dictum — that the venue determines the genre — those named above, and other Sondheims as well, qualify as “operas,” having been performed by opera companies.

Last weekend, Morgan and the Oakland East Bay Symphony rendered the genre dispute quite immaterial by performing Follies in an enhanced concert version at the Paramount (a former movie palace similar in time to the follies theaters), and doing a fabulous job of it.

Produced by Frédéric Boulay, the show featured the showgirls (actually, show ladies) in spectacular costumes, an extra-large orchestra, a chorus from the Berkeley Broadway Singers, and guest stars galore. The reunion of old Follies dancers and their beaus — with each other and with their young selves — unfolded in a devoted, loving production, with Sondheim’s second-most-romantic music (after A Little Night Music), and hilarious, psychologically brilliant text getting their due.

Rita Moreno, 76 (the 1961 West Side Story Anita), sang “Broadway Baby” with zest and panache; Val Diamond delivered “I’m Still Here” with the expected power, albeit lacking the crescendo that gives the song its special bite; Melody Moore showed off her operatic prowess in “One More Kiss” (in duet with Debbra Lambert, an excellent last-minute replacement for Sheri Greenawald). Sharon McNight was hilarious in “Ah, Paris!” and Trente Morant opened and closed the show with the grand music accompanying the parade of “Beautiful Girls,” hitting the demanding high notes with ease.

Rita Moreno Sings “Broadway Baby”

Photo by Pat Johnson

First among equals in the uniformly excellent group of the other soloists, Dahbura stood out with her exquisite musical sensibility and chameleonlike ability to shift from role to role. I have lost count of Follies productions seen and heard since the show’s 1971 premiere, but Dahbura’s Sally — and her “In Buddy’s Eyes,” the loving ballad about living lovelessly — was the most moving of them all. Then, when she brought the house down in “Could I Leave You?” Dahbura was every inch of the hard-as-nails Phyllis, rather than the vulnerable Sally. And, when she sang “The Story of Lucy and Jessie,” musically and dramatically, Dahbura was completely another character again.

In what may well be the first such realization of the work, Morgan — in his own introductory words — “spread the role of Sally” among several singers because “she has so much good music and I had so many fine singers.” (Surprised by the applause for the announcement, as was I, Morgan scored some serious laughter with the ad-lib: “Ah, a hand for democracy!”) And so, Sally’s “Don’t Look at Me” and “Losing My Mind” went to Darla Wigginton; “Too Many Mornings” and “Buddy’s Blues” to Katy Stephan.

Greg Zema was one Ben, in “The Road You Didn’t Take,” Clark Sterling another, performing “Too Many Mornings” and the show’s only problem number (one that’s just impossible to make work), “Live, Laugh, Love.” Christian Nova sang Buddy’s “The Right Girl,” Ben Jones took the show-stopping “Buddy’s Blues.” Oakland Ballet veteran stars Joy Gim and Joral Schmalle performed the “Bolero d’Amore.” An exciting newcomer, Mindy Lym, sang the young Phyllis in ensembles.

Michael Morgan

Morgan successfully straddled the Broadway/opera dichotomy, giving the work a varied interpretation, ranging from the grandiose (skirting the overloud through the combination of the large orchestra and amplification) to the intimate. Diction was superb all around, making supertitles virtually unnecessary, but still welcome.

It’s curious how Sondheim, accused wantonly of “being unable to write a melody,” kept failing on Broadway during the years of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s reign of syrupy Puccini imitations. But today, he is heard by just about everybody as a great and accessible contemporary American composer. The highly varied audience at the Paramount seemed to hum (quietly) through it all.

Katy Stephan

Photo by Eliot Khuner

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Tonight’s the Night

If you can get away tonight (Tuesday) and make it to Herbst Theatre, do it, come hell or high water. At 7:30 p.m., part two of San Francisco Performances’ The Russian Piano will begin, reuniting (from Monday night) the extraordinary musical tag-team of pianist Garrick Ohlsson and lecturer Robert Greenberg.

On Monday night, the always hilarious and illuminating Greenberg commentary, interspersed with Ohlsson’s effortless and powerful performance, dispensed with Rachmaninov (including the “It” Prelude in C-sharp Minor, which for 40 years haunted the composer. The audience clamored for yet another performance of it, but the two just began on Scriabin. Ohlsson played five études and Piano Sonatas No. 2 and 5 in the pauses between Greenberg’s laudatory and condemnatory remarks, the latter including a comparison to Michael Jackson.

On the program tonight: Scriabin’s Two Poems, Preludes Op. 74, Piano Sonata No. 10, and Three Études, Op. 65. And, expect Greenberg to sharpen his fangs for Prokofiev, whose Piano Sonata No. 2 (the four-movement Opus 14), Three Pieces, Op. 59; and Suggestion diabolique will be on the musical menu.

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Sounds of Aleph-Bet at the Contemporary

Among the first exhibits at the new Contemporary Jewish Museum: John Zorn’s Aleph-Bet Project — the MacArthur Fellow is serving as curator, and commissioning sound and music based on letters of the Hebrew alphabet.

The Contemporary, Nearing Completion

Photo by Bruce Damonte

The venue for the project is in the Contemporary’s “cube,” which has a 65-foot ceiling, walls converging at striking angles, and 36 diamond-shaped windows providing the light. The structure channels the Hebrew yud, the letter used in writing the name of Adonai or God (or, properly, G-d). The official name for the cube is the Stephen and Maribelle Leavitt “Yud” Gallery.

San Francisco’s newest museum, a bold structure by Daniel Libeskind, is opening on June 8, in the block between Market Street and Yerba Buena Gardens.

John Zorn

Zorn, 54, is best known for integration of jazz, klezmer, improvised, and contemporary music. His sound project aims at linking the alphabetic symbols found throughout Libeskind’s architecture with the new museum’s mission of “rethinking tradition.” Zorn’s mandate is to assist musicians as they embrace the Kabbalistic principle that the ancient Hebrew alphabet is a spiritual tool full of hidden meaning and harmony. During the run of the project, each participating composer will be invited to perform their music live at the museum.

Participating musicans include Lou Reed, Laurie Anderson, Erik Friedlander, David Greenberger, Z’EV, Terry Riley, Alvin Curran, Christina Kubisch, Marina Rosenfeld, Rez Mesinai, and Jewlia.

Inside the Yud Gallery

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Conservatory Graduating Class, Season Highlights

San Francisco Conservatory of Music, producing the largest graduating class this week in its 90-year history, is also making plans for its next season of public performances. Awarding an honorary degree of Doctor of Music to flutist Paula Robison, the Conservatory will graduate 147 students at its Concert Hall commencement on May 23. The new alumni-to-be will either join the ranks of 142 former graduates who are now members of 11 Bay Area orchestras, including the San Francisco Symphony, or they will venture further afield, around the world, where Conservatory graduates are active.

