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Listening Ahead

Our Critics’ Choices of Upcoming Events in the Bay Area
for September 23 – October 6, 2008

By David Bratman, Scott Cmiel, Janos Gereben, Catherine Getches, Georgia Rowe, Jason Victor Serinus, Michael Zwiebach

Opera

Piccola Aida

In the “anything you can do I can do smaller” contest, San Francisco Lyric Opera follows Festival Opera and Berkeley Opera in challenging the big boys on their home turf. They’re cramming Verdi’s grandest opera, Aida onto the intimate Cowell Theater stage. (See review.) They’ve cast it well: Olga Chernisheva as Aida, former Adler Fellow Todd Geer as Radames, Patrice Houston as Amneris, and Roberto Gomez as Amonasro. Damn the production values; full speed ahead.

Sept. 26, 7:30 p.m., Sept. 27, 7:30 p.m., Cowell Theater, Fort Mason, San Francisco, $18-$32, children under 12 free, (800) 919-8088, www.sflyricopera.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 review.) 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.

Through Oct. 3, times vary, War Memorial Opera House, San Francisco, $20-$290, (415) 864-3330, www.sfopera.com. (J.V.S.)

Amy Tan

Die Tote Stadt

The Dead City is one of Erich Korngold’s most gripping and richly melodic operas, written at age 23. The music is reminiscent of both Puccini and Richard Strauss. Strangely, it will have its premiere here only now, 88 long years after its great success in Europe. From the man who became one of Hollywood’s most successful film composers, this is a work reminiscent of Hitchcock’s Vertigo. The story is about a man (sung by Torsten Kerl) whose obsession with his dead wife (Emily Magee) places him in a world torn between painful reality and yearning fantasy. Willy Decker’s intriguing production arrives in San Francisco from the Vienna State Opera and the 2004 Salzburg Festival. Donald Runnicles conducts.

Sept. 23 and 26, 8 p.m.; Oct. 1, 7:30 p.m.; Oct. 4, 8 p.m.; Oct. 9, 7:30 p.m.; Oct. 12, 2 p.m., War Memorial Opera House, $15-$260, (415) 864-3330, www.sfopera.com. (J.G.)

Thorston Kerl (center), who will sing the role here

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Chamber Orchestra

Eisenhower With an Eye on Today

The Castro Valley Chamber Orchestra will premiere a new work by Jack Curtis Dubowsky, conducted by Josh Cohen, and featuring NBC11 reporter Scott Budman as orator. The Eisenhower Farewell Address, like Aaron Copland’s Lincoln Portrait, uses a speaker in conjunction with live orchestra. The text is excerpted from one of the most renown Presidential speeches in U.S. history, Eisenhower’s 1961 address, his televised warning from the Oval Office of a growing danger he called the “military-industrial complex,” the first use of the term to describe the iron triangle of the military, the government, and the defense industry.

Oct. 5, 2 p.m., Castro Valley Center for the Arts, $10 suggested donation, (510) 889-8961, www.cvorchestra.org. (C.G.)

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Recital

Pablo Sáinz Villegas

Winner of the Gold Medal at the inaugural Christopher Parkening International Guitar Competition, Pablo Sáinz Villegas presents a program of Spanish classics by Albeniz, Turina, and Rodrigo as well as music from outside the European tradition by Villa-Lobos and Domeniconi.

Sept. 27, 8 p.m., Green Room, San Francisco $30, (415) 242-4500 or (650) 726-1203, www,omniconcerts.com, www.omniconcerts.org. (S.C.)

Garrick Ohlsson

One of the great interpreters brings his alternately vigorous and distinctively delicate touch on the keyboard to the South Bay in a solo recital program of early sonatas by Beethoven (the “Pathétique” and Op. 22) and by Scriabin (No. 2, the “Sonata-Fantasy”).

Sept. 28, 7 p.m., McAfee Center, Saratoga, ticket prices not yet available, (408) 295-6500, www.steinwaythebayarea.com. (D.B.)

