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By Janos Gereben / November 4, 2008

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Musical Memories From Another Election

It was 76 years ago, almost to the day. The General Election of 1932 fell on Nov. 8. On that day, at a time of economic turmoil far worse than ours (so far), Franklin Delano Roosevelt was elected to the first of his four presidential terms.

Within a few months, FDR created the New Deal, and then in 1935, one of its main building blocks, the Work Progress Administration, later renamed World Projects Administration. Over the years, WPA put millions of the unemployed to work, from building roads, to creating (mostly) boxy statues, to composing music — some good, some not much better than statuary faintly redolent of Socialist realism.

WPA statues on Treasure Island

Photos by Janos Gereben

The numbers of WPA projects are tremendous: 116,000 buildings, 78,000 bridges, and 651,000 miles of highways. And, just think: How much upgrading has been done in all those decades since? Perhaps a WPA Renewal is in order. As to the arts, fully 7 percent of the WPA budget was set aside for theater, music, and visual arts. One branch, the Federal Music Project, was responsible for 225,000 concerts performed across the country, involving an estimated 150 million participants and audience (at a time when the total population was 127 million).

But now, to the point: Other than the coincidence of elections and bad times, where is the news in this News item?

Last Saturday, your intrepid reporter, some 40 musicians of the Mill Valley Philharmonic, and a small but rain-defying audience congregated in Building One of Treasure Island. The occasion: celebrating the WPA. Treasure Island, the real one in the Bay, not Robert Louis Stevenson’s, was built as a WPA project — dredging up 20 million cubic yards of sea bottom — for the 1939 Golden Gate International Exposition, later to become an airport for the trans-Pacific clipper ships.

Building One as a “concert hall”

Treasure Island was just one of the Mill Valley orchestra’s round of free concerts paying tribute to the WPA and “Orchestral Music of the 1930s.” The program: Aaron Copland’s 1942 Fanfare for the Common Man, Samuel Barber’s 1939 Adagio for Strings, George Frederick McKay’s 1945 From a Moonlit Ceremony (Suite on Indian songs and dances), Ernst Bacon’s 1937 Symphony No. 2 (”Americana”). The concerts are led by MVP Director Laurie Cohen; Liam Vincent is narrator.

The schedule also calls for Nov. 8 at Cavallo Point’s The Lodge at the Golden Gate and Nov. 9 at the Bernard Osher Great Hall in the San Francisco Zoo.

And how did the Treasure Island concert go? Difficult to say. Vincent’s amplified narration came through somewhat in the sprawling, empty, echo-filled hall, but the music sounded rather like “through a glass darkly,” but in the original meaning of Corinthians 13:12 — mirrors, not lens, with the sound bouncing from wall to wall and then disappearing. FDR would not have approved, not to mention Copland, Barber, and so on.

Kalichstein at Napa

Pianist Joseph Kalichstein is featured on the next program of the Napa Valley Symphony as the soloist in the Beethoven Concerto No. 4 in G. The “Italian Festival” event, dedicated to the late Robert Mondavi, opens the orchestra’s 76th season. Conducted by NVS Music Director Asher Raboy, the concert includes the Overture to Rossini’s Italian Girl in Algiers and Mendelssohn’s Symphony No. 4 (”Italian”). The concert is on Nov. 16 at Yountville’s Lincoln Theater.

Joseph Kalichstein

Meet and Hail Afiara

The Afiara String Quartet, Quartet-in-Residence at the San Francisco State University’s International Center for the Arts, has won the 2008 Concert Artists Guild International Competition. The young quartet’s mentors, the Alexander String Quartet, was the first winner of the competition, back in 1982.

The Afiara String Quartet: David Samuel (viola), Valerie Li (violin), Adrian Fung (cello), and Yuri Cho (violin)

The ‘Record Business’ Is Not What It Used to Be

EMI, long time a leading light of music publishing, is in deep decline, with steadily declining revenues and a loss of $1.2 billion for the last financial year. Besides the general problems in the industry, EMI has been found to perform poorly, having “a high-spending culture (including high executive salaries), overly traditional artist relationships, and poor reporting of data related to artist profitability.”