Just a few of the famous alumni: conductor/pianist Jeffrey Kahane, soprano Catherine Naglestad, pianist Robin Sutherland, cellist Hai-Ye Ni, violinist Krista Benion Feeney, and guitarist David Tanenbaum.

Even before the school year is over, plans are being made for 2008-2009, including a new BluePrint new music series, directed by Nicole Paiement. The subject is social awareness and change, and titled The Urgency of Now. The series begins at an Oct. 18 concert, with Ives’ War Song March, John Harbison’s Abu Ghraib, and the West Coast premiere of Bright Sheng’s Postcards. On Nov. 15 there is the premiere of a work commissioned by the Conservatory, alumna Alexandra Vrebalov’s Transparent Walls, along with Requies Ranarum by Santa Cruz composer Phil Collins, Young-Shin Choi’s Seek and Destroy, and Giya Kancheli’s Exil, with text from Psalm No. 23.

The BluePrint season concludes March 7, with a program of George Crumb’s Ancient Voices of Children, Terry Riley’s Y Bolanzero for guitar ensemble, Andrew Imbrie’s From Time to Time, as well as a commissioned work on antiwar protest songs by Conservatory faculty composer David Garner.

For more information about Conservatory plans, stay tuned for the next issue of Music News.

David Garner

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Dance On, My Heart

The San Francisco Girls Chorus is concluding its 29th anniversary home season with the program “Dance On, My Heart” on May 30 at Berkeley’s Congregational Church, and on May 31 at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music Concert Hall. Artistic Director Susan McMane conducts the concerts, which feature guest artists from ODC/Dance and hammered dulcimer artist Malcolm Dalglish. The program includes music from the Middle Ages to more recent times, including works by Janika Vandervelde, Malcolm Dalglish, Zoltán Kodály, Stephen Paulus, George Gershwin, Robert Schumann, and others.

S.F. Girls Chorus

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Ballet San Jose to China

Flying on a private 747 — loaned by Fry Electronics and renamed for the dance company — Ballet San José has left for China and a month-long tour of Shanghai, Hangzhou, Dongguan, Shenzhen, Wuhan, Beijing, Shenyang, and Ningbo. Programs include Carmina Burana, The Firebird, Serenade, and Swan Lake.

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Shostakovich Suite: Found and Lost

An amazing thing about Shostakovich’s 1974 Suite on Verses of Michelango is how rarely this huge, gripping homage to Mussorgsky and Mahler is performed. As a practical programming consideration, it would be the perfect pair for Mussorgsky’s Songs and Dances of Death.

Saturday’s performance at Herbst Theatre was most likely the local premiere for this extraordinary song cycle. (See review.) Featuring baritone Matthias Goerne and pianist Alexander Schmalcz, the San Francisco Performances concert looked promising, but it turned into a partial disappointment.

There was wonderful singing, but it all came from Schmalcz, whose splendid pianism served the music, not the performer. On the other hand, Goerne reveled in his own voice and made mush of the work. With his nose in the score; with a diction not worth the name; without clear phrasing; and an unvariegated, almost monotonous performance of a rich, varied, dynamic cycle, Goerne struck out as never before in his many appearances here.

Michelangelo’s text, in Abram Efros’ Russian translation, speaks of life and death, love and anger, truth and immortality. But it all sounded the same, both in diction and phrasing. Schmalcz’s brilliant piano carried all the impact of words and music — a rare accomplishment, considering he had to perform the role of orchestra, which Shostakovich had in mind for the work. (Nearing the end of his life, the composer was unable to turn the 40-minute cycle into his planned Symphony No. 16.)

As for Goerne (of whom I’ve only spoken well in the past), when he sang of morning’s joy or night’s deadly relief, words and music sounded the same. We heard the savage power of “Truth” and “Wrath,” the anguish of “Parting” and “Night,” the lyricism of “Morning” and “Love” from the piano, not the singer. The concert served as an important reminder of great, neglected music, and of the fallibility of an artist who has neglected to learn the music, the text, and who substituted voice for singing.

Alexander Schmalcz

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Merola 2008

Twenty-three singers, five apprentice coaches and one apprentice stage director have been chosen for the 51st season of the Merola Opera Program, which takes place in San Francisco June 2 through Aug. 16. They will participate in productions of Britten’s Albert Herring and Mozart’s Don Giovanni, as well as in a series of individual and joint recitals.

Merola faculty includes pianists Steven Blier, Martin Katz, Warren Jones, and Malcolm Martineau; sopranos Jane Eaglen, Carol Vaness and Evelyn Lear; mezzo soprano Dorothy Byrne; tenor Vinson Cole; and bass Eric Halfvarson, among others. Participants will also receive training in operatic repertory, foreign languages, diction, acting, and stage movement.

The 2008 Merola Opera Program artist roster:

• Apprentice Stage Director:
  Jimmy Smith (Rumson, NJ)
• Apprentice Coaches:
  Dennis Doubin (Moscow, RUS)
  Eileen Downey (Grand Ledge, MI)
  Alan Hamilton (Houston, TX)
  Carl Pantle (Oakley, CA)
  Allen Perriello (Gibsonia, PA)
• Sopranos:
  Kate Crist (Agency, IA)
  Leah Crocetto (Adrian, MI)
  Rena Harms (Santa Fe, NM)
  Joelle Harvey (Richburg, NY)
  Amanda Majeski (Gurnee, IL)
  Ellen Wieser (Winnipeg, Manitoba, CAN)
• Mezzo-Sopranos:
  Nicole Birkland (Moorland, IA)
  Natasha Florez (Los Angeles, CA)
  Renee Tatum (Carlsbad, CA)
• Tenors:
  Rene Barbera (San Antonio, TX)
  David Lomeli (LOMELI, Monterrey, Nuevo León, MEX)
  Tyler S. Nelson (Salt Lake City, UT)
  Nathaniel Peake (Humble, TX)
  James Benjamin Rodgers (Blenheim, Marlborough, NZ)
• Baritones:
  Younjoo An (Seoul, KOR)
  Eugene Chan (Rohnert Park, CA)
  Austin Kness (Cedar Rapids, IA)
  Darren Perry (Frederick, MD)
  David W. Pershall (Temple, TX)
• Bass-Baritones:
  Adam Cioffari (Columbus, OH)
  Carlos Monzon (Guadalajara, MEX)
• Basses:
  Benjamin LeClair (Royal, IA)
  Ben Wager (Havertown, PA)

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The Chairman and Donizetti

Pocket Opera’s performance of Donizetti’s Don Pasquale on May 24 at the Legion of Honor will offer an unprecedented alternative to the normal preopera introduction by Music Director Donald Pippin. Instead, the speaker will be Dana Gioia, chairman of the National Endowment of the Arts and a fan of Pocket Opera. A poet, businessman, music critic, and Stanford MBA, Gioia has bypassed his own organization to initiate a project — without NEA grants — to encourage U.S. troops and their families to write about their wartime experience. This resulted in an anthology titled Operation Homecoming. He followed this up by bringing opera and musical theater companies to perform at 39 military bases in the U.S. The Pocket Opera, going strong after 30 years, is in the midst of its seven-production season.