Garrick Ohlsson

Isabel Bayrakdarian Sings of Armenia

The visually and artistically spectacular soprano Isabel Bayrakdarian, accompanied by the Manitoba Chamber Orchestra, sings a concert that is not for the faint of heart. It centers on the celebration of a contemporary composer all but completely unknown in these parts. The composer in question is Gomidas Vartabed (1869-1935), the soprano’s fellow Armenian, the country’s national composer. Besides Vartabed’s Songs of Yearning, Songs of Nature of Love, and other works, the soprano will also sing works by Bartók, Ravel, Nikos Skalkottas, and Gideon Klein.

Oct. 4, 8 p.m., Herbst Theatre, $40-$65, (415) 392-2545, www.performances.org. (J.G.)

Isabel Bayrakdarian

More Hot Beethoven

As the tours through Beethoven piano sonatas continue at major Bay Area presenters, we should not forget the locals engaged in similar quests. William Corbett-Jones, longtime San Francisco State faculty member will give an all-Beethoven concert consisting of the Opus 27 sonatas (which include the “Moonlight”), the experimental Op. 26 in A-flat Major, and the “Appassionata” sonata (Op. 57, in F Minor).

Oct. 5, 3 p.m., Knuth Hall, Creative Arts Building, San Francisco State, $10-$15, (415) 338-1431, www.musicdance.sfsu.edu. (M.Z.)

Goode Keeps Going

Music lovers have to be glad that Richard Goode has decided to skip retirement for now. The 65-year-old pianist may be collecting Social Security, but he is still one of the most musical and intellectually incisive pianists alive. In his Cal Performances recital, of Bach and Chopin, both his beauty and warmth of tone and his natural and persuasive way of rendering complex thoughts will come to the fore.

Oct. 5, 3 p.m., Zellerbach Hall, UC Berkeley, $34-$62, (510) 642-9988, www.calperformances.org. (M.Z.)

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Contemporary

Bluegrass and Bach

Winner of a MacArthur Foundation grant, bassist and composer Edgar Meyer pursues his passion for contemporary bluegrass music and J.S. Bach from the stage of Herbst Theatre, courtesy of San Francisco Performances. One of the trio that recorded the best-selling album Appalachia Waltz, he collaborates with a variety of musicians across traditional boundaries. In this concert he teams with brilliant bluegrass mandolinist Chris Thile. Thile is also a composer, and an extended suite of his was recently premiered in Zankel Auditorium at Carnegie Hall. So an evening of their compositions with some Bach thrown in promises to be ear-opening, as well as a lot of fun.

Oct. 2, 8 p.m., Herbst Theatre, San Francisco, $32-$49, (415) 398-6449, www.performances.org. (M.Z.)

Struck, Plucked, Scraped, and Shaken

Composer Maki Ishii, who died five years ago, spent the latter part of his creative life in a search for a kind of Japanese “third stream,” treading a path between Japanese traditional and European contemporary musics. Although hardly a retrospective, the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players’ first concert of the season is anchored by two of his later works, one for percussion and the other for harp. One of the later works of the protean György Ligeti, for four percussionists and mezzo-soprano, opens the program, followed by the world premiere of Yiorgos Vassilandonakis’ Cochleas and the U.S. premiere of Franck Bedrossian’s Digital.

Oct. 6, 8 p.m., Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Forum, San Francisco, $10-$28, (415) 278-9566, www.sfcmp.org. (M.Z.)

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Chamber Music

Eccentric Escher

The always interesting Escher Quartet, veterans of the two most recent Music@Menlo Festivals, bring their motoric rhythms and compressed interpretations to San José’s chamber music series. They’re eccentric but worth a listen. The varied repertoire includes Mozart, Zemlinsky, Shostakovich, and — to crown the concert — Beethoven’s Third “Razumovsky” Quartet.

Sept. 28, 7 p.m., Le Petit Trianon, San José, $25-$40, (408) 286-5111, www.sjchambermusic.org. (D.B.)

Escher String Quartet

Photo by Tristan Cook

Ready for Anything

The Laurel Ensemble is a versatile sextet consisting of violinist Christina Mok, violist Jenny Douglass, cellist Krisanthy Desby, pianist Lori Lack, flutist Sarah Holzman, and clarinetist Ann Lavin. These well-regarded instrumentalists can break into a variety of subgroups, making their concert programming quite broad, for a chamber group. Witness their program at Dominican University: a Beethoven clarinet trio, Heitor Villa-Lobos’ Jet Whistle for flute and cello, another duo by Rebecca Clarke, and a Duruflé trio for flute, viola, and piano.