EMI lost its third-place rank among the labels to Warner Music Group in 2006. Physical CD sales for the label fell 45 percent from 2005 to 2007, even though the average market decline was 19 percent. Also, the label’s digital music revenue has had slower growth than the industry overall. “EMI Music had a history of signing great artists but had not adapted sufficiently to the changing consumer market for music,” according to a fiscal report.

World Music, Youth Division

The Asian Art Museum hosts a San Francisco World Music Festival Youth Showcase at 2 p.m. on Nov. 16 in the museum’s Samsung Hall, free with museum admission. The event features young performers of Kurdish, Chinese, and Armenian music.

Kurdish singers Duygu Bayar and Berfin Oztoprak

Russian Violinist Scandal Turned Suicide

Russian violinist Sergei Diatchenko, 64, with a solo career and teaching practice in Rome, has been found by a police investigation to be selling fake Stradivaris and other antique violins to his own students and others at inflated prices. Officers recovered 197 violins from his apartment, ready to be sold. The student who tipped off the police spent $650,000 on an unexceptional violin Diatchenko had claimed to have come from Guadagnini.

Police arrested Diatchenko as he left his flat with a briefcase packed with $20,000 in cash. After being charged and released, Diatchenko returned to his home and hanged himself. He was the father of pianist-violinist Masha Diatchenko, 14, a seventh-generation musician.

Masha Diatchenko with Mstislav Rostropovich

All, No, Some of the Concerts That Fit to Print

Compiled by the Association of California Symphony Orchestras:

On Nov. 7, 8, and 9, the New West Symphony with Boris Brott, conductor and the Ventura County Ballet Company. On the program: Grieg’s Suite No. 1 from Peer Gynt, Beethoven’s Scenes from the Creatures of Prometheus, and Mussorgsky/Ravel’s Pictures at an Exhibition.
On Nov. 8 the Bakersfield Symphony Orchestra, with John Farrer, conductor. The program: Berlioz’ Overture to Beatrice et Benedict, Mendelssohn’s Incidental Music to A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Ravel’s Mother Goose Suite, and Mozart’s Symphony No 36 in C (”Linz”), K. 425.
On Nov. 8 and 9, the Master Sinfonia Chamber Orchestra, with David Ramadanoff, conductor; and Dan Levitan, harp. The program: Mozart’s Overture to Idomeneo, Bohmler’s Concerto for Harp and Orchestra, and Haydn’s Symphony No. 104 in D Major (”London”).

David Ramadanoff

On Nov. 8, the Merced Symphony, with Henrik Jul Hansen, conductor; Michelle Xiao You, violin; and Richard Cionco, piano. The program: Mendelssohn’s Concerto for Violin and Orchestra in E Minor, Addinsell’s Warsaw Concerto, and Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5.

Michelle Xiao You

On Nov. 8, the San Francisco Conservatory Orchestra, with Andrew Mogrelia, conductor; and Aleksey Artemev, piano. The program: Rossini’s Overture: La Scala di Seta, Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1, and Brahms’ Symphony No. 1.
On Nov. 8, the San Luis Obispo Symphony, with Michael Nowak, conductor; and Alyssa Park, violin. The program: Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto in E Minor, Op. 64; Dvořák’s Symphony No. 9.

Alyssa Park

On Nov. 8, 9, and 10, the Santa Rosa Symphony, with Bruno Ferrandis, conductor; and Gilles Apap, violin. The program: Ligeti’s Lontano, Berg’s Violin Concerto, and Schubert’s Symphony No. 9, “The Great.”

Gilles Apap

On Nov. 9 the Oakland Youth Orchestra, with Michael Morgan and Bryan Nies, conductors. The program: Corelli’s Concerto Grosso, Handel’s Concerto Grosso, Arnold’s Solitaire, and Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5.
On Nov. 9 the Sacramento Youth Symphony, with Michael Neumann, conductor. On the program: Wagner, Weinberger, and Shostakovich
On Nov. 9 the Yorba Linda Symphony Orchestra, with Robert Frelly, conductor. The program: Smetana’s The Moldau, Rossini’s William Tell Overture, and Strauss’ Blue Danube.