Dana Gioia

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 20th, 2008 at 11:49 am 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.

On paper, American mezzo-soprano Isabel Leonard reads like a filly breaking free from the pack. At 25, she has already debuted at the Metropolitan Opera in Roméo et Juliette, singing Stéphano alongside Anna Netrebko and Roberto Alagna. Other star turns include her recent Zerlina with Chicago Opera Theater, a forthcoming Cherubino in Santa Fe, and a gig at the Cincinnati May Festival. Orchestral appearances past and future include the Saint Louis Symphony, Chicago Symphony, Los Angeles Philharmonic, New York Philharmonic, and Boston Symphony. The recipient of six prestigious awards since 2005, Leonard seems to have already crossed the finish line.

Visually, she could be mistaken for Audrey Hepburn playing Liza Doolittle entering the ball. Slim, elegant, and perfectly poised, she’s a stunning woman who carries her iridescent indigo gown and sparkling earrings with a grace that would make many an upper-class debutante rend her garments. The looks alone make you want to applaud.

So does the voice. Shimmering and light, with substantial carrying power, her high mezzo is capable of shining freedom on top. About 99 percent of the time, especially when tempered into softly floated phrases, it is drop-dead gorgeous. Heard in the thankfully much improved (but still a ways to go) live acoustic of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music’s Concert Hall, and presented by San Francisco Performances, the voice is ravishing.

Judging from her encores, Leonard seems quite adept in coloratura, and capable of a perfect trill. Her instrument is also clearly secure enough at the high end to enable her to soon assay the soprano solo in Mozart’s C-Minor Mass, which demands a glorious, out-of-the-blue high C that must sound as though beamed down from the heavens above.

Perfect Program

If ever there were a recital program designed to establish a presence, it was Leonard’s. Music in five languages (Spanish, German, French, Russian, and English from our two most recent centuries, plus a Mozart encore that reached back to the 18th) could have served as a model for aspiring vocalists.

Not that many of the Conservatory’s voice students bothered to notice. Although their absence may have been due to the demands of final recitals, it left me wondering what they’re studying. (Susan Graham uttered the same complaint a few years back, after her recital at the University of Indiana at Bloomington drew nary a student to a similarly half-full hall.)

As a song interpreter, Leonard is filled with promise. She is certainly no Cecilia Bartoli, who in her first Cal Performances recital at the age of 23 or 24 left a thrilled audience astounded at her interpretive maturity and shouting for more. Nor is she Kate Royal, whose emotional and vocal depth belies her youth.

Sometimes glorious, sometimes illuminating, and sometimes pedestrian, Leonard instead brought to mind the young Elly Ameling, whose voice was so radiant and appealing at first blush that it took until her 30s for her to move beyond surface glow and become one of the more sensitive and probing recitalists of her era. For now, Leonard impresses as an immensely gifted singer with enormous potential.

Lightness and Suffering

The recital began disappointingly. In the first of three songs by Havana-born Joaquin Nin, Leonard’s beautiful voice failed to differentiate the three verses of A la jota, which crashed from strophic sameness. Perhaps a more assertive and colorful accompanist than Vlad Iftinca could have encouraged Leonard to probe deeper. But in Alma sintamos (Soul, let us suffer!), she displayed a fair share of the heartfelt passion, color, and depth that are central to a recitalist’s mastery.

Leonard’s tears in her voice were equally convincing in Mein Liebster singt am Haus (My dearest’s below singing), the first of six songs from Hugo Wolf’s Italienisches Liederbuch. Although the requisite frustration of Schweig’ einmal still (O you beastly ranter) seemed feigned, some phrases were distinguished by lovely shading. Gorgeously floated, teasing highs as well as ideal poise and clarity graced O wär’ dein Haus durschsichtig wie ein Glas (Would that thy house were transparent as glass).

Wir haben beide lange Zeit geschwiegen (Long have we both not spoken) was the high point, poignant, glowing, and gorgeous from first note to last. Were anyone to hear it by itself on CD, they would be tempted to hit the repeat button.

Shadows of Other Voices

When former San Francisco Opera General Director Terence A. McEwen became head of London Records, he invited critics over to share in his passion, his collection of historic vocal recordings. When he asked them if they wanted to hear Claudia Muzio, several replied, “Claudio who?” Which led McEwen to wonder, how can you be a critic when you have no standards?

Some would cry foul to comparing Leonard’s first recital with recordings by the more-seasoned greats. But when those recordings play round and round in a critic’s head as she sings, it would be a disservice to censor what one hears.

Thus, following the Wolf set that was unfailingly lovely (if miles from renditions by Schwarzkopf or Lehmann in both word painting and insight), I could not help but think of Maggie Teyte as Leonard launched into Reynaldo Hahn’s L’Heure exquise (The exquisite hour). Leonard’s floated highs may have been exquisite, but the song’s three verses were dismayingly alike.

Nowhere in evidence was Teyte’s mastery at underscoring emotion by emphasizing words and syllables as though they were being spoken fresh from the heart. The phrasing was also dismayingly modern, lacking elasticity of tempo and specificity of emotion.

Manuel de Falla wrote his Seven Popular Spanish Songs for Maria Barrientos, who recorded them in 1928 with the composer at the piano. (Other benchmark recordings available are by Conchita Supervia and Victoria de los Angeles.) In them, as well as in four songs by Rachmaninov and three cabaret lied by Schoenberg, Leonard displayed gorgeous sounds, but insufficient emotion to convince. “The perfect graduate recital,” muttered my not yet legal husband.

Home Turf Letdown

If any repertoire is telling, it’s songs in one’s own language. In a nonstop medley of Porter, Kern, Gershwin, Berlin, Meredith Wilson, and Rodgers & Hart, Leonard sounded like someone from the burbs slumming in the city. The vibrato seemed an old-fashioned throwback to an earlier generation, the tone and strophic sameness wrong, the dearth of idiomatic phrasing, seduction, and swing dismaying. Till There Was You without sentimentality and I Concentrate on You without smokiness simply will not do.

In encores, the half-Argentinean Leonard failed to grab the Latin guts of De España vengo (I come from Spain). But when she sang Stéphano’s aria from Roméo et Juliette, her glorious vocalism, superb technique, and supremacy on high rightfully brought the house down. “Vedrai carino” from Don Giovanni was almost as good, lacking only the ultimate little-girl charm of a great soubrette. Onstage in Chicago, she may have blown people away.

Technically, aurally, and visually, everything about Isabel Leonard is gorgeous and in place. In another year or two, she may return and leave us floored. Then, there will be no reason to sing, “Till there was you.”

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 20th, 2008 at 11:49 am and is filed under review, recital. 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.

