Music News
Ginstling to Cleveland Orchestra
San Francisco Symphony Communications Director Gary Ginstling is leaving the job on Aug. 22, to become general manager of the Cleveland Orchestra, reporting to Executive Director Gary Hanson. Ginstling will be responsible for day-to-day management, including labor relations and scheduling. He succeeds Jonathan Martin, who has become executive director of the Charlotte Symphony in North Carolina. (Just one more item in this game of musical chairs: The Charlotte Symphony is looking for a new music director, and San Francisco Symphony Associate Conductor James Gaffigan is one of the candidates.)
Ginstling has been director of communications and external affairs for the San Francisco Symphony for the past two years; he was executive director of the Berkeley Symphony from 2003 through 2006, and has spent a dozen years in the state altogether.
“After my time here,” Ginstling told Classical Voice, “I have come to realize that California is a really tough place to leave. I make this decision with mixed emotions, as the San Francisco Symphony is an inspiring place to work, and it has been a true privilege to work with Music Director Michael Tilson Thomas, Executive Director Brent Assink, and the entire board and staff. However, my wife Marta and I are excited about the prospect of moving closer to our families and introducing our children to the concept of four seasons. I am also delighted to be taking on a new role with one of America’s great orchestras.”
Just last month, the Cleveland Orchestra made a number of major announcements about its long-range plans, including the extension of Music Director Franz Welser-Möst’s contract to 2018; the return of opera to Severance Hall; ballet to the Blossom Music Center, in collaboration with Miami City Ballet; and creating a centennial commissions project. (San Francisco’s centennial occurs sooner, in 2011, but yes, we have no [commission] bananas.)
Just three years ago, the Cleveland was in a tough spot, with a $7.4 million accumulated deficit — the biggest in its history — on an operating budget of $36 million. Today, the situation has improved: The budget is $41.2 million, and the deficit was retired largely through drawing on the endowment. (San Francisco Symphony’s operating budget is about $60 million, and only a relatively small deficit is expected, in spite of the general economic meltdown.)
A recent anonymous $5 million donation to the Cleveland endowment has helped the orchestra to renew its commitment to the school district, bringing all fifth graders to Severance Hall.
In September 2010, Franz Welser-Möst will become general music director of the Vienna State Opera with an initial five-year term. His Vienna appointment follows a 13-year tenure at the Zürich Opera where he has been general music director concurrent with his role as music director in Cleveland. Franz Welser-Möst will step down from his position in Zürich at the conclusion of the current season.
Gary Ginstling (with Michelle Robertson)
Midsummer Abduction
Midsummer Mozart Festival presents a semistaged version of The Abduction from the Seraglio at the California Theater in San Jose, Aug. 1 and 3. George Cleve’s 34-year-old festival normally produces chamber-music and small-orchestra concerts, but at the instigation of David Packard, there will be opera this season as well — although only in San Jose.
The production — conducted by Cleve and directed by Barbara Heroux — features sopranos Christina Major and Khori Dastoor, tenors Isaac Hurtado and Matthew O’Neill, bass-baritone Jeremy Galyon, and William Neely in the speaking role of Pasha Selim.
Jeremy Galyon
Kahane to Leave Colorado
Jeffrey Kahane, 50, who left the Santa Rosa Symphony in 2005 to become music director of the Colorado Symphony (succeeding Marin Alsop there), has served one three-year term, but will keep the post for only two more years, instead of taking a three-year (or longer) extension. A major reason for his decision was a case of extreme hypertension last year, which forced him to cancel three months of concerts.
“There’s going to be sadness, and there’s certainly a lot of sadness on my end,” Kahane said. “It’s not a decision I’m going to go out and celebrate, but I feel good, because I know it’s right for me and I know it’s going to be right for the orchestra.”
Per his wishes, Kahane’s contract was extended through the 2009-2010 season, during which he has pledged to “give his all.”
Jeffrey Kahane (with violinist Lindsay Deutsch)
Festival Opera’s Britten
Festival Opera’s Aug. 9-17 A Midsummer Night’s Dream by Benjamin Britten features countertenor William Sauerland as Oberon, soprano Ani Maldjian as Tytania, bass Kirk Eichelberger as Bottom, baritone Igor Vieira as Theseus, mezzo-soprano Lauren Groff as Hippolyta, tenor Jorge Garza as Lysander, baritone Nikolas Nackley as Demetrius, mezzo-soprano Jessica Mariko Deardorff as Hermia, and soprano Stacey Cornell as Helena.
(On July 17, Festival Opera announced that former two-time San Francisco Opera Merola Program participant Ani Maldjian would replace Marnie Breckenridge in the role of Tytania. Marnie Breckenridge was given permission by Festival Opera to bow out so that she could accept an invitation by the Glyndebourne Opera Festival to cover the lead role in the premiere of Peter Eotvos’ Love and Other Demons, August 10-30.)
Michael Morgan is music director, Peter Crompton is the set designer, and Susanna Douthit the costume designer.
Ani Maldjian and Kirk Eichelberger
New Cellists to New Century
Music Director Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg has selected Michelle Djokic as a new cellist for the New Century Chamber Orchestra, and appointed cellist Susan Babini to a one-year position. Djokic, of Palo Alto, was the assistant principal cellist for the San Francisco Symphony from 2005 to 2007, and is a member of the San Francisco Cello Quartet. She is the founding artistic director of Concordia Chamber Players, based in New Hope, Pennsylvania, and has performed at the Aspen, Banff, and Newport Music Festivals, among others.
Djokic’s many prizes in competitions include the Prince Bernard Award for Excellence in the 1989 Scheveningen International Cello Competition, the People’s Prize in the 1980 Pablo Casals International Cello Competition in Budapest, Hungary; first prize in the Chicago Civic Orchestra Competition; and she also captured first prize in the young artists competitions of the New Jersey Symphony, the North Carolina Symphony, the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Juilliard School Concerto Competition, and the Aspen Festival Concerto Competition. The orchestra’s call for cellists to audition for a tenure-track position and a temporary one-year post drew 83 resumes, the largest expression of interest in any NCCO audition.
Michelle Djokic
Ritual of the Virtues
Hildegard von Bingen
San Francisco Renaissance Voices will perform Hildegard von Bingen’s Ordo Virtutum (Ritual of the Virtues) in Old First Church on Aug. 9. This rarely performed 12th-century work is to be presented in a “fusion concert,” incorporating instrumental music and dance of India. Tod Jolly is music director, participants include Deepak Ram (bansuri) and Diana Rowan (Celtic harp).
Deepak Ram
Other performances of this production are scheduled for:
- August 2, 7:30 p.m., Seventh Avenue Presbyterian, San Francisco
- August 10, 7:30 p.m., Alameda Presbyterian, Alameda
- August 16, 7:30 p.m., All Saints Episcopal, Palo Alto
- August 17, 4 p.m., St. John’s Presbyterian, Berkeley
Gifts of the Medici
Festival del Sole sensation Measha Brueggergosman will appear in the Aspen Festival’s season-finale production of Schoenberg’s Gurrelieder on Aug. 17, and this gargantuan work will be shown on Medici.TV’s web casts this summer.
The cast:
David Zinman, conductor
Jon Villars, tenor
Measha Brueggergosman, soprano
Lilli Paasikivi, mezzo-soprano
Anthony Dean Griffey, tenor
Gustav Andreassen, bass
Colorado Symphony Orchestra Chorus
Duain Wolfe, chorus director
United States Army Chorus
Measha Brueggergosman
Besides Aspen, Medici.TV will feature web casts from the entire Verbier Festival in Aix-en-Provence, through July (Yuja Wang performs a rich, varied program on July 29), and numerous Berlin Philharmonic tour performances.
Currently, Medici.TV is showing the new Peter Sellars production of Mozart’s unfinished 1780 opera Zaïde, which was the opening production of the 2008 Aix-en-Provence Festival. Among the principals: recent Adler Fellow tenor Sean Panikkar.
Sean Panikkar
Medici.TV is produced by Medici Arts, which, in conjunction with two production companies (EuroArts in Leipzig and Idéale Audience in Paris), specializes in the independent production and distribution of audiovisual programs in performing arts and documentaries. It currently represents a catalogue of 1,500 hours of television programming, with 30 new films produced each year. These two companies have already issued over 250 DVDs — including the acclaimed Classic Archive series — with plans to issue 60 new titles every year. The catalog of audio recordings includes the BBC Legends CD series (220 titles already available) and Royal Opera House Heritage series from London’s Covent Garden.
Rouse Concerto Premiere at Cabrillo
Christopher Rouse’s Concerto for Orchestra receives its premiere on Aug. 1 at the Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music’s opening night. Performance of the Festival-commissioned work honors the composer’s 60th birthday. Music Director Marin Alsop conducts the program, which also includes the U.S. premiere of Stephen McNeff’s Sinfonia, the premiere of Eric Lindsay’s Darkness Made Visible, and David W. Sanford’s Scherzo Grosso, with cellist Matt Haimovitz as soloist.
Christopher Rouse
High Court Defends Scornful Reviews
Britain’s Independent reported on Tuesday that composer Keith Burstein’s unsuccessfully filed a lawsuit against the Associated Newspapers for a critical review of his opera, which resulted in bankruptcy. The unsuccessful libel action cost Burstein approximately $130,000. His claim was that Veronica Lee’s review of Burstein’s Manifest Destiny, performed at the Edinburgh Festival in 2005, made readers think that he is a terrorist sympathizer.
The review said the opera’s “idea that there is anything heroic about suicide bombers is a grievous insult,” and the highest Appeal Court prevented the case from going before a jury, a ruling “widely interpreted as a landmark decision in respect of the right of journalists to write scornful reviews.”
Keith Burstein
A musicologist friend from London comments:
He is a nutcase. He advocates something called ‘new tonalism’ and goes around disrupting Harrison Birtwistle concerts. I’m all for keeping tonalism going but his version just sounds devoid of any interest or tension.
Successful suits in cases like this are not out of the question. In fact, Burstein won one over News International before. It has to do with the The London Times claiming that the composer “organized bands of hecklers to go about wrecking performances of modern atonal music, particularly anything by Sir Harrison Birtwistle.” Burstein sued for libel, successfully pointing out that he had “never interrupted any concert or performance of any sort. It would have been inconceivable to interrupt anybody’s performance.” The hecklers’ demonstration had taken place following the performance of Gawain during the audience applause, and hence constituted legitimate comment/response rather than an interruption or “wrecking.”
Kirkby’s Proper Doctorate in Music
Dame Carolyn Emma Kirkby, much beloved in Europe, but known in these parts only for a Philharmonia Baroque appearance five years ago, and a Cal Performances recital with her husband, Anthony Rooley, last month received an honorary degree of Doctor of Music from Oxford University, and was greeted by the following speech:
Ecquid facere nequeunt qui litteris humanioribus Oxoniae bene studuerunt? Abhinc tres annos virum honestavimus qui eis studiis perfectis ad physicam se contulit praemiumque Nobelianum nactus est; et hodie feminam ad gradum doctoris extollimus quae non omnino in musicam prius incubuit quam scripta Graeca et Latina satis perscrutata erat. Illa aetate Eduardus Fraenkel, vir doctissimus et formidolosus, discipulos docuit vel terruit; quem ea dicitur ut Orpheus lyra bestias ita lepore domare potuisse.
… and much, much more.
Emma Kirby
Photo by Eric Richmond
Oxford, it seems, is the last refuge of Latin — especially since its discarding from the Catholic Mass, alas — and so the above melodious speech, rather than this prosaic, loosely translated version:
Is there anything that those who have read Greats at Oxford cannot do? Three years ago we honored a man, who after completing this degree turned to physics and won a Nobel Prize for it, and today we confer a doctorate on a lady who did not devote her whole time to music until she too had made this thorough study of Greek and Latin texts. In those days the vastly learned and formidable Eduard Fraenkel was teaching (or terrorizing) his pupils, but she is said to have subdued him by her charm as Orpheus subdued the beasts with his lyre.
New Merolini, New Hope, New Love
(From a late edition of last week’s Music News)
They just keeping coming, young singers of extraordinary promise. But there was something different Tuesday night at Herbst Theater, where the 51st Merola Class’s first indoor, unamplified concert took place (following a Sunday outdoor event at Yerba Buena, attended by thousands).
The difference came in the person of Leah Crocetto, an omni-soprano from Michigan, trained at both the Moody Bible Institute and the Sarasota Opera Apprentice Program. In 30 years of exciting discoveries, listening to each group of Merolini for the first time, I have never experienced a singer springing as complete and awesome from terra incognita as Crocetto.
Leah Crocetto
What is an “omni-soprano”? It’s someone who shifts from dramatic to lyric fach, from tragic to comic performance seamlessly, amazingly. Crocetto’s first role on Tuesday night — in a program of four extended operatic excerpts, accompanied by an orchestra under the baton of Dean Williamson — was Manon from the Massenet opera, in the Saint-Sulpice scene.
Her note-perfect, solid, well-rounded performance peaked in thrilling notes that were powerful, not loud. At one point, I heard the broad, irresistibly penetrating voice of Birgit Nilsson … but more beautiful.
And then a look at the program, and something approaching incredulity: Crocetto’s next appearance was to be as Norina in a Don Pasquale scene! Norina? Not the heaviest of Verdi heroines, maybe Brünnhilde, perhaps Fidelio? Surely a dramatic soprano of such heft is misled into Donizetti’s lyric, comic role.
Instead of disappointing, Crocetto’s Norina blew everyone away, with wicked humor, sensational performance of the heroine’s many voices, and — in confrontation — to Ben Wager’s outstanding Pasquale: Just one sustained note from Crocetto, and a foot away from Wager, the poor man was, well, blown away for real. As the make-believe country girl from the convent, Crocetto’s “Sofronia” was hysterically funny, without overacting. The trick was in the voice — when “Sofronia” pretends to realize that she is being courted by a man, her first “Come? Un uomo!” came with the prescribed “con terrore” up high, but when she repeated “Un Uomo?!” her voice dropped about three octaves, booming out as if channeling Boris Godunov haunted by a ghost, and several audience members slid off their chairs, helpless with laughter.
The entire Don Pasquale Act 2 scene was a triumph. Wager — although an improbably young and handsome Pasquale — sang well, but acted just a bit too fussy. René Barbera’s Ernesto was impressive, his aria ending on a blown high note, cleary due to nerves (the voice is there) … and that’s exactly what the Merola Program is there for. David Perhall’s Malatesta was smooth and strong, a comprimario role sung and performed to a T.
YoungJoo An
The evening began on a high note, as YoungJoo An sang a velvet-smooth Prologue to Leoncavallo’s I Pagliacci. The Korean baritone’s warm, medium-sized, beautiful voice came across with radiant musicality, the singer focusing on the music, rather than “showing off” the voice.
Inexplicably, An’s second appearance, as Germont in Verdi’s La Traviata, was disappointing with its blandness. The scene from the end of Act 2 also featured Nathaniel Peake as Alfredo. Too bad the excerpt began after Violetta’s departure — Crocetto would have been delightful in the role. Peake’s big chance came in the Manon scene, as des Grieux.
Nervous, melodramatic acting, on order of The Drunkard, and audible effort reaching high notes counteracted the gift of a fine voice the tenor possesses.
The rest of the large Merola group can be heard July 18 and 20 (Albert Herring), Aug. 1 and 3 (Don Giovanni), and then it’s time for all at the Aug. 16 Grand Finale in the Opera House.
Janos Gereben (janosg@gmail.com) is a regular contributor to San Francisco Classical Voice.
©2008 By Janos Gereben, all rights reserved.