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YEAR'S HIGHLIGHTS
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Berlin Staatskapelle, Daniel Barenboim, by Allan Ulrich, 1/11/04
The remarkable, if unofficial, festival of international orchestras spicing Bay Area musical life this season introduced one of the
world's oldest bands to the community Sunday evening, when the Staatskapelle Berlin, led by Conductor for Life Daniel Barenboim,
reminded Davies Symphony Hall of the untamable vigor of the Romantic movement. Barenboim is touring this country with nothing but
Robert Schumann in his luggage (some other cities will hear the concertos for piano, cello and violin). Whatever the excesses or
idiosyncrasies in these readings, they came as an antidote for or rebuff to the authentic performance practice crowd, who might
force this most refulgent of mid-19th century symphonists into a whalebone corset.
Cecilia Bartoli, by Stephanie Friedman, 2/15/04
Cecilia Bartoli has fun when she works: she has fun with her own vocal dexterity; she has fun with her accompanist (smiles were
exchanged more than once in Sunday's recital at Zellerbach Hall); she has fun with her audience and of course with her comic songs.
Comedy — a very serious concept to those who work as hard as she does — is the essence of Cecilia Bartoli's performances. But like
the Marcel Marceau skit of the man with the rapidly alternating tragedy and comedy masks, Bartoli proves that the profound sadness
of a sad song is simply the reverse of the ecstatic joy and bubbliness of a light-hearted one. The same font of artistic delirium
within her feeds both extremes of emotion.
Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Herbert Blomstedt, by George
Thomson, 2/22/04
Much of the talk — rather the hype — that has surrounded the current Music Director's spectacular tenure with the San Francisco
Symphony has carried with it a whiff of dismissiveness towards his predecessor. And it's true that the glow of extroverted, Grammy
™-fied, Maverick™ MTT(™?) energy in which we now bask does somewhat obscure some of the virtues of Herbert Blomstedt's tenure here.
It could hardly be otherwise, especially with an organization so adept at marketing itself. Since we are now knocked out of our
socks on a fairly regular basis, were we just snoozing through the dark before-time? Sometimes it's nice to have a reminder of how
lucky we were to have had what we had then, making what we have now possible.
Sunday evening's concert by Blomstedt and the visiting Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra at Davies Hall provided a wonderful
opportunity for such reflections. Through the prism of two masterworks (with two more to follow the next evening) shone supremely
confident music-making from conductor and orchestra. Throughout the great Fourth Symphonies of Beethoven and Tchaikovsky, this
well-matched team drew sustenance from what we thought was familiar, providing comfort without complacency, and eliciting affection
without affectation.
Alfred Brendel, by Jerry Kuderna, 4/11/04
Alfred Brendel, now in his seventies, has taken of late to writing poetry (or rather, as he puts it, “it has been writing itself”),
and some of it has even been set to music by the likes of Birtwhistle and Berio. However it gets written, at his recital Sunday at
Zellerbach a new strain of simplicity seemed to have invested his piano playing with added depth and directness, raising his always
impeccable artistry to yet a new level.
Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra & Chorus, by Anna Carol Dudley,
4/17/04
Saint Cecilia, the patron saint of music, presided over Philharmonia Baroque's last concert set of the season, the North American
premiere of Alessandro Scarlatti's Vespers performed in her honor. She would have been well pleased with Saturday night's
performance at the First Congregational Church of Berkeley. The orchestra, the Philharmonia chorus and the quintet of soloists were
in top form. Nicholas McGegan led the modern premiere of the Vespers in 2001, in collaboration with the German musicologists. They
had finally been able to locate all the score and parts, some of which had languished for years in a small church in Rome.
Berkeley's audience was invited to participate in a high-class recording session, distinguished by informality of dress, close
attention to scores, and little touches like the self-conducting countertenor and the soprano gleeful at having laid down a long
and difficult track.
Paul Dresher Ensemble, by David Bithell, 5/1/04
Theater is seduction. The power of the human body moving on stage, creating manifold forms of visual and verbal expression, easily
entices an audience. It has also ensnared composers — often drawing their attention to the narrow divide between bodies performing
as musicians and bodies performing as actors. Bay-Area-based Paul Dresher, composer and director of the Paul Dresher Ensemble, has
investigated this connection in his music theater work Sound Stage. A collaboration between Dresher, the contemporary music
ensemble Zeitgeist, Rinde Eckert (text, direction), and Alex Nichols (lighting and visual designer), Sound Stage is the
result of a several years of development, planning, construction, and rehearsal, and is, as Dresher freely admits, not a one-man
show. Performed at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Forum this past week, it features a blended visually stunning set, with
inventive instruments, and energetic performances.
Lara St. John, by Michelle Dulak, 5/9/04
Violinists signed by the dwindling "major labels" these days tend to be either Wunderkinder of the just-won-my-sixth-
competition, never-played-a note-out-of-tune-in-the-last-five-years kind, or else "adventurous" players with some interest in
crossover projects. Sony is particularly attracted to the latter type, and it's not terribly surprising to find them signing the
Canadian violinist Lara St. John, nor to discover that her first album for the label is a collection of heavily reworked Bach, with
tabla, electric guitar, self-overdubbing, and much else. The good news is that they are also letting her record some classical
repertoire as part of her eight-disc contract. Judging by Sunday's recital at the Florence Gould Theater, there might be brighter
things ahead than the Sony debut disc's "BADinerie."
Jordi Savall, Hespèrion XXI, by Rebekah Ahrendt,
5/12 & 14/04
Virtuoso violist da gamba Jordi Savall made a rare dual Bay Area appearance last week. In a solo recital on Wednesday, May 12, and
with his ensemble Hespèrion XXI on Friday, May 14, Savall gave audiences at Berkeley's First Congregational Church a whirlwind tour
through the history and future of a very special family of instruments. And a family affair it was — the latter-day incarnation of
his early-music group Hespèrion XXI. On this tour, it comprised Savall's wife Montserrat Figueras and their children Arianna and
Ferran, as well as Pedro Estevan, the percussionist who has been part of the Savalls' musical family for a quarter of a century.
The Savalls, so much a part of the history and development of the Early Music movement, demonstrated what this movement's future
may well look like, a future that is not “early” at all.
SF Opera's Cunning Little Vixen, by Robert
Commanday, 6/11/04
Leoš Janácek was touched with the Czech genius for theater. All nine of his operas were originals, none more so than The Cunning
Little Vixen (1924), a charmer performed by the San Francisco Opera for the first time Friday. It's an elaborate parable about
human-animal interaction, delightful and different from any of the countless allegories on that subject because it's double-edged.
It switches back and forth in perspective, making no judgments except perhaps that nature prevails, human nature, animal nature,
Mother Nature.
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