Old First Concerts played host on Sunday to a varied and exhilarating program of chamber music by Stefano Scodanibbio, performed by sfSoundGroup and the composer himself. The concert, sponsored by the Istituto Italiano di Cultura of San Francisco, was part of Primavera Italiana: The Spring Festival of Italian New Music, now in its second year.

The five pieces on the program — solo works for contrabass and violin; a string quartet; a piano duet; and a partially improvised piece for diverse instruments — gave the audience a well-rounded look at Scodanibbio’s compositional concerns. The composer, a virtuoso contrabass player, has an abiding interest in extending string-playing technique as far as it can be extended, as well as a deep love for older musical forms. And the performances were such that a repeat of any of the pieces would have been greeted with cheering.

The concert opened with Labore navigaciones for two pianos, played by Ann Yi and Christopher Jones. Its Debussy-esque opening of sustained, slowly shifting chords disintegrates, or perhaps unravels, over time, consonance replaced by dissonance, the harmonic motion speeding up, square chords replaced by flurries of notes. Chords that are in phase with each other go subtly out of phase … and then the piece seemingly reverses itself, simplifying and clarifying, and ends much as it began.

Violinist Graeme Jennings then came on stage and knocked our socks off with My new address, a bravura, and extremely entertaining, 10-minute showpiece of jaw-dropping harmonics, double- and triple-stops, portamenti, and extended bow technique.

Mix and Match

The first half of the program closed with Avvicinamenti (Approaches), a partially improvised work, partially directed by composer Scodanibbio. Because of rehearsal issues, the players — Kyle Bruckmann, oboe; Matt Ingalls, clarinet; John Ingle, alto saxophone; Tom Dambly, trumpet; Kjell Nordenson, percussion; and Christopher Jones, piano — weren’t those announced in the program. But the musical materials for the piece, sent in advance by the composer, were adaptable for different combinations of instruments, hence sfSoundGroup adapted to the available players.

The composer signaled when the three main sections of the work started and stopped, occasionally cueing a player, and firmly conducting the close. Between the start and the finish, the players elaborated on the materials the composer provided, which at times created a dense, vibrating wall of sound out of which various solo instruments would emerge.

Written for contrabass in 2007 and performed by the composer, And Roll is built on a structure of a repeated low-note, high-note pattern that is varied and elaborated over time. That brief description almost makes the work sound as if it was written by a minimalist composer, yet the repeating pattern has the sound and feel of the walking bass in an American blues piece, or the repeating ground of a passacaglia or chaconne.

And Roll exploits the extremes of those high and low notes, with much subtle rumbling in the lowest register of the contrabass, and a passage of intense trilling (multiple-string trilling at the high end). At times, the performer must strum and pluck the strings with both hands, as if playing a guitar or harp. The final notes, played pizzicato, had the emotional force of the pizzicato cello and bass notes at the end of the Tristan und Isolde prelude.

Mas lugares (More places), performed by Graeme Jennings and Erik Ulman, violin, Ellen Rose, viola, and Monica Scott, cello, melds old and new in a most astonishing fashion. It incorporates long stretches of music adapted from Monteverdi madrigals and frames the older master’s works with thoroughly modern passages. Like And Roll, the opening had some feeling of being built over a repeating bass pattern, which allowed for a smooth segue into the Monteverdi.

Played with limited vibrato, and with at least one member of the quartet almost always playing in harmonics rather than natural tones, the Monteverdi sections of Mas lugares sounded eerily like the ghost of the madrigals, or as if being played from far away or from behind a scrim. And the music composed entirely by Scodanibbio in Mas lugares matches this tone beautifully, with the serenity and sense of stasis of Morton Feldman’s music.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 20th, 2008 at 11:49 am 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.

One of the finer aspects of the San Francisco Symphony’s current Brahms Festival is that in only three programs it manages to give a pretty complete view of what he stood for. The second of those three programs Thursday evening in Davies Symphony Hall featured one of his most lighthearted orchestral works, the Serenade No. 2 in A Major, Op. 16, the dramatically tragic Piano Concerto No. 1 in D Minor, Op. 15, and one of his displays of sheer compositional technique, the Variations on a Theme by Haydn, Op. 56a.

Michael Tilson Thomas beautifully managed to capture the individual styles of all three works by leaning a bit on German Romantic models, as established by the likes of Bruno Walter or Karl Böhm. MTT also had the advantage of showcasing virtuoso pianist Yefim Bronfman as his soloist for the concerto. While the performance was not 100 percent perfect, MTT and Bronfman came so close to achieving that that it hardly mattered.

Brahms had begun work on a Symphony in D Minor in 1854, largely under peer pressure. But it just didn’t work out to his satisfaction. Rather than burn the symphony, as he did with so many of his manuscripts, he recast it into part of his First Concerto, and partly reused other bits for his German Requiem. That may account for the odd formal layout of the concerto. The very symphonic first movement is long, over half the length of the final two movements put together.

Transferring orchestral textures into a concerto format is a tricky task, at best. While the concerto is an unquestioned masterpiece, it is most problematic to hold together, as well as fiercely difficult for the pianist. Early critics were not far off base in labeling it as a symphony with piano obbligato. (Tchaikovsky faced much the same problem when resetting his Seventh Symphony sketches as his unfinished Third Piano Concerto.) The wonder is that Brahms, in spite of the difficulty, managed to pull it off.

Going the Distance

The piano part is inordinately taxing. Coping with the fatigue factor as well as the pervasive unreasonable keyboard writing can be daunting. The concerto bulges with extensive double, triple, and quadruple trills, extremely tiring for the hands and wrist when they are so long and frequent, as in the Brahms First. I know of no other concerto that’s so dominated by flutterings.

That, and the 45+ minutes of unrelieved intensity, requires that the artist have a keen feeling for self-pacing. He simply cannot maintain the required white heat for that length of time. When coupled with the inevitable fatigue factor, still playing all the expressive elements takes a special sort of pianist indeed. Bravo, Bronfman! He did it.

Bronfman seemed to hold an endless amount of power in reserve, drawing orchestral sonorities from the piano time and again. Then too, his phrasing stuck me as ideal, tastefully brimming with passion even in quiet episodes. The lyricism of his solo passages was velvet coated. Indeed, the little soft-voiced cadenza near the close of the slow movement proved magical — one of the particularly memorable episodes of the performance. But then, dynamic shadings from both him and the orchestra were super throughout the concert.

His one small flaw was the occasional bit of heavy pedaling, smearing sonority in some of the more tortuous passages. As the work closed the evening, the audience obviously hoped for an encore. None was forthcoming. After all, what can you play after that concerto without its becoming a lead balloon?

All-Smiles Serenade

Hardly a greater contrast with that stone-faced concerto can be found than the Second Serenade, which is all smiles and folksy charm. The serenade is scored for the classical orchestra of Haydn and Mozart, minus any violins. This serves to highlight the importance of upper woodwinds against the lushness of the violas, cellos, and basses. It produces a most unusual orchestral coloration, one that other composers would later toy with, most obviously Dvořák in his Second Serenade (though he dropped the violas as well as the violins).