Sept. 28, 3 p.m., Angelico Hall, Dominican University, $10-$18 (free for Dominican faculty, staff, and students), (415) 257-0128, www.dominican.edu/events.html. (M.Z.)

Conservatory Comrades

San Francisco Conservatory of Music has no shortage of distinguished musician/professors, and Jean-Michel Fonteneau and Axel Strauss are two of the best. The Freight and Salvage is a great, intimate venue and Schubert’s rapturously lyrical Quintet in C Major is quite possibly the composers’, and chamber music’s, finest written. Guest artists are: Leonie Bot, violin; Benjamin Simon, viola; and Dana Putnam Fonteneau, cello.

Sept. 29, 8 p.m., Freight and Salvage, Berkeley, $8.50, (510) 548-1761, www.sfchamberorchestra.org. (C.G.)

Two for Beethoven

The redoubtable duo of cellist Bonnie Hampton and pianist Paul Hersh have already sold out their faculty recital at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. The program is all-Beethoven, including the two marvelous sonatas of Op. 102. If you want tickets — and you should — call the box office and get put on the wait list for returned tickets, or call on the day of the concert.

Sept. 29, 8 p.m., Recital Hall, San Francisco Conservatory of Music, $15-$20, (415) 503-6275, www.sfcm.edu. (M.Z.)

Völs Quartet

The young Völs Quartet makes their Berkeley Chamber Performances appearance a memorable one, with four, extremely contrasted pieces: the Elegie and Polka by Shostakovich, Four for Tango by Astor Piazzolla, Crisantemi (Chrysanthemums) by Puccini (yes, the opera composer), and Edvard Grieg’s Quartet in G Minor, Op. 27.

Sept. 30, 8 p.m., Berkeley City Club, $10-$20 (high school students and younger, free), (510) 525-5211, www.berkeleychamberperform.org (M.Z.)

Alexander Back With More Beethoven

This October, following on the heels of two September San Francisco Performances concerts by the Alexander String Quartet, you will have the opportunity to see the group tackle even more Beethoven. Once again, the illuminating series features a lecture demonstration by the veteran elucidator Robert Greenberg, and once again it is all about the composers’ string quartets. The Berkeley performance — the third and final installment in this multiyear survey of his works — is devoted to the Quartet in C-sharp Minor, Op. 131. And the two bonus Mondavi center performances will feature the Quartet in D Major, Op. 18, No. 3; and the Quartet in F Major, Op. 18, No. 1 before the group returns to S.F. Performances in December.

Oct. 4, 10 a.m., St. John’s Presbyterian, Berkeley, (415) 398-6449; Oct. 5, 2 p.m., 7 p.m., Mondavi Center for the Performin Arts, Davis, (866) 823-2776, $20-$40, www.asq4.com. (C.G.)

Alexander String Quartet

Afiara Quartet

The Afiara String Quartet is in residence at San Francisco State University, but they take time to cross the bay and open the season of “Sunday@4” concerts at the Crowden Music Center in Berkeley. Fresh from a trip to Munich, where they received second prize in the prestigious AMD International Music Competition (Germany’s largest competition for classical musicians), they bring their powerful, unified sound to a program ranging from Alban Berg’s Lyric Suite to Beethoven’s second “Razumovsky” quartet.

Oct. 5, 4 p.m., Crowden Music Center, $12 (free for children 18 and under), (510) 559-6910, www.crowden.org. (M.Z.)

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Crossover

The Streets Are Alive

“Hit the Streets” and head to Union Square Park for not one, but three performances of highlights from StringWreck, the evening-length collaboration between choreographers Janice Garrett and Charles Moulton and the Del Sol Quartet. The day promises to blur the boundary between dance and music: At the premiere in April at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts one dancer wrestled a violinist, instrument in hand, to the floor while another dancer tugged on a violist’s hair while he played on. And if you can manage to avert your eyes, you’ll find even more happening on the street in paintings by chalk artist Tracy Lee Stum.