Yorba Linda Symphony Orchestra

On Nov. 11 the Santa Barbara Chamber Orchestra. Program TBA.
On Nov. 13 and 15 the Stockton Symphony, with Peter Jaffe, conductor; and Patricia Shands, clarinet. On the program: Copland’s A Lincoln Portrait, Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto, and Franck’s Symphony in D Minor.

Patricia Shands

On Nov. 14, 15, and 16, the North State Symphony, with Kyle Wiley Pickett, conductor. The program: Rossini’s The Barber of Seville Overture, Schoenberg’s Transfigured Night, and Beethoven’s Symphony No. 4.
On Nov. 14, the Oakland East Bay Symphony, with Michael Morgan, conductor; and vocalists Eisa Davis and Manoel Felciano. The program: George Antheil’s Jazz Symphony, Nathaniel Stookey’s Zipperz (with libretto by Dan Harder), and Prokofiev’s Suites from Romeo and Juliet.

Michael Morgan

On Nov. 14, 17, and 18, the San Diego Chamber Orchestra, with Jung-Ho Pak, conductor; and Masayo Ishigure, koto. The program: Mozart’s The Abduction from the Seraglio Overture, Rimsky-Korsakov’s Song of India, Tchaikovsky’s Arabian Coffee from The Nutcracker, Puccini’s Humming Chorus from Madame Butterfly, and Sawai’s Flying Like a Bird.

Masayo Ishigure

On Nov. 15, the Long Beach Symphony Orchestra, with Enrique Arturo Diemecke, conductor; Cécilia Tsan, cello; and the Cal State Long Beach choirs. The program: Ana Lara’s Canticum Sacrum, Lalo’s Concerto for Cello in D Minor, and Ravel’s Daphnis et Chloé.

On Nov. 15, the San Bernardino Symphony, with Carlo Ponti, Jr., conductor; and Janina Fialkowska, piano. The program: Beethoven’s Leonore Overture, No. 3; Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 27 in B-Flat Major, and Robert Schumann’s Symphony No. 2 in C Major.
On Nov. 15 and 16, the Fresno Philharmonic, with Theodore Kuchar, conductor; and Sarah Chang, violin. The program: Sibelius’ Lemminkainen’s Return, Brahms’ Violin Concerto, and Walton’s Symphony No. 1.

Fresno musicians John Morrice (violin), Cynthia Stuart and Claudia Shiuh (violin and viola), Judy Robinson (cello)

On Nov. 15, 16, and 17, the Monterey Symphony, with Max Bragado-Darman, conductor; and Angel Romero, guitar. The program: Ibert’s Divertissement, Rodrigo’s Fantasía para un gentilhombre, and Bizet’s Symphony in C Major.
On Nov. and 23, the California Youth Symphony, with Leo Eylar, conductor; and Dong June Kim, piano. The program: Hindemith’s Symphonic Metamorphosis, Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 3, Ravel’s Daphnis et Chloé, Suite No. 1 and 2.

Leo Eylar

On Nov. 16, the Peninsula Youth Orchestra, with Mitchell Sardou Klein, conductor. The program: Gwyneth Walker’s Concert Suite, Chabrier’s Suite Pastorale, and Franck’s Symphony in D.
On Nov. 22, the American Philharmonic, with Richard Williams, conductor; and Heidi Hau, piano. The program: Glinka’s Russlan and Ludmilla Overture, Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto No. 2, and Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 4.

Heidi Hau

Janos Gereben (janosg@gmail.com) is a regular contributor to San Francisco Classical Voice.

Comments

Thank you for posting the photos of Treasure Island; I am unable to drive on the freeway and would never have seen these had you not done so.

That is very sad about Sergei Diatchenko.

Posted by Ruth C. Jacobs on November 4, 2008 at 4:52 pm