The five-movement Serenade contains both a Scherzo and a Menuetto to emphasize its 18th-century influences. Yet this is North German classicism, a good deal thicker than was favored in Mozart’s Vienna. Chords and doublings tend to be fuller than are typically encountered in a Mozart serenade — Brahms’ cream cheese music rather than Mozart’s whipped cream music. What really stood out was the splendid playing of the Symphony’s wind section, all in perfect balance, a thing undoubtedly owing much to the skills of MTT in fostering it.

MTT opened the concert with a most distinguished performance of (as it’s commonly known) the “Haydn Variations.” Variations are one of the more difficult musical forms to control, if they are to add up to more than an assortment of sonic confetti. Finding a continuous line of logic from the first variation through to the closing notes surpasses mere technical competence. The composer needs a keen appreciation of finite mathematics within sonics. Music, after all, is just the acoustical manifestation of mathematical formations.

Brahms, who was a past master at this, once noted that the key lay in maintaining variation changes to the bass lines. Audiences will hardly be aware of this going on, nor should they, but therein lies the artistry of the achievement.

Then, in an act of sheer chutzpah, Brahms had the gall to end his superb set of variations with a finale that’s another set of variations, a Passacaglia. That’s an even more demanding Baroque form of variations writing, one long out of vogue at the time — in other words, creating a finale to his variations out of an even more demanding set of variations on the original St. Anthony material. (The original tune is from an old Austrian pilgrims song.) In effect, he topped one coup with an even grander one. What a show-off!

The performance was brilliantly on the mark. That did not surprise me, as MTT’s old recording with the London Symphony has long been a personal favorite. The sonics were appropriately rich in sonority, be it for the martial sixth variation, or the ultimate quiet but fast eighth. Above everything, Thomas captured a sense of inner profundity, whether the score was swaying or gingerly gliding. The entire evening struck me as a major triumph for all concerned.

As a nice gesture, Thomas gave solo bows to the three retiring members of the orchestra, all of whom were seated in the hall: violinist Daniel Kobialka (33 years a member), violist Leonid Gesin (29 years), and trombonist Mark Lawrence (33 years). MTT then invited any former members of the orchestra in the house to rise and take a bow. All were applauded with the gratitude they richly deserve.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 20th, 2008 at 11:48 am 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.

When a concert is titled “Sound the Trumpet,” and features music of Bach and Handel, listeners naturally expect to get their ears blasted off with the Second “Brandenburg” and the Royal Fireworks Music. But nary a kettledrum was in sight as the American Bach Soloists and natural-trumpeter John Thiessen showed the more lyrical side of the trumpet in Saturday’s concert at the First Congregational Church in Berkeley, repeated Sunday in San Francisco and Monday in Davis.

Thiessen’s sound was clear and sweet, full of heart-stopping high D’s (he didn’t miss one all night) and agile passagework. He is our nation’s only full-time professional playing the natural trumpet, so the chance to hear and see him up close in a small hall is not to be missed. But in this concert, he was a member of the ensemble rather than a dominating solo presence. For example, in a concerto by Johann Friedrich Fasch (1688-1758), there was a long passage for trumpet and oboe in parallel thirds, in which they blended so well that it became difficult to tell which voice was which.

Thiessen performed in two other works, a solo concerto by Giuseppe Torelli (1658-1709) and a seldom-played 1733 version of Handel’s Water Music, which included two movements that were not part of the familiar version of the suite usually played today. Thiessen plays a copy of a 1748 German instrument. Unlike violins, 18th-century brass instruments deteriorate with frequent playing (as the humidity interacts with impurities in the brass) and can be toxic to the player’s health.

The originals had serious design limitations as well: They could play the notes of the tonic chord (doh-mi-sol) well enough, one more note (re) only slightly out of tune, two more notes (fa and la) very much out of tune, and the other notes not at all. How, then, did Handel and his trumpeters deal with the out-of-tune notes? They grinned and bore it, minimizing the use of the false notes and confining them to short notes in rapid, scalar passages.

Best of Both Worlds

What we hear today, whenever we hear a natural trumpet, is a miracle of the modern instrument-maker’s art: notes made possible by nodal vents. By opening a small hole at an appropriate point (node), the tubing is shortened, and the notes from a different chord are produced. The player covers the holes with his fingers, and, like an oboist, opens them when their notes are needed. Thus, today’s natural trumpet is the best of both worlds. Its small bell and the hand-hammered tubing produce a sound that can blend with a chamber ensemble, while the nodal vents give it the perfect intonation to which we are accustomed.

Thiessen’s fingers were flying throughout the program, and the result was superb. But what a pity it is that this expedient, which was well within the ambit of 18th-century technology, was not discovered until the 1950s.

The other pieces on the program (which alternated with the trumpet works to keep us from getting tired of the key of D, and to give Thiessen a rest from high-register clarino playing) were similarly instructive regarding the exigencies of period instruments. In Telemann’s violin concerto called “The Frogs,” soloist Carla Moore played the bariolage effects (the same note played on both open and stopped strings to imitate the sound of frogs) with verve and a sense of humor, making the unpromising principal theme (a single note) into an aesthetic challenge met and mastered.

The Sixth “Brandenburg” Concerto treated the audience, which is used to ABS’ superior ensemble skills, the result of many years of playing together, to the remarkable sight of cellist Joanna Blendulf determinedly and correctly bowing everything exactly backward from the two gamba players beside her.

Violists Katherine Kyme and Aaron Westman shone through the one-to-a-part ensemble. The delicate accompaniment of the gambas allowed them to sing, instead of merely struggling to be heard. This piece can often sound muddy, due to the low tessitura (the violas are the highest voices). A slightly slower-than-usual tempo in the contrapuntal sections helped the audience to hear the intricate passagework clearly.

The program ended with a second, less famous, piece of “water music” — that of Telemann, written for the seaport city of Hamburg in 1723. ABS Music Director Jeffrey Thomas’ short introductory comments pointed out the work’s elements of tone painting, using slow rising scales and long, sustained notes in the oboes to represent the ocean. Later, the bass instruments contributed their share to the nautical effect with fast runs, rhythmic leaps, and lusty off-beats to depict the dances of die lustigen Bots Leute (the merry mariners). It is a piece that deserves to be heard more often.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 20th, 2008 at 11:47 am 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.

As if to mirror the state of bitterness attributed to some citizens of our country in these days, baritone Matthias Goerne and his excellent accompanist Alexander Schmalcz presented a vocal recital Saturday at Herbst Theatre that was a study in bitterness. Yet there were flashes, too, of triumph over the forces of malevolence, of the redemptive power of love, of the fierce joy in the artistic act of creation.

Michelangelo — the Renaissance sculptor, painter, and poet — took center stage in settings by two composers, while the Four Serious Songs of Johannes Brahms completed the program, given under the auspices of San Francisco Performances.

