Listening Ahead
Our Critics’ Choices of Upcoming Events in the Bay Area
for September 2 – 15, 2008
Symphony
S.F. Symphony Opener
The San Francisco Symphony subscription season kicks off with a bang, featuring the Labeque sisters piano duo, providing the guest star power in Poulenc’s Concerto for Two Pianos. Music Director Michael Tilson Thomas and the orchestra open up with Gyorgy Ligeti’s delicate, otherworldly Lontano, and finish with Prokofiev’s powerhouse Symphony No. 5.
Sept. 4, 6, 8 p.m.; Sept. 7, 2 p.m., $35-$130, (415) 864-6000, www.sfsymphony.org. (M.Z.)
Recital
Music Teachers’ Association Piano Recital
The Alameda East Branch of the Music Teachers’ Association of California is sponsoring a free piano recital by Young Artists Guild member Ian Counts. The winner of last year’s Bach Concerto Competition and 2008 Aspen Music Festival attendee (studying with Antoinette Perry) will perform a program including works by Beethoven, Rzewski, and Gershwin.
Sept. 6, 7:30 p.m., Ashbury United Methodist Church, Livermore, free, (925) 443-2514, www.mtac.org. (J.G.)
Ian Counts
Early Music
Blumenstock and Johnson
Elizabeth Blumenstock and her violin are still reason enough to make special plans to see a concert. She and harpsichordist Janine Johnson perform violin sonatas and fantasias by Bach and Telemann at Trinity Chamber Concerts, this Saturday. Lovers of Baroque music, take note.
Sept. 6, 8 p.m., Trinity Chapel, Berkeley, $10-$15, www.trinitychamberconcerts.com. (M.Z.)
Myth and the Muse
If you really want to feed your love of music, see a Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra concert at least once a year. Conductor Nicholas McGegan opens up this season with two rarities that are still right up both his and Philharmonia’s alley. The orchestra’s sensuous string sound and brilliant winds are sure to be tested by master orchestrator Jean-Philippe Rameau in his short opera, Pygmalion. Thomas Arne’s Comus, after the famous masque by John Milton, will showcase more of that composer’s theatrical talent. McGegan has assembled some excellent soloists in sopranos Sophie Daneman and Meredith Hall, and tenor Colin Ainsworth.
Sept. 13, 8 p.m., First Congregational Church, Berkeley; Sept. 14, 7:30 p.m., First Congregational Church, Berkeley; Sept. 16, 8 p.m., Lafayette-Orinda Presbyterian Church; Sept. 19, 8 p.m., Herbst Theatre, San Francisco; Sept. 20, 8 p.m., First United Methodist Church, Palo Alto, $30-$75, (415) 252-1288, www.philharmonia.org. (M.Z.)
Music by the Barrel
Between them, Handel and Telemann probably wrote 19 trillion cantatas and sonatas — wait a minute, breaking news — make that 19 trillion and one cantatas and sonatas. The scary part is that most of them are worth listening to, especially when sung and played by the likes of Jennifer Paulino (soprano), Annette Bauer (recorders), Rebekah Ahrendt (viola da gamba), and Jonathan Rhodes Lee (harpsichord). These four make up a new group, Les grâces, and if you’re in San Jose that day, you should drop by.
Sept. 14, 3 p.m., Foothill Presbyterian Church, San José, www.lesgraces.com. (M.Z.)
Opera
Angela Gheorghiu in Concert
One of the highlights of the 2007 opera season was Angela Gheorghiu’s San Francisco Opera debut. (Read review.) Appearing as Magda in Puccini’s La Rondine, the Romanian soprano sang with warmth, radiant tone, and indelible theatricality. This month, Gheorghiu returns to the Bay Area for a concert at Zellerbach Hall. Joining the San Francisco Opera orchestra under Marco Armiliato, she’ll perform arias by Puccini (including “Ch’il bel sogno di Doretta” from Rondine), Verdi, and Giordani, as well as selections by Delibes, de Curtis, Ernesto Lecuona, Eduardo di Capria, and Romanian composer George Grigoriu. The event is copresented by San Francisco Opera and Cal Performances.
Sept. 6, 7:30 p.m., Zellerbach Hall, UC Berkeley Campus, $35-$100, (510) 642-9988, www.calperformances.org. (G.R.)
Angela Gheorghiu
Photo by Eduard Sandu
Eugene Onegin
Opera San José’s first production of the season is Tchaikovsky’s brilliant Eugene Onegin. Besides being melodious, this intimate opera is a case study in delineating characters in music. Tchaikovsky also succeeds masterfully in portraying the social distinctions and morés so critical to the story. Of course, it takes two magnetic stars and a sensitive director to realize this opera’s potential. In a way, it’s a Russian La traviata.
Sept. 6-21, 8 p.m. (Sundays at 3 p.m.), California Theatre, San José, $69-$91, (408) 437-4450, www.operasj.org. (M.Z.)
