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IN Music News
S.F. Symphony Talks Cool, Ruth Crawford, Composer The Small, Plucky Home of the Met Fremont's Young Artist Winners Wagnerissimo Talking Head Writes Opera Music on the Brain
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S.F. Symphony Talks Cool, Acts Retro
By Janos Gereben
To a plaintive question about his 2000 "American Mavericks" festival, a significant highlight of his tenure here, Michael Tilson Thomas replied at a large press conference on Monday that something similar to that landmark event will come again "before I'm out of here."
In the San Francisco Symphony's relentlessly self-congratulatory season-announcement session — even against the welcome counterpoint of MTT's self-deprecating sense of humor — mention of the truly bold, exciting "American Mavericks" came as a nostalgic reminder to what was ... and what now may be missing.
For his 13th year as music director, MTT programmed the Symphony's upcoming 96th season the same way the past few years have unfolded: cautious, "marketable," and mostly safe.
Unlike relatively tiny orchestras in Oakland, Berkeley, Walnut Creek (and MTT's own New World Symphony in Miami) that present new works on almost every single concert, the $54.5 million San Francisco music machine will offer no (zero) world or U.S. premiere next season. There will be 13 works "new to SFS" (including Handel, Martinu, Barber, and Ives — "new" indeed!) on 31 subscription concerts and a dozen special events. There will also be works from two local composers: John Adams and MTT himself, although neither needs much exposure. On the other side of the ledger: 15 works by Mozart ("well featured" last year, too), 30 by Beethoven, seven by Tchaikovsky, and an entire festival of Brahms. Yes, "American Mavericks" was a long time ago.
Why beat up on the Symphony on this front, especially when it does so much good in many other ways? Because it is hoisting itself on its own petard, advertising the orchestra's "long tradition of affirming the importance of showcasing new, rarely performed, and commissioned works," while in fact it has been maintaining an overwhelming, out-of-balance emphasis on familiar Classical and Romantic works.
And now, some of the good news: SFS will present the West Coast premiere of Finnish composer Magnus Lindberg's yet-unnamed work, co-commissioned by San Francisco and the Berlin Philharmonic (which will also present the U.S. premiere on tour in New York). Lindberg and Los Angeles Philharmonic's Esa-Pekka Salonen are founders of the important experimental group the Toimii Ensemble.
All truly "new" performances will be under the baton of guest conductors: Roberto Abbado will conduct Luca Francesconi's Cobalt, Scarlet: Two Colors of Dawn, SFS Associate Conductor James Gaffigan will lead Chen Yi's Si Ji (Four Seasons), and Roberto Minczuk will introduce his fellow Brazilian Almeida Prado's Symphonic Variations.
Vladimir Ashkenazy leads the first performances here of Rautavaara's Manhattan Trilogy, Venezuelan conductor Gustavo Dudamel presents his countryman Evencio Castellanos' Santa Cruz de Pacairigua, and Alan Gilbert will conduct Steven Stucky's Son et Lumière.
Michael Tilson Thomas MTT's own programs include Ives' Psalm 90, and — with Deborah Voigt — the Barber Andromache's Farewell. MTT will conduct his own Agnegram and Notturno. The latter premiered in Carnegie Hall last year as a tribute to Paul Renzi, who retired after 50 years as SFS' principal flute. Other highlights:
Ruth Crawford, Composer Normally mild-mannered musicologist Fred Lieberman objects vehemently to my parenthetical identification of Ruth Crawford Seeger above by saying: "I think it's not a quibble to object to this as trivializing, and to point out that Ruth Crawford was one of the most significant American composers of the 1930s-'40s. Stepmothering is much less important in the annals of music history than her studies with Charles Seeger at proto-Juilliard. Her subsequent marriage to Charles, concomitant stepmothering of Pete and John, as well as birthing Mike and Peggy, was considered by many (even today) to be the beginning of the end for her highly original compositions." Writer to professor: Uncle!
The Small, Plucky Home of the Met It is always with head-shaking, eye-rolling wonderment that this column mentions that the sole availability of Metropolitan Opera broadcasts in this Cultural Paradise of the Pacific is on a tiny college station with an unusable Web page, but there you are: KUSF-FM, 90.3. In addition to the Saturday opera broadcasts (see below), KUSF also features a post-Met music broadcast by Al Covaia. Fans of the Met, of KUSF, and of Covaia are expected at the station's first "Opera Social," on March 18. Call KUSF at (415) 386-KUSF for information. Upcoming live broadcasts are on March 3 at 10:30 a.m. featuring Verdi's Simon Boccanegra, with Angela Gheorghiu, Thomas Hampson, Marcello Giordani, Ferruccio Furlanetto, and Fabio Luisi conducting. Covaia's postopera program features recordings of those principals in arias and duets by Verdi and Mozart. On March 10 at 9 a.m. (an early start because of the opera's length): Wagner's Die Meistersinger von Nuremberg, with James Morris, Johan Botha, Hei-Kyung Hong, Evgeny Nikitin, and James Levine conducting.
Fremont's Young Artist Winners Violinist David Southern, 21, won the $1,000 first-prize award last month in the Fremont Symphony's Young Artist Competition. The senior at the San Francisco Conservatory is a pupil of Ian Swenson, he plays in Symphony Silicon Valley, and is a substitute in the Marin Symphony. The second-prize winner is also a Swenson student, violinist Tao Zhang, 20. Saratoga High School junior Jennifer Wey, a 17-year-old violinist who is a pupil of Pat Burnham and a member of the San Francisco Symphony Youth Orchestra, took third place.
Wagnerissimo The Wagner Society of Northern California is one busy organization — speakers coming and going, Wagnerites meeting, arguing, and eventually uniting in their affection for the Master. There was an exotic topic scheduled for the Society's next meeting (Feb. 24 at the UCSF Laurel Heights Conference Center): a speaker was to report on Bangkok's Ring production (yes, Wagner in Thailand), but because of illness, the program changed. Marjorie Wade, a teacher of German, mythology, and folk literature, will speak about "The Nibelungenlied: Dragon Slayers and the Bride Quest." For the next meeting, on March 17 — lacking an Irish Wagner expert — UC Santa Barbara Drama Department Chair Simon Williams will speak on "Drama and Ritual in Parsifal." On April 28, a new documentary will be screened about Winfred Wagner, the most controversial of the composer's famous-infamous relatives. On May 19, it will be time for a really big cake, with 194 candles for Wagner's birthday (May 22), and a "surprise musical program." How do you surprise a Wagnerite musically? Very carefully.
Talking Head Writes Opera David Byrne presented the debut of his opera, Here Lies Love, last weekend in Carnegie Hall. The collaboration with Fatboy Slim is about former Philippines first lady Imelda Marcos. Byrne's take on Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos is that "they were like Jackie and Jack (Kennedy) in the Philippines at the time."
Music on the Brain Monday's PBS News Hour segment on "Your Brain on Music" explored Daniel J. Levitin's book of the same title. Chapter titles tell the intriguing story: "Music and Science," "What Is Music?" "Music and the Mind Machine," and "Music and Human Evolution."
(Janos Gereben is a regular contributor to San Francisco Classical Voice. His e-mail address is janosg@gmail.com.)
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