Shostakovich found in the Michelangelo poems, in a free Russian version from a German translation of the original Italian, ideas that accorded with his own life’s battles. Unfortunately, the programs provided the audience with only English translations. Goerne’s achievements are many, but the enunciation of Russian is not among them, and comprehension suffered. Nevertheless, he and Schmalcz brought the manifold emotions contained in this harrowing piece, called Suite on Verses of Michelangelo, blazingly to life.

Songs with names like “Truth,” which reveals the poet’s disdain for an audience who misunderstood his works; “Creativity,” in which sharp, irregular piano chords sound like a crazed hammer and chisel attacking a block of marble; and “Immortality,” the almost humorous final song of the group, in which the poet gently says, “Yet I am not dead: I have changed my dwelling” and the piano trails off into nothingness, abundantly illustrate the mind, heart, and soul of a giant among artists.

Artistic Unity

Two giants, in fact, not to mention their interpreters. The 11 songs are beautifully unified, sometimes by means of similar musical and poetic motives, sometimes because poet and composer seem to speak with one voice.

The emotional power of this little-heard work almost overshadowed the Michelangelo Lieder by Hugo Wolf, even though an intermission separated the two works. Wolf, sensitive as he was to poetry, was deeply moved by the poems given him by a friend, in a German translation. He intended to set a larger group than just three, but the tertiary stage of syphilis robbed him of his mental balance, and the remainder of his life was spent in and out of asylums, ending in a tragically early death.

Goerne showed his formidable powers of control and his refined taste in the very first line of the first song, “Wohl denk’ ich oft an mein vergangnes Leben” (Quite often I think of my past life), spinning out the line in a filament of pure gold. Once again, at the end of the third song, “Fühlt meine Seele das ersehnte Licht” (Is my soul feeling the longed-for light) in the phrase “Daran sind, Herrin, deine Augen Schuld” (That, mistress, is the fault of your eyes), Goerne, who at times hunched over the piano like a tortured, demented creature, sang the most beautiful legato imaginable, linking deine and Augen. At such times, the creature had an angelic presence.

The bleakness of the Wolf songs harked back to the starkness of the Shostakovich, and anticipated the next and final set, the Four Serious Songs of Brahms. The first three are to texts from Ecclesiastes, the last from Corinthians. Brahms composed the songs late in his life, when his beloved Clara Schumann had suffered an ultimately fatal stroke.

Not for the first time did I feel an unbridgeable chasm between the almost unbearable pessimism of the first songs and the muscular uplift of the final song, which promises redemption. The set begins with funereal chords, reminiscent of some of the Shostakovich songs: Man is no better than the beast, and they both go to the same place after death. The second song is darker still: Better not to have been born at all than to live to see the evil everywhere in the world.

The third addresses death itself — “O Tod, wie bittre bist du” (O death, how bitter thou art). Bitter, that is, to the rich man whom death wrenches from his precious possessions. To the poor man who has nothing, who is “vexed with all things,” death comes as a welcome release, as a friend.

Goerne and Schmalcz delivered these two songs, the heart of the set, with tenderness and deep empathy, though a dry patch in the baritone’s voice on the exquisitely set “wie” (”O Tod, wie wohl tust du”) made the final passage a little less loving than it should have been.

The final song sounded unavoidably preachy and almost anticlimactic after the unflinching but compassionate probing of the human soul that preceded it. Singer and pianist sounded suitably vaunting at the lines about bestowing all one’s goods on the poor yet not having charity, and an especially lengthy trill on the German word for “I” (Ich) was perfectly executed by Goerne.

There was, blessedly, no encore. It was enough.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 20th, 2008 at 11:47 am and is filed under review, recital. 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.

Lynn Harrell is one vital man. In the middle of an extended phone conversation about his forthcoming S.F. Jazz gig — he plays J.S. Bach’s complete Suites for Solo Cello this Thursday and Friday night in Grace Cathedral — the voice of a child punctuates the proceedings. Hannah, I learn, is going to be four.

“Honey, you have to go over and play with Mommy, because I can’t talk to Jason,” says the patient, ever-buoyant 64-year-old cellist.

“But I’m being quiet,” Hannah softly protests.

“No, you’re not being quiet,” Daddy lovingly replies, in tones that reflect the sweetness of his cello’s timbre.

“Having a daughter at age 60 is the greatest thing,” says Harrell. “I don’t know if it’s Grandfather Time clicking in, but I just love it. My other children — they’re twins, a boy and a girl — turned 28 yesterday and the day before. They were born across midnight, so that’s why they have two different birthdays. I never felt quite so close to them as I do this little girl and my son who is just 15 months. I had my knees replaced last December because I want to be able to run around with them. It is the greatest.”

You can hear the vitality in Harrell’s CDs of Bach’s six suites. Recorded in 1984, and released the following year to commemorate the 300th anniversary of Bach’s birth, his interpretations take Bach’s dance designations both seriously and lightly. Seriously, because even at his most profound, Harrell grants each section a sense of liquid movement sometimes absent from other renditions. And lightly, because when he plays the gigues that end each suite, he often skips and scampers like a young colt let out to pasture.

Lynn Harrell at a Carnegie Hall performance

It’s illustrative to compare Harrell’s renditions with two recent and well-received recordings of the suites — Jean-Guihen Queyras’ recording concludes Suite No. 4 in E-flat Major with a stately gigue (running two minutes and 23 seconds), and Steven Isserlis’ drier-toned musicianship knows not of fun (2’32). In marked contrast, Harrell’s warm, liquid-sounding cello kicks up its heels (2’09), and launches into an almost breathless, agile dance best left to the youngsters. As for the final finish, the concluding gigue to the Suite No. 6 in D major, neither Qyeyras (4’01), Isserlis (4’03), nor earlier recordings by Rostropovich (4’09) and Casals (3’59) come within miles of Harrell’s unabashedly exuberant, joyful romp (2’26).

Profundity and Excitement

“Bach is one of the most profound composers of all time,” Harrell explains. “The music can excite you. It can make you jump with joy, or start crying with tears through sadness. You slap your leg when an important new voice comes in a fugue because it’s so exciting.

“All the feelings that one can get from music, one gets in spades from J.S. Bach, perhaps with the excitement quotient being the greatest. When my doctor, who is an amateur music lover, first suggested this to me, I thought, well no, Stravinsky, Shostakovich, and Beethoven are exciting. But when I started listening to Bach to see if he is the most exciting, I came away thinking, absolutely he is.”

Surprisingly, Harrell declares this a new revelation, one that came to him in the last few years: How has his approach to Bach changed since he recorded the suites at the tender age of 40?

“While the basic tempos are about the same,” he explains, “I have much more patience with the unfolding of music. I realize we live such a computerized, quick life compared to the 18th century that you just have to take more time to let the music breathe and express itself.

“I love when great actors are aware of this. I just saw The Bucket List, and some of the conversations between Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman take a lot of time. That allows the mental and the communicative dialogue to express itself.”

To demonstrate how his Bach performance has evolved, Harrell half-sings examples over his cordless phone. His “Dadadida dadadida … Bum bah bah,” doesn’t translate very well into print. It could just as easily represent an Indian raga on tabla, but his “now” version is microseconds slower.

“The way I play now gives the music more time to make its storytelling points,” he says. “It allows it to breathe and live, rather than be kind of strict.

“I think of the specter of Bach, and his overall conception of structure. In musical terms, he was like a Newton. He was thought of in that way during his day because of his music’s complexity, and his rigorous sense of architecture and structure. But it doesn’t mean that his music shouldn’t be human and warm and effusive and fun and dynamic. Though he was sort of like an Einstein or a Newton of compositional technique, he has more heart than just about anyone you can think of, except Mozart and Schubert. He has a frightening, awesome kind of musical personality that you confront when you play his music.

“There are great architectural cathedrals, like the one in Cologne, that are so extraordinary. It probably has things about it that are slightly inexact in measurements and proportions, but the overall structure is so powerful that it speaks to us emotionally. All these wonderful intellectual, structural, and architectural aspects of J.S. Bach are there in the music. The overall effect is so much more than just wonderful puzzle music. It has great emotional impact.”

Easing His Way In

Even though Harrell began studying the first suite when he was 11 — much to the delight of his violinist mother — he indulged in only a few, scattered public performances of the first and third suites until well into his 30s. That may sound surprising for a Juilliard and Curtis Institute-trained cellist who made his professional debut with the New York Philharmonic at Carnegie Hall in 1961, began a solo career in 1971, and has since recorded core repertoire by Beethoven, Schubert, Tchaikovsky, Brahms, and others with the likes of Itzhak Perlman, Vladimir Ashkenazy, Stephen Kovacevich, Pinchas Zukerman, Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg, and Kennedy.

The younger Lynn Harrell

“I can’t brag, as Pablo Casals did, that he practiced them daily for 10 years before performing them in public,” he confesses with wry humor.

The reason Harrell held back has to do with his father, baritone Mack Harrell. Although Mack Harrell sang 23 roles at the Met, and created the role of Nick Shadow in the American premiere of Stravinsky’s The Rake’s Progress, he is most remembered for his recordings of Bach’s oratorios. He sang the role of Jesus in the St. Matthew Passion many times, and recorded the part of Jesus in the St. John Passion.

His last record featured two Bach Cantatas (Ich habe genug, No. 82, and the “Kreuzstab” Cantata, No. 56) with the Cleveland Orchestra.

“I was 15 when my brother, sister, and mother got the test pressing,” he says. “It was about four months after my dad died in 1960 at age 50. It was very emotional listening to those two glorious performances. I recognized that when I played Bach, I felt the stigma of my dad’s last recording. Those two Bach cantatas have more raw emotional feeling than the cello suites, which are very instrumental and lack text. ‘I will with gladness carry the cross,’ ‘It is fulfilled,’ and ‘I’m ready to go to heaven’ — are texts that convey a sense of letting go and dying. But the cello suites, with the exception of perhaps one movement — the Sarabande of the fifth suite — don’t have that same kind of emotional impact.

Mack Harrell

“My dad’s last recording, and what people had said about his performance of the role of Jesus, hung me up. I felt that I couldn’t play the suites in a way that came alive. It was a little bit cold, a little bit dry; it wasn’t comfortable. I didn’t get the same feeling of artistic satisfaction from performing them. I also felt as though I couldn’t really manage to play them all that well, even technically. Although I played much more difficult music well, it was music that I was somehow more comfortable with.

“Somehow, over the years, the resistance diminished and fell away. I now feel good about playing Bach, and play with a great deal more passion, virtuosity, and tonal splendor. And I feel sort of entitled. I’m not so nervous as I used to be that I’m breaking Baroque and authentic early-instrument rules. It’s a transition that has taken about 20 years, at least since my mid ‘30s.”

Bach for Modern Ears

Our conversation shifted to changes in interpretation. Harrell decries the “over-romanticized, slow, turgid, heart-on-sleeve” performances of the 1920s and ‘30s, and contrasts them with the “clinical approaches” of the early authentic instrument movement that do not take into account changes in listeners and listening habits. He contends that it is not possible to re-create music as it was performed in 1725, because the change in listeners has resulted in a change in how music is perceived.

“We now have listeners who have experienced Stravinsky, Shostakovich, Schoenberg, electronic music, the loudness of a 747 taking off, and the quickness of a TV beer advertisement, which flashes 30 images in nine or 10 seconds. The 21st-century listener hears music, and assimilates it mentally and emotionally, extremely differently than an 18th-century gentleman. Certainly, when music was played in much smaller venues, the loudest thing that the urban man would ever hear was thunderclaps. Perhaps people’s hearing was less damaged than it is now.

“Today, time goes so much faster. If your watch gained four minutes in a week, that didn’t matter much in the 18th century. If your letter got there three weeks later, it wasn’t a big deal. It is now.

“I like to promote the idea that we take the emotional, dramatic, theatrical, or intellectual effect that the composer had in mind as the basis of our performance, and present J.S. Bach to modern listeners so it has the same kind of impact that it would have had in 1725. The feeling and depth of emotion in his music is very profound. It’s not only for the poignant and the sad and the lonely, but also for the energetic, athletic, and vibrant. Bach was one of the first really great virtuosos on a keyboard instrument. I think he loved hot fingers, and that should be portrayed in the string instrument as well.”

Lynn Harrell performs Bach’s Cello Suites 1, 5, and 3 in Grace Cathedral on Thursday May 22, 7:30 p.m., and the remaining suites on Friday at 8 p.m. For tickets, see www.sfjazz.org or call 866-920-JAZZ (5299).

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 20th, 2008 at 11:00 am 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.

Opera

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 Theatre, Palo Alto, $20-$50, (650) 424-9999, www.wbopera.org. (M.Z.)

Watch on the Rhine

Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen cycle is usually such a big deal that opera houses presenting a new production of it precede and surround the four operas with a plethora of activities: lectures, workshops, symposia, and so on. And yet, shifting attention from the Hamburg production to San Francisco’s own new “American Ring“ reveals slim pickings in preparation for Das Rheingold: There’s a free preview lecture on May 28, and a panel discussion on June 2 (see details below).

Once the Rheingold run takes place, June 3-28, Wagner expert Evan Baker will present an introductory lecture an hour before curtain at each performance in the War Memorial Opera House. Other than that, to prepare, you may want to read stories about director Francesca Zambello’s thoughts on creating the production, reviews of Rheingold at the co-producing Washington Opera, and of course about the opera itself.

Gordon Hawking (Alberich) in the Washington Rheingold

Photo by Karin Cooper

Preview lecture, May 28, noon, San Francisco Main Library Koret Auditorium, 100 Larkin Street; Rheingold dress rehearsal, May 31, 5 p.m., War Memorial Opera House, by invitation only; Insight panel discussion, June 2, 6 p.m., Herbst Theatre, free to donors, $5 for the general public. Rheingold performances: June 3, 6, 14, 8 p.m.; June 19, 7:30 p.m.; June 22, 2 p.m.; June 28, 8 p.m.; (video projection screens will be used on the balcony at the last three performances); $25-$200, (415) 864-3330, www.sfopera.com. (J.G.)

Alberich and the Nibelung

The Turn of the Screw Returns

The San Francisco Lyric Opera is stretching its muscles this month. The company that is associated with the warhorses of Italian repertory, from Mozart to Puccini, has turned to (gasp!) — Benjamin Britten’s The Turn of the Screw. But this opera is a perfect size for them, as it was for Oakland Opera Theater and Sacramento Opera earlier this season. Chamber opera is an underutilized corner of the repertory, but it can offer great rewards in small theaters.

May 30, June 6, 7, 7:30 p.m.; June 1, 2 p.m., Cowell Theater, Fort Mason, San Francisco, $18-$32 (children under 12, free), (800) 919- 8088, www.sflyricopera.org. (M.Z.)

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Recital

Lynn Harrell’s Suite Tooth

Lynn Harrell, the great cellist, has recorded the complete Bach Cello Suites, of course. (See this week’s feature.) But that’s no reason not to hear him do the set in live performance. If you’re a Bach aficionado, 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

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Contemporary

Intricate Inventions

As part of the San Francisco International Arts Festival, Earplay’s upcoming concert features works by composers born outside of the U.S. Peter Maxwell Davies’ rarely performed Ave Maris Stella is paired with works by three modern composers. The U.S. premiere of a work by Hèctor Parra (the 2007 Earplay Donald Aird Memorial Composition Competition winner) shares the program with Christopher Burns’ xerox book, Salvatore Sciarrino’s Lo spazio inverso, and Beat Fürrer’s Presto con fuoco. Mary Chun conducts the usual suspects — Tod Brody, Peter Josheff, Terrie Baune, Ellen Ruth Rose, Thalia Moore, and Karen Rosenak — who are joined this time by other notable Bay Area artists: Dan Reiter, Brenda Tom Vahur, Ann Yi, Eric Zivian, Chris Froh, and Dan Kennedy.

May 29, 7 p.m., Herbst Theatre, San Francisco, $10-$20, (415) 392-4400, www.earplay.org. (C.G.)

Odes to Pablo Neruda

Bring together a poet, a muse, and a composer and it sounds like the perfect occasion for a party. Well, that’s sort of the idea for Adorno’s May concert at the De Young Museum and the wrap-up party that follows. The ensemble will premiere songs set to the work of poet Pablo Neruda by composer Gabriela Lena Frank, and the group is joined once again by Naumburg Award-winning soprano Lucy Shelton, the inspiration for many a modern composer, and the champion of more than 100 premieres. Mario Davidovsky’s Synchronisms No. 9, Pablo Ortiz’ Hipermilonga, and George Crumb’s Madrigals Book I are also on the program. A seminar at the Berkeley Jazzschool on May 27th titled “Finding Music in Neruda” will explore Frank’s new work, and you can listen to samples of Shelton and Adorno performing other works by Frank here. Oh, and that party isn’t just about food and wine: Make your reservation now for the celebration on June 3 at San Francisco home where the group will perform works by John Cage, Arthur Jarvinen, Gavin Bryars, and more. (Tickets for the party are $125.)

May 30, 8 p.m., De Young Museum, San Francisco, (415) 392-4400, www.earplay.org. (C.G.)

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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. The third remains: 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 III: May 21-24, 8 p.m., Davies Symphony Hall, $25-$125, (415) 864-6000, www.sfsymphony.org. (J.G.)

Black & White Ball (Education Support With an Official Cocktail)

Democracy in fund-raising action: The San Francisco Symphony’s Black & White Ball used a community campaign to vote for a “Build Your Own Ball” campaign. The result of 5,000 ballots: the San Francisco Indie rock band Elephone was picked for opening musical act, S.F. Academy of Art graduate Sara Shepherd was selected to create Ball Chair Patricia Sprincin’s gown for the evening: “a black and white strapless dress featuring a fitted bodice and elegant full skirt,” and — drum roll, please — the vote favored Grey Goose Vodka Orchard Martini as the official cocktail of the Ball. (From the Complete Reporter: It’s the classic Grey Goose Vodka martini augmented with apple cider, maple syrup and cinnamon sugar. Sweet.)

At 8 p.m. Grammy-winner singer-songwriter Seal performs at Davies Hall, and at 9 p.m., the usual multiple-venue, manifold activity begins in the Civic Center, with the bacchanalia planned to run through 1 a.m. Proceeds from the Ball benefit the Symphony’s Adventures in Music education program, now in its 20th year of bringing music to every student in grades 1-5 in all of San Francisco’s public elementary schools.

May 31, 8 p.m., San Francisco Civic Center, $200 and up for party pass, $325 for Seal concert and party, $375-$600 for “Symphonix Bash Beyond the Ball,” $375-$600 for Supper Club tickets, $1,000-$2,500 for Patrons’ Dinner tickets, (415) 864-6000, www.sfsymphony.org. (J.G.)

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Chamber Music

Laurel Ensemble

The crackerjack, glamorous, all-female Laurel Ensemble is 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, Benjamin Simon, and Julie Steinberg — will take the stage, as well as the Crowden School Orchestra. Crowden faculty, alumni, and friends will join in 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.)

Focile and Clarke

Cal Performances favorite Nuccia Focile will be stopping in Berkeley with her husband, tenor Paul Charles Clarke. The pair will be entertaining admirers in intimate Hertz Hall with a program of operatic and musical theater duets. The Berkeley Symphony Orchestra is conducted by Cal Performances’ chief, Robert Cole.

May 31, 8 p.m., Hertz Hall, Berkeley, $48, (510) 642-9988, www.calperfs.berkeley.edu. (M.Z.)

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Choral

Chanticleer

What better way to celebrate its debut 30 years ago in the Mission Dolores than with nine concerts of Mission-era music (from the era of the Spanish settlement) 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.

Through May 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 21, 8 p.m., Old St. Hilary’s Landmark, Tiburon; $15-$25, (415) 637-1334, www.musae.org. (C.G.)

Musae

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 Congregational Church of Berkeley, $10-$18, (415) 392-4400, www.choranova.org. (C.G.)

Women’s Antique Vocal Ensemble

England may not yet have been all-conquering-Britannia in the 16th and 17th centuries, but the music of the period sure rules. The WAVE women, together with the indispensible (and ubiquitous) Katherine Heater on harpsichord and a consort of instrumentalists, do homage to the great tradition through Purcell. What a fantastic way to open the Berkeley Festival and Exhibition.

June 3, 8 p.m., St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, Berkeley, $5-$15, (510) 233- 1749, www.wavewomen.org. (M.Z.)

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 20th, 2008 at 11:00 am 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.