Sept. 25, 12:30 p.m., 1:30 p.m., 2:30 p.m., Union Square Park, S.F., (415) 374-0074, www.delsolquartet.com. (C.G.)

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Master Class

Coach Hampson

Performer, musicologist, and musical Americana promoter, voice coach Thomas Hampson is among the finest master class coaches. He will now appear in a Master Workshop, apparently a master class on a graduate level, hosting the first event in Lieder Alive! — a program that’s working on engaging some great singers, including Christa Ludwig, Thomas Quasthoff, Adrianne Pieczonka, and Angelika Kirchschlager. Apparently, Marilyn Horne has already signed up, for next summer.

Maxine Bernstein is program director, and she managed to get Hampson for two consecutive evenings of “Mostly Mahler” workshops with such worthies as S.F. Opera Adler Fellows Heidi Melton and Katharine Tier.

October 1 and 2, 7 p.m., San Francisco Conservatory of Music Concert Hall, $15-$20 [$30 for both evenings], (415) 561 0100, www.cityboxoffice.com.
(J.G.)

Hampson in master class action

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Gala

Marsalis + Brazil = Festa

The season opener at Stanford Lively Arts might just set the standard for these kinds of things. The 2008–2009 season kicks off with a Brazilian themed evening — the honorary host is Maurício E. Cortes Costa (Consul General of Brazil) and Grammy winner Branford Marsalis and Philharmonia Brasileira join together for a performance of Marsalis Brasilianos. Following the concert is a cocktail reception with live music by Brazilian vocalist Claudia Villela and guitarist Ricardo Peixoto and a formal dinner at 6 p.m. with gourmet Brazilian cuisine.

Oct. 5, 2:30 p.m., Memorial Auditorium, Stanford University, $500 for the package, (650) 723-2551, www.livelyarts.stanford.edu. (C.G.)

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Symphony

Inspired by Challenge

The fearless Redwood Symphony under Eric Kujawsky stares down another concert whose repertoire would cause other community orchestras to flinch. They will perform Gyorgy Ligeti’s famous essay in orchestral timbre, Atmosphères, and Ravel’s La Valse on the same program. As if that isn’t enough, they join local teenage wonder Chloe Pang in Prokofiev’s Piano Concerto No. 3. “Intrepid” doesn’t begin to cover this group.

Sept. 27, 8 p.m., Cañada College Main Theater, Redwood City, $10-$20 (children under 10, free), (650) 366-6872, www.redwoodsymphony.org. (M.Z.)

Diablo Symphony

Here’s a community orchestra that has been around for 46 years, yet you rarely hear about them. It has signed on superpianist Temirzhan Yerzhanov for their next concert. With Music Director Joyce Johnson-Hamilton on the piano, he plays the Tchaikovsky’s First Concerto, and then the orchestra offers the Brahms Third Symphony.

Sept. 28, 2 p.m., Dean Lesher Regional Center for the Arts, Walnut Creek, $20, (925) 935-7764, www.diablosymphony.org. (M.Z.)

Conservatory Orchestra

The S.F. Conservatory of Music Orchestra is back in action for two concerts featuring Steve Reich’s The Four Sections — the composer’s original, enjoyable take on the concerto for orchestra genre — and Shostakovich’s 10th Symphony, one of his greatest essays in the genre.

Oct. 4, 6, 8 p.m., Concert Hall, San Francisco Conservatory of Music, $15-$20, (415) 503-6275, www.sfcm.edu. (M.Z.)

Tango Time

The Marin Symphony kicks off its season with a pops concert event. The high-profile Quartet San Francisco drops by to help premiere some tango arrangements and new tango compositions by their lead violinist, Jeremy Cohen. A pair of dancers, Sandor and Parissa, will add flavor to the evening. And if you like your pops concerts sprinkled with orchestral warhorses, the Symphony has you covered there, too, with (wait for it … ) Ravel’s Bolero and Rimsky-Korsakov’s Capriccio espagnol.

Oct. 5, 7:30 p.m.; Oct. 7, 7:30 p.m.; Marin Center, San Rafael, $27-$65, (415) 479-8100, www.marinsymphony.org. (M.Z.)

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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.

Through Oct. 12, Curran Theatre, San Francisco; $30-$99, (415) 512-7770, www.shnsf.com. (J.G.)

Spring Awakening

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Choral

Wondrous Free

Chanticleer, the celebrated men’s chorus, opens its local season with a festival of American song stretching from Francis Hopkinson’s “My Days Have Been So Wondrous Free” (1759), to a newly commissioned work by David Conte (also the director of the San Francisco Conservatory’s fine chorus).

Sept. 25, 8 p.m., First Congregational Church, Berkeley; Sept. 26-27, 8 p.m., Sept. 28, 5 p.m., San Francisco Conservatory of Music; $25-$44, (415) 252-8589, www.chanticleer.org. (M.Z.)

Clerestory

From their first concert, the men’s choir Clerestory has been a beacon of light. Now in their third season, the group, composed partly of Chanticleer vets, offers another fine program of “undiscovered” music. Featured Renaissance composers are Monteverdi, Carlo Gesualdo, and others. The concert also includes a set of young, Bay Area composers, and a tribute to Ralph Vaughan Williams in honor of the 50th anniversary of his death.

Sept. 27, 8 p.m., St. Mark’s Lutheran Church, San Francisco; Sept. 28, 5 p.m., St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, Berkeley; $17, www.clerestory.org. (M.Z.)

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Dance

Romeo and Juliet, on Motifs of Shakespeare

Choreographer Mark Morris returns to Berkeley with his latest evening-length work, Romeo and Juliet, on Motifs of Shakespeare. Morris is always interesting, but this event offers something more: an opportunity to hear one of the world’s beloved ballet scores as the composer intended it. With Romeo and Juliet, Prokofiev departed significantly from Shakespeare, conceiving an alternate ending in which the star-crossed lovers live. The Soviet regime intervened, and Prokofiev was forced to make major revisions; as a result, he never heard the original score during his lifetime. It was recently recovered from the Russian State Archive by Princeton musicologist Simon Morrison and was revived last month at Bard College, with Morris’ new choreography and Leon Botstein conducting the American Symphony Orchestra. Cal Performances presents the production’s West Coast premiere. The Mark Morris Dance Group is joined by the Berkeley Symphony Orchestra under Stefan Asbury in four performances at Zellerbach Hall.

Sept. 25-27, 8 p.m.; Sept. 28, 3 p.m., Zellerbach Hall, UC Berkeley campus, $42-$94, (510) 642-9988, www.calperformances.org. (G.R.)

Dancers in Mark Morris’ Romeo

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Early Music

An Evening With Bach

Highlights of the Voices of Music concert in September are hard to choose from. If you don’t get your fill on Bach’s fugues, arias, sonatas, and preludes featured in the performance, then feast on his cantata Ich habe genug (I have enough) written in Leipzig for the Feast of the Purification. The performers are the early music mavens we have come to know and celebrate: Laura Heimes, soprano; Louise Carslake, traverso, recorder; Katherine Kyme and Carla Moore, baroque violin; Lisa Grodin, baroque viola; William Skeen, baroque cello; David Tayler, archlute, theorbo; and Hanneke van Proosdij, organ, recorder.

Sept. 26, 8 p.m., First Lutheran Church, Palo Alto; Sept. 27, 7:30 p.m., St. John’s Presbyterian, Berkeley; Sept. 28, 4 p.m., St. Mark’s Lutheran; $22-$25, (415) 474-1608, www.sfems.org. (C.G.)

Charpentier the Pleasure-Seeker

When Warren Stewart’s Magnificat performs their core 17th-century repertory, the appeal of this music becomes instantly obvious, and not a matter for specialists and hard-core fans. Expect the usual sparks to fly when the group takes up Marc-Antoine Charpentier’s divertissements Les Plaisirs de Versailles and La Couronne des fleurs. This is Charpentier in a vein you will have rarely encountered, and it should be a jewel of a concert.

Oct. 3, 8 p.m., First Lutheran Church, Palo Alto; Oct. 4, 8 p.m., St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, Berkeley; Oct. 5, 4 p.m., St. Mark’s Lutheran Church, San Francisco, $10-$30, (800)-853-8155, www.magnificatbaroque.org. (M.Z.)

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• November 18 – December 1, 2008
• November 11 – 24, 2008
• November 4 – 17, 2008
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