|
YEAR'S HIGHLIGHTS
|
Berkeley Opera's Bat Out of Hell, by Michael Zwiebach,
7/16/04
The dot-com boom may have evanesced like champagne bubbles, but Bat Out of Hell, David Scott Marley's adaptation of Johann
Strauss' Die Fledermaus, is still fresh, funny and pointedly satiric in its current revival by Berkeley Opera, which opened
on Friday night at the Julia Morgan Theatre. Beautifully conducted by Jonathan Kuhner, and ably sung, the show triumphed as if it
were brand new.
Music@Menlo, by Michelle Dulak Thomson, 8/10 & 13/04
Among the chief virtues of a festival like Music@Menlo is the opportunity it affords first-rank musicians to prepare works that for
purely practical reasons don't get heard often. The standard string chamber ensembles are piano trio and string quartet; you can
augment both of them in fairly obvious ways — extra strings to the quartet for a string quintet or sextet, an extra viola to the
trio for a piano quartet; a pianist to the string quartet or (more rarely) a violinist and violist to the piano trio for a piano
quintet. But how often do you get a chance to add a soprano comfortable with the Russian language to a piano trio? And how often is
it practical to subtract a violinist from your string quartet while adding an extra cello? A Shostakovich song cycle and an Arensky
quartet, both appearing on the last, Russian program of Music@Menlo (heard 8/13), demonstrate what you can program when you don't
have to worry about that sort of thing. And if the previous, Eastern European program (heard 8/10) didn't venture afield in the
same way, it had the same atmosphere, of great musicians getting to play stuff that the rest of the year they generally can't, with
people having as much fun as they are.
Opera San Jose's Nozze di Figaro, by Janos Gereben,
9/18/04
With remarkable punctuality under the potentially chaotic circumstances of a premiere in a new house, at 8:03 Saturday evening,
Opera San Jose had its big moment. A mightily gussied-up audience of 1,100 rose in the reconstructed California Theater to sing the
"Star-Spangled Banner," marking the company's move into this old movie palace, spectacularly refurbished by $74 million worth of
richly gilded arches and bordello-red flower-patterned carpets.
All that and — unexpectedly — great acoustics of the kind no money can buy, but only luck can drop onto your lap, especially in
this 1927 barn of a building. To the company's credit, it didn't waste the occasion on some gala fluff; to the contrary, it took on
Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro.
SF Opera's Billy Budd, by Robert Commanday, 9/26/04
Britten's Billy Budd, one of the more consistently successful operas of the late 20th century, came off well again Sunday in the
production, new here, by the San Francisco Opera. The work, in its musical and dramatic clarity, always seems to elicit
performances of such quality as this and to interact directly with audiences.
SF Symphony's Mahler 9, by Charles Barber, 10/3/04
Now we know what the San Francisco Symphony can sound like. And now we know what Mahler 9 could sound like. At Sunday
afternoon's concert, the last in a set of five performances being recorded for the orchestra's own label, an extraordinary case was
made for both.
It was the finest display of orchestral virtuosity I have yet heard in this ensemble. Blend and balance, line and phrase, direction
and energy and color all magically cohered around a single agenda. Every section brought glory to itself and found glory in the
music. This was a deeply impressive event at every level.
Ian Bostridge, by Stephanie Friedman, 10/25/04
The Romantic hero in Wilhelm Müller's poetic cycle, Die Winterreise, like many so many other Romantic heros of the 19th
century, is not a particularly likable fellow. He suffers mightily, and he talks a lot about it. He shuns society, from which he
feels alienated by virtue of his surpassing sensitivity. He feels a greater kinship with nature than with his fellow human beings.
Why should we want to spend well over an hour in his company? The answer is Franz Schubert, who seized on Müller's creation
gratefully, seeing in him a means to fathom his own deep caverns of suffering and creativity — Schubert and, it must be said,
artists of the calibre of Ian Bostridge, tenor, and Leif Ove Andsnes, piano, who presented a heart-scouring performance of
Schubert's late cycle, Winterreise (Winter Journey), in Herbst Theatre last Monday night.
SF Opera's Le Grand Macabre, by George Thomson,
10/29/04
A bombed-out, apocalyptic cityscape. Abundant and graphic violence. Sadomasochism. Dark yet "relevant" political humor. A woman
wielding a spit. A man wearing false breasts. Humping of impressive geometrical variety.
Just another night at the opera these days, you might think.
Except that it's not Abduction from the Seraglio, or Un ballo in maschera, or a bold new take on Iolanthe. No
sir: last Friday night at the San Francisco Opera, traditionalists could not cavil; all these things were supposed to be there, in
the long-awaited American premiere of György Ligeti's Le Grand Macabre. [ . . . ]
BluePrint Project, by Jonathan Russell, 11/6/04
Saturday night, at the San Francisco Conservatory's Hellman Hall, the Conservatory's BluePrint new music series presented a fresh
and colorful program centered around the works of Kurt Weill. Following on a stellar concert centered on Ligeti a few weeks ago,
the program indicated that this series is becoming an important part of the City's new music scene and that the Conservatory
students and faculty have a lot to contribute thereto.
English Concert, Andrew Manze, by Joseph Sargent, 11/7/04
The dynamic Andrew Manze's recent installation as director of the famed English Concert, following seven years of leading the
Academy of Ancient Music, was guaranteed to attract the attention of early music aficionados. And, sure enough, the group has
already made waves with a recording of the Mozart warhorse Eine kleine Nachtmusik, widely heralded for its highly expressive
approach. The English Concert's Sunday performance at Stanford University's Memorial Auditorium, their Bay Area debut with Manze at
the helm, offered strong proof that he has lost none of his ability to captivate, not only as a soloist but as the director of a
group that brings to the stage a winning combination of creative energy and airtight ensemble polish.
Magnificat, by Michelle Dulak Thomson, 11/14/04
I might grow weary someday of talking up seventeenth-century music, but hardly of listening to it; so I am grateful once again that
we have Warren Stewart and his ensemble, Magnificat, to do the talking (and playing, and singing) up. Magnificat's last program
(heard Sunday at St. Gregory Nyssen Episcopal Church, San Francisco), involved the usual Magnificat suspects: the continuo team of
Stewart (cello), Hanneke van Proosdij (harpsichord), and David Tayler (mostly theorbo); violinists Rob Diggins and Cynthia
Freivogel; and sopranos Jennifer Ellis and Catherine Webster. The theme this time was Claudio Monteverdi; and, given the scale,
there could hardly have been a better survey.
SF Symphony, Yan Pascal Tortelier, by Eric Valliere, 12/1/04
It was a magical night for viola lovers. In a meaty program the SF Symphony under guest conductor Yan Pascal Tortelier presented
fine solo playing and introduced Britten's Double Concerto to Bay Area ears. Sandwiching Britten's sinewy, youthful work were
Chausson's mostly flabby Symphony in B-flat and Elgar's downright beefy In the South. That's a lot to chew on, and in the
end it may have been too much.
Ekaterina Semenchuk, by Stephanie Friedman, 12/5/04
Ekaterina Semenchuk, the marvelous mezzo from Minsk, gloriously defies the usual descriptions. It is useless and inappropriate to
speak of her singing in terms of dynamics, diction, pitches. When she sings Russian songs, any listener with a Russian soul (one is
writing this review) is riven. Semenchuk's voice is her soul and must be listened to, not with the ears but empathically, with a
hearkening soul. It needn't be a soul of the same nationality: the polyglot audience at Hertz Hall Sunday afternoon knew what they
were hearing and sat forward in their seats as one body, ever eager to hear more.
|