World Premiere in San Francisco
Over a decade after San Francisco Opera co-commissioned Stewart Wallace to compose his opera, Harvey Milk, Wallace returns with the premiere of another San Francisco-specific opera, The Bonesetter’s Daughter. (See this week’s feature.) Adopted from the novel by Amy Tan, the opera follows the women in a Chinese family over the course of three generations, from China to San Francisco. With gifted mezzo-soprano Zheng Cao singing the title role, we have much to look forward to.
Sept. 13 – Oct. 3, times vary, War Memorial Opera House, San Francisco, $20-$290, (415) 864-3330, www.sfopera.com. (J.V.S.)
Amy Tan
Contemporary Music
Composer Fete
As noted in this issue, the San Francisco Conservatory of Music Orchestra presents a special concert of two of its long-serving composers, Elinor Armer and Conrad Susa. Armer’s far-reaching Piano Concerto receives its world premiere along with another recent work, The Call of the West. Susa is represented with selections from his San Francisco Opera commission, The Dangerous Liaisons, and The Blue Hour, receiving its first local performances.
Sept. 6, 8 p.m., San Francisco Conservatory of Music, $15-$20, (415) 503-6275, www.sfcm.edu. (M.Z.)
Electroacoustic Heaven
The ninth annual San Francisco Electronic Music Festival features the sfSound Group performing with the composers in a set of mixed chamber-electronic pieces, expanding the range of previous incarnations.
Sept. 3-6, 8 p.m.; Sept. 7, 7 p.m., Project Artaud Theater, San Francisco, $12-$17, festival pass $55, http://sfemf.org. (M.Z.)
Making More With Less
If any two musicians can hold together the threads of Morton Feldman’s 80-minute late work, For John Cage, those musicians are violinist Graeme Jennings and pianist Christopher Jones. Their recent concerts together have usually been highlights of the area’s new music scene. And these sfSoundSeries continue to cost only $5.
Sept. 14, 8 p.m., ODC Dance Commons, San Francisco, $5, www.sfsound.org. (M.Z.)
Chamber Orchestra
New Century Chamber Orchestra Season Opener
It’s a new era for the New Century Chamber Orchestra. Following an extensive two-year search for a music director to replace Krista Bennion Feeney, the San Francisco-based string ensemble named violinist Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg to the post earlier this year. Salerno-Sonnenberg officially takes up the reins Sept. 11, as the group launches its 2008-2009 season with a program titled “Nadja Plays Piazzolla: the Sounds of Brazil and Argentina.” She’ll serve as soloist for Piazzolla’s Four Seasons of Buenos Aires and Ginastera’s Glosses on Themes by Pablo Casals. The program also includes the premiere of Impressions, a suite for chamber orchestra by the frequent Salerno-Sonnenberg collaborator Clarice Assad, as well as Assad’s arrangement of Villa-Lobos’ Bachianas Brasileiras No. 5.
Sept. 11, 8 p.m., St. John’s Presbyterian Church, Berkeley; Sept. 13, 8 p.m., Herbst Theatre, San Francisco; Sept. 14, 5 p.m., Osher Marin Jewish Community Center; Sept. 16, 8 p.m., First United Methodist, Palo Alto; $16-$54; $125 for box seats at Herbst; (415) 357-1111, www.ncco.org. (G.R.)
Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg with members of the NCCO
Photo by Steve Jennings
Musical
Spring Awakening
Winner of eight Tony Awards last year, including Best Musical, Spring Awakening is arriving at the Curran Theater, the first stop on a national tour after its Broadway run. Originating with Lulu dramatist Frank Wedekind’s “scandalous” 1891 work, this dark play about angst-filled adolescent sexual “awakening” in late-19th century Germany has been scored by Duncan Sheik, with lyrics by Steven Sater, and choreography by Bill T. Jones.
A review by Charles Isherwood in The New York Times described it as “a brave new musical, haunting and electrifying by turns, [which] restores the mystery, the thrill and quite a bit of the terror to that shattering transformation that stirs in all our souls sometime around the age of 13.” Caveat emptor, a much dimmer take on the musical may be found in Barnard College drama professor Shawn-Marie Garrett’s review.
Sept. 4 – Oct. 12, Curran Theatre, San Francisco; $30-$99, (415) 512-7770, www.shnsf.com. (J.G.)
Spring Awakening
Janos Gereben (janosg@gmail.com) is a regular contributor to San Francisco Classical Voice.
Georgia Rowe is a Bay Area arts writer. Her work has appeared in Opera News, Gramophone, The San Jose Mercury News, The Oakland Tribune, The San Francisco Examiner, and The Contra Costa Times.
Jason Victor Serinus writes about music for Opera News, Opera Now, American Record Guide, Stereophile, San Francisco Magazine, Muso, Carnegie Hall Playbill, East Bay Express, East Bay Monthly, San Francisco Examiner, Bay Area Reporter, hometheaterhifi.com, and other publications.
Michael Zwiebach holds a Ph.D. in music history from UC Berkeley.
©2008 By Janos Gereben, Georgia Rowe, Jason Victor Serinus, Michael Zwiebach, all rights reserved.