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IN Music News THIS WEEK:
Philharmonia a Hit from Coast to Coast
Salonen Contract Extended
A New Generation of Four-Legged Opera Lovers
Agreement, But No Joy in St. Louis
Obituaries
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By Janos Gereben
San Domenico Strings Take National Title
The Virtuoso Program Orchestra da Camera of San Anselmo's San Domenico School, directed by George Thomson, took top
honors last week at the National Orchestra Festival in Reno, Nevada. One of the titles attained by the orchestra is the "Grand
Champion" award for the most outstanding high school orchestra in the US.
The festival was staged as part of the joint convention of the American String Teachers Association and the National School
Orchestra Association. Seven hundred sixty high school musicians and 15 orchestras from nine states participated. The San Domenico
students' performance of David Diamond's Rounds and the Tchaikovsky Serenade for Strings earned them a Superior
rating and first place in the High School String Orchestra category.
The 28-piece string ensemble of the Virtuoso Program (established in 1977 by Faith France), of the 160-student, all-girl San
Domenico Upper School shared the "Grand Champion" award with the 90-piece symphony orchestra from 3,500-student Santa Monica High
School. Together, the two orchestras performed in a special Winners' Concert on Saturday as the final event of the festival. See www.sandomenico.org, and for performance sound files: www.virtuosoprogram.html.
Philharmonia a Hit from Coast to Coast Nicholas McGegan's Philharmonia Baroque, on a national tour last week, sold out both Carnegie Hall's 644-seat Zankel Hall in New York and Los Angeles' 2,265-seat Walt Disney Concert Hall, earning rave reviews on both coasts. Venturing further afield, the orchestra will perform in May at the International Handel Festival in Germany, and in August at the BBC Proms in Royal Albert Hall, and in the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, among other venues.
Salonen Contract Extended The Los Angