Music News
‘Tis the Season to Plan Seasons
So many organizations are making season announcements in late July and early August that Music News will have only a quick roundup here, consisting of links to information, and a few highlights. Classical Voice’s customary fall feature of “critics’ picks” is due later this month; otherwise, check Listening Ahead as the season approaches.
Music at Kohl Mansion
The 26th season at Kohl Mansion will present a few gems, on the order of the Paris Piano Trio on Nov. 2 (Fauré, Schumann, and Mendelssohn), and the La Catrina Quartet on Nov. 23 (Arias y Luna, Alvarez, Piazzolla, Moncayo, and Grieg). On Dec. 14 is the annual holiday fund-raiser “Musicians from the San Francisco Symphony” — Amy Hiraga and Sarn Oliver, violins; Peter Wyrick, cello; and Robin Sutherland, piano; as well as Geraldine Walther, principal violist of the Symphony for 29 years, and now a member of the Takács Quartet.
All concerts take place in historic Kohl Mansion in Burlingame, followed by Meet-the-Artists receptions in the Mansion’s dining rooms.
Geraldine Walther, with the Takács Quartet: Edward Dusinberre, András Fejér, and Károly Schranz
San Francisco Girls Chorus
The Girls’ 30th anniversary season consists of four home concerts (including commissioned premieres); guest performances with the San Francisco Opera, Symphony, and Philharmonia Baroque; a debut at New York’s Lincoln Center; and a tour to South America.
The Oct. 24-26 “Dreams and Visions” program includes music by Poulenc, Willcocks, Rachmaninov, and the premiere of Augusta Read Thomas’ settings of two e.e. cummings poems.
San Francisco Girls Chorus
Left Coast Chamber Ensemble
Left Coast is presenting 10 pairs of concerts in the coming season, at Mills Valley’s Throckmorton Theater and at the San Francisco War Memorial’s Green Room. The group’s opening concert, “Metamorphoses” on Nov. 6, is representative of its ambitious blending of recent works and the brand-new: two premieres, Wayne Peterson’s String Trio and Bill Beck’s Oboe Quartet, as well as Britten’s Six Metamorphoses After Ovid, Bloch’s Cello Suite No. 1, and Dohnányi’s Serenade in C Major for String Trio.
Left Coast Chamber Ensemble
San Francisco Conservatory of Music
The Conservatory presents more than 400 public concerts during the 2008-2009 school year, many free of charge, others in the $15-$20 range. The Conservatory Orchestra opens the season on Sept. 6, with a tribute to composition faculty members Elinor Armer and Conrad Susa. On the program: Armer’s Call of the West and the Concerto for Piano and Orchestra, with Lois Brandwynne, piano; and Susa’s The Blue Hour and selections from Les Liaisons dangereuses, commissioned and performed by San Francisco Opera in 1994.
The Faculty Artist Series includes three concerts of chamber music by pianist Paul Hersh and friends (with Bonnie Hampton and dedicated respectively to Beethoven), Dvorák, and Schubert’s Music for Piano Four-Hands. William Wellborn and the Ives Quartet present the music of Amy Beach, Corey Jamason performs the Goldberg Variations on harpsichord, and trumpeter Mario Guarneri and the Jazz Faculty offer two concerts.
One of the Conservatory’s performance spaces
Photo by Robert Stronck
Jewish Community Center of San Francisco
JCCSF’s Friend Center for the Arts will present a series of concerts, including one on Nov. 16 by Alberto Mizrahi, advertised as “the Jewish Pavarotti,” performing in nine languages (not at the same time).
On Jan. 15, there will be a Lar Lubovitch Dance Company concert, and in the spring, the Center will present another edition of the genre-bending annual Other Minds Festival of New Music.
Lar Lubovitch Dance due at the JCC
Photo by Gene Schiavone
Merola-Mozart-Malfitano-Marvelous
Something highly instructive — and delightful — took place in Cowell Theater last weekend. This was the same venue where six years ago the director Roy Rallo attempted to disgrace Mozart with a repulsive production of La finta giardiniera, all in the name of avoiding “static opera” (a constant Eurotrash justification). This time Catherine Malfitano exalted Mozart with a dynamic, vital Don Giovanni, which celebrated the work, and involved and empowered the young singers.
The choices are not between “shocking” and “static” — the real alternatives are talent or lack of it, ineptidue combined with self-promotion, the director thrusting himself in the foreground, composer and singers be damned. A few mild excesses in Malfitano’s Don Giovanni — seminude wrestling and hitting the floor too often — were not at the center of the production, but occurred incidentally, perhaps prompted in part by the young performers’ own enthusiasm.
Austin Kness (Giovanni) and Carlos Monzón (Leporello) in front; behind them: Joélle Harvey (Zerlina), Adam Cioffari (Masetto), Rena Harms (Elvira), David Lomeli (Ottavio), Amanda Majeski (Anna)
Photos by Kristin Loken
Rallo’s purpose was to exhibit “18-year-old Mozart and his librettist … exploring the nature of sadism, self hatred, murderous jealousy, and downright insanity” by making singers “crawl, roll around on the floor, be upside down, backward, take their clothes off, be blindfolded, tied up, and have all manner of indiscriminate sex while trying to sing Mozart’s vocally demanding music.”
Someone has been watching too many reruns of Amadeus. Also, note there is no reference to the young singers, made into helpless pawns in the director’s hands.
Contrast that with Malfitano’s approach, as expressed in an interview:
Rehearsals began with the young artists worrying about being correct. They are growing up in an era where there’s such a sense of homogenizing themselves.
I’m looking for someone who can sweep me away and show me they’re unique, have something special and gutsy. We need to be correct, but we need to get beyond correct. These kids are getting a lot of freedom and permission from me and our conductor Gary Wedow to really live and breathe in a much more human way. There’s a life underneath the first layer of words. My job is to help them understand the subtext and what they’re really saying underneath the words they choose to speak.
Joélle Harvey as Zerlina, Austin Kness as Don Giovanni
Once again, Merola has presented great new talent to the world. The cast featured a brilliant Donna Anna in Amanda Majeski’s intense, Dessayesque performance; with the tenor discovery of David Lomeli as Don Ottavio; Rena Harms’ vibrant Donna Elvira; Joélle Harvey’s Zerlina (with enough reserve in the voice for more dramatic roles); Carlos Monzón’s dynamic Leporello, and in the title role, Austin Kness’ already mature talent.
Wedow conducted with consistency and power. I don’t know how the orchestra can play at all, inches from the singers’ feet, sitting right next to the first row of the audience — but play they did, well and true, without once overwhelming the singers or the small hall.
Outside Cowell, seagulls raised a ruckus, which was clearly audible inside the theater, as if voicing nostalgia for Thomas Pasatieri’s opera performed here a couple of years ago, the one called The Seagull.
Don Giovanni, with Zerlina, Donna Elvira in the background
Bernstein Fête
The New York Philharmonic and Carnegie Hall have announced a massive, three-month series of programs in tribute to Leonard Bernstein. From September through December 13, Bernstein: The Best of All Possible Worlds pays homage to the late composer with concerts featuring Michael Tilson Thomas, Marin Alsop, and Gustavo Dudamel. Yo-Yo Ma will play on opening night; an educational project will involve 500 public school students in compositions inspired by Bernstein’s Mass.
MTT and Leonard Bernstein, some time ago
Nicola Rescigno
Italian-American conductor Nicola Rescigno, 92, died Monday in a Viterbo hospital, while awaiting surgery for injuries suffered in a fall. He had cofounded both the Chicago Lyric Opera (1953) and the Dallas Opera (1957), and served as artistic director and principal conductor in Dallas for 33 years, until 1990.
In San Francisco, he conducted several productions between 1950 and 1986, making his last appearance leading a concert in the War Memorial Opera House by Montserrat Caballé. Rescigno was one of Maria Callas’ main collaborators.
Chen Yi’s Olympic Premiere
Chen Yi was sent to the countryside during China’s cultural revolution in the late ’60s to work as a farmer. “I had brought my violin along with me to practice my fingers, playing revolutionary songs,” she said, recalling those difficult years. Now Chen Yi — former composer-in-residence for San Francisco’s Chanticleer and Women’s Philharmonic — is making her contribution to the Beijing Olympics, albeit from a world away and with a twist.
On Thursday, when the 2008 Games open in the Chinese capital, Chen Yi’s Olympic Fire will have its premiere at London’s Proms Festival, in Royal Albert Hall. The work “looks forward to the London Olympics in 2012, evoking the image of fire, and representing the idea of a meeting of cultures.” The concert — in which Leonard Slatkin also conducts works by Rachmaninov and Vaughn Williams — can be heard on the Internet both live and for a week after the performance.
Chen Yi
Supertitles’ Silver Anniversary
Lotfi Mansouri, former general director of the San Francisco Opera, was responsible 25 years ago for the (then controversial) introduction of supertitles, simultaneous English translation of the libretto projected above the stage during performance of an opera sung in another language. Mansouri first introduced supertitles at the Canadian Opera Company that he headed before coming to San Francisco. The titles have helped make opera more accessible to audiences around the world. The anniversary was greeted in The New York Times as that of “his most lasting contribution to the field.”
Happy birthday Supertitles
Study: File-Sharing Is Here to Stay
The Financial Times reported on Sunday that a study suggests the music industry should embrace, rather than fight, file-sharing Web sites. The point in question is Radiohead’s last album release, downloaded by huge numbers of people illegally, even though the band allowed fans to pay little or nothing for it.
“Rights-holders should be aware that these nontraditional venues are stubbornly entrenched, incredibly popular, and will never go away,” said Eric Garland, coauthor of the study, which concluded there was strong brand loyalty to controversial “torrent” and peer-to-peer services. Radiohead’s release of In Rainbows on a pay-what-you-want basis last October generated enormous traffic to the band’s own Web site and intense speculation about how much fans had paid. Garland urged record companies to study the outcome and accept that file-sharing sites were here to stay. “It’s time to stop swimming against the tide of what people want,” he said.
Janos Gereben (janosg@gmail.com) is a regular contributor to San Francisco Classical Voice.
©2008 By Janos Gereben, all rights reserved.