Listening Ahead
Our Critics’ Choices of Upcoming Events in the Bay Area
for July 8 – 21, 2008
Festival
Stern Grove Festival
Once again we can enjoy the S.F. Symphony and Opera outdoors. On June 29, Orli Shaham plays Rachmaninov’s Variations on a Theme by Paganini, with James Gaffigan on the podium, while the orchestra gives Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 4 in F Minor, Op. 36. The San Francisco Opera closes the festival with a celebration of American opera and musical theater, on August 17.
Through Aug. 17, Sundays at 2 p.m., Stern Grove, San Francisco, $10-$30, (415) 252-6252, www.sterngrove.org. (M.Z.)
Orli Shaham
Photo by Christian Steiner
Music Academy of the West Summer Festival
This festival is centered on an eight-week summer program for pre-professional musicians. Concerts involve students and faculty, along with a few guest artists. This year’s big deal is a performance of William Bolcom’s 2004 opera, A Wedding, based on the Robert Altman film. The Takács Quartet also drops in for a visit, performing with faculty on July 15, and on their own on July 17. Christopher Taylor does Messiaen’s complete Vingt regards again (July 9), and the Academy Orchestra, under the Philharmonia Baroque’s own Nicholas McGegan, performs Messiaen’s Un sourire, along with Mozart, Ibert, and Schumann.
Through August 15, Santa Barbara, (805) 969-4726, www.musicacademy.org. (M.Z.)
Takács Quartet
Photo by Peter Smith
‘Summer in the City’
Once known as the Symphony Pops Concerts, this festival has a judicious mix of symphonic works, jazz, tango, swing, and musicals — allowing visits to Davies Hall at significantly lower prices than during the season. Of special interest: On July 9 and 10, young violinist star Stefan Jackiw plays the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto, and 28-year-old maestro James Gaffigan conducts the Bach-Stokowsky Toccata and Fugue in D Minor, as well as the Mussorgsky-Ravel Pictures at an Exhibition. (Gaffigan and S.F. Symphony will also perform at two free concerts: at the Plaza de Cesar Chavez, noon on July 15; and at Dolores Park, 2 p.m. on July 20.)
July 9-10, 8 p.m., Davies Symphony Hall, $10-$68, (415) 864-6000, www.sfsymphony.org/. (J.G.)
Stefan Jackiw
American Bach Soloists SummerFest ’08
The splendid American Bach Soloists bring us another edition of their new festival, full of understated elegance and intimacy, and also ultra-refined playing. The repertory of this year’s three “main events” ranges from Bach to Mendelssohn, advertising the fact that these musicians aren’t sequestered in one corner of the repertory. The “twilight serenades,” hour-long concerts in the early evening, include The Whole Noyse, playing wind and brass music from the 16th and 17th centuries; and a concert of salon music.
July 11-20, Belvedere, San Francisco, and Davis, (415) 621-7900, www.americanbach.org. (M.Z.)
Festival del Sole
This is the festival for the starstruck classical music fan. It rolls out the big names — Joshua Bell, Jean-Yves Thibaudet, Andre Watts, the Rosetti String Quartet — all performing, considerately, in the early evening, so that those patrons who have done a little winetasting and arts-and-crafts hunting can take in the concert and still find their way home to the Bay Area at a reasonable hour. This year’s concerts also feature young and up-and-coming talent in free recitals, which may tempt those who don’t want to part with the festival’s $45-$125 prices. If you’re headed up to the first weekend of Festival del Sole concerts, don’t overlook the young artists’ concerts happening at Copia Winery at midday. On the 12th, it’s 25-year-old guitarist Ryan Haverty, and a day later, Karla Donehew Perez on violin.
July 12-20, Napa Valley, (707) 226-8742, www.festivaldelsole. (M.Z.)
Joshua Bell
Mendocino Music Festival
Here’s a festival that sports an actual big-top tent. The 22nd festival, as always, adds a number of jazz and world music concerts into the mix. This year’s highlights include a performance of Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro with Brian Leerhuber (Figaro), Nicole Foland (Countess), Christine Brandes (Susanna), and Eugene Brancoveanu (Count Almaviva). Pianist Stephen Prutsman gives a concert mixing jazz and classical works, an evening is devoted to the “degenerate” musical culture of the Weimar Republic, and the festival orchestra brings the festival to a ringing close with Handel’s Music for the Royal Fireworks and Beethoven’s 9th Symphony.
July 12-26, Mendocino, www.mendocinomusic.com. (M.Z.)
Midsummer Mozart Festival
This movable feast of a festival doesn’t invite you to go to the mountains, it brings the mountain to you. The two main Mozart programs include Jon Nakamatsu playing the A-Major Piano Concerto, K. 488, Nikolai Demidenko working over the C-Minor Piano Concerto, K. 491, and Laura Griffiths, principal oboist of the S.F. Ballet Orchestra, performing the Oboe Concerto, K. 271k. This year’s festival is expanded to reach San José, with a semi-staged performance of The Abduction From the Seraglio, at the California Theatre, and starring some recent Opera San José stalwarts, and a concert at Le Petit Trianon on August 2.
July 17 – August 3, Santa Clara, San Francisco, Sonoma, Berkeley, San Jose, www.midsummermozart.org. (M.Z)
Jon Nakamatsu
Music@Menlo
The impressively funded Music@Menlo Chamber Music Festival offers multimedia full immersion, if you want to take advantage of the lectures, “Café Conversations,” open houses, CD-based listening guides, art displays, and “Encounter” discussion centers. It is also a training program for young musicians, who merit their own series of concerts. The main concerts this year present a chronological march through the development of chamber music beginning with a survey of the Baroque period from Salamone Rossi through to J.S. Bach and ending with a program of contemporary music including a premiere of a piano trio by Kenneth Frazelle. The recital series includes the Borromeo String Quartet playing the complete Bartók string quartets; Stephen Prutsman in a program that juxtaposes preludes and fugues from The Well-Tempered Clavier with a kaleidoscopic variety of works, classical and not; and Gary Graffman in a program of left-hand piano music.
July 18 – August 8, Atherton and Palo Alto, www.musicatmenlo.org. (M.Z.)
Borromeo String Quartet
Photo by Christian Steiner
Carmel Bach Festival
The Carmel Bach Festival packs an awful lot of music into three weeks. This year, the theme seems to be the Bach-Brahms connection. The main concerts include Bach’s B-Minor Mass, the complete Brandenburg Concertos, a concert that connects the Viennese School greats, and one that pairs Brahms’ German Requiem and Bach’s Cantata No. 21. In the chamber concerts series, Sanford Sylvan sings Schubert’s song cycle Die Winterreise, and an all-Brahms vocal evening. In addition, there are the preconcert (Twilight) concerts, and the postconcert (Candlelight) concerts. You could spend a day and hear a week’s worth of music.
July 19 – August 9, Carmel, www.bachfestival.org. (M.Z.)
Sanford Sylvan
Photo by Susan Wilson
Early Music
Les Violettes
Les Violettes (Rebekah Ahrendt and Colin Shipman, violas da gamba; Violet Grgich, harpsichord) welcome guest artist Elisabeth Opsahl, cornetto and recorders, in her U.S. debut for a concert of “abracadabra” music of late 16th- and early 17th-century Italy. The program, which includes works by Frescobaldi, Bassano, Rogniono, and others repeats in Rutherford and features a winetasting.
July 12, 8 p.m., St. Joseph of Arimathea, Berkeley, suggested donation $5-$12; July 13, 2 p.m., Grigch Hills Estate, Rutherford, $25 with wine tasting; (800) 532-3057, www.lesgraces.com (C.G.)
Choral
Maracaibera!
The latest program from Creative Voices takes the choral group outside the classical repertoire to Venezuelan folksongs from the repertory of the Quinteto Contrapunto. The QC was a vocal quintet (with guitar and cuatro accompaniment), whose unusually complex arrangements made it a star performing/recording group on the European and Latin American folk scene between 1962 and 1971. A brief reunion in 1998 refocused attention on the group, and now the original arrangments, by Rafael Suárez have been found. Creative Voices recreates the sound and feel of the Quinteto, not omitting the cuatro player either.
July 13, 7 p.m., La Pena Cultural Center, Berkeley; July 20, 8 p.m., The Dance Palace Community Center, Point Reyes Station; Aug. 2, 8 p.m., Mission Cultural Center for Latino Arts, San Francisco; $13-$15, (415) 238-0533, www.creativevoices.org/index.html. (M.Z.)
Opera
Casting coup in Il trovatore
Il trovatore’s star has secured a place in the hearts of Verdians, despite a fairly ridiculous plot. The central character, the gypsy Azucena, has seen her mother burned at the stake as a witch. Like Rigoletto, both parents are bent on revenge and both involve their children in that revenge. Rigoletto does so unintentionally, but the act is more complicated in Azucena’s case. Is she crazy? And does she care at all for the troubadour Manrico, the child she has raised? Festival Opera’s production, directed by Giulio Cesare Perrone, brings together a powerhouse cast to conquer each successive scene, each with a new aria or dilemma to be conquered. The strong vocals of Hope Briggs (Lenora), Noah Stewart (Manrico), Scott Bearden (Count di Luna), Patrice Houston (Azucena), Kirk Eichelberger (Ferrando), and Jessica Mariko Deardoff (Inez) promise to convey this compelling melodrama of unceasing rage and revenge, in which each character is permanently entrapped. Michael Morgan conducts.
July 12, 15, 18, 8 p.m.; July 20, 2 p.m.; Lesher Center for the Arts, Walnut Creek, $46-$100, (925) 943-7469, www.festival.com. (C.G.)
Tosca
The tiny Julia Morgan Theater will play host to the big passions of Puccini’s Tosca in the new Berkeley Opera production featuring Jillian Khuner, Kevin Courtemanche, and John Minagro.
July 12-20, various times, Julia Morgan Theater, Berkeley, $15-$44, (510) 841-1903, www.berkeleyopera.org (M.Z.)
Contemporary
Percussion Batterie!
In the first of four experimental-contemporary classical-classical fusion-whatever concerts, Pamela Z brings together a group of percussion-oriented artists at the Royce Gallery, in San Francisco. Joining Pamela are Matt Davignon, who has started using drum machines to create unusual sounds; Moe Staino; “techno-diva” Amy X. Neuberg on voice and MIDI percussion; and drummer Suki O’Kane.
July 11, 8 p.m., Royce Gallery, San Francisco, $10, www.pamelaz.com. (M.Z.)
SfSoundSeries
ODC Theater and sfSound join to present sfSoundSeries, a concert series featuring contemporary and experimental music. The rich and varied program includes Steve Reich’s Four Organs (1970), Giacinto Scelsi’s Kya (1959), Salvatore Sciarrino’s Muro d’orizzonte (1997), Mauricio Kagel’s Atem for trumpet and tape (1970), Alan Hilario’s kibô (1997), and a new collaborative piece by sfSoundGroup, directed by Matt Ingalls. Performers are Heather Frasch, alto flute; Kyle Bruckmann, English horn/organ; John Ingle, soprano saxophone; Tom Dambly, trumpet; Jen Baker, trombone; Andy Strain, trombone; Christopher Jones, piano/organ/conductor; Ann Yi, organ; Loren Mach, percussion; Alexa Beattie, viola; and Leighton Fong, cello.
July 13, 8 p.m., ODC Commons, Studio B, 351 Shotwell Street, San Francisco; $5, (415) 863-9834, www.sfsound.org. (J.G.)
Matt Ingalls
Chamber Music
The Eusebius Duo
Even if they hadn’t confessed it on their Web site, you would have to assume that the Eusebius Duo had a thing for Schumann from their adopted name alone. Consisting of violinist Monika Gruber and pianist Hilary Nordwell, both graduates of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music’s masters program, the duo has already garnered some awards and attention. They are sponsored by the San Francisco Friends of Chamber Music. In their appearance at Old First Concerts, they indulge their Schu-mania by playing the composer’s two violin sonatas, the A-Minor Op. 101, and D-Minor Op. 121, along with Brahms’ gorgeous sonata in G Major, Op. 78.
July 13, 4 p.m., Old First Church, San Francisco, $12-$15, (415) 474-1608, www.oldfirstconcerts.org. (M.Z.)
Recital
Merry Merolini
The new enrollees in the Merola Opera Program show their wares in a concert of significant operatic excerpts, which you can catch for free at the Yerba Buena Gardens, or you can pay for a seat at Herbst Theatre. Be the first to hear and appreciate the fresh Merolini.
July 6, 2 p.m., Yerba Buena Gardens, free; July 8, 7:30 p.m., Herbst Theatre, San Francisco, $40-$60 (some student tickets at $25), (415) 864-3330, www.sfopera.com. (M.Z.)
Russian Fantasy, Lisztian Magic
Daniel Glover celebrates his birthday by playing a piano recital mixing Rachmaninov’s great Sonata in B-flat Minor with music by Rachmaninov’s contemporary Nikolai Medtner, and Liszt’s impressively fingerbusting Fantasy on Wagner’s “Rienzi,” as well as two of Liszt’s religious piano works, Two Franciscan Legends and Benediction of God in Solitude.
July 11, 8 p.m., Old First Church, San Francisco, $12-$15, (415) 474-1608, www.oldfirstconcerts.org. (M.Z.)
Trailblazing Sarah Cahill
In her concert at Old First Church, pianist Sarah Cahill presents two works written for her, Evan Ziporyn’s Pondok and Kyle Gann’s Private Dances. Also on the program are two rarities by Mark Blitzstein, which the pianist is slated to record on the Other Minds label.
July 18, 8 p.m., Old First Church, San Francisco, $12-$15, (415) 474-1608, www.oldfirstconcerts.org. (M.Z.)
Sarah Cahill
Suddenly Simone
Pianist Simone Dinnerstein is suddenly a hot commodity on the classical music scene, at the unusually advanced age of 34. The story of the recording that made her famous — a Goldberg Variations that was financed by friends, recorded while the pianist was pregnant, and released a full two years after being recorded — has been told in The New York Times among other places. At the Festival del Sole she plays the Mozart Concerto K.488 (No. 23) in A Major with the UBS Verbier Symphony Orchestra, while her beloved Goldberg Variations are subjected to the dubious honor of arrangements by violinist/conductor Dmitry Sitkovetsky.
July 17, 6:30 p.m., Castello del Amoroso, Calistoga, $75-$125, (707) 226-8742, www.festivaldelsole. (M.Z.)
Multimedia
LIFE: A Journey Through Time
A Festival del Sole benefit event for Global Green and the Napa Land Trust will feature Philip Glass’ music and Alexander V. Nichols’ design in celebrating Frans Lanting’s photography in LIFE: A Journey Through Time. The Napa Valley Symphony is conducted by Carolyn Kuan. Starting from Santa Cruz, Lanting spent seven years photographing every continent on the planet, including Antarctica. The resulting photo collection focuses on the evolution of life on Earth, picturing prehistoric trilobites, giant tortoises, delicate jellies, spiny octopus trees, and erupting volcanoes.
July 13, 3 p.m., Lincoln Theater, Napa Valley; $45-$125, (707) 226-8742, www.festivaldelsole.com. (J.G.)
Symphony
Midsummer Mahler
If summer festival music is generally too light for you, you might want to note the date of this Dallas Symphony concert at Festival del Sole, in which mezzo-soprano Jill Grove joins Music Director Jaap van Zweden in a performance of Mahler’s Rückert Lieder, followed by the Fifth Symphony.
July 20, 3 p.m., Lincoln Theater, Yountville, $45-$125, (707) 226-8742, www.festivaldelsole.com. (M.Z.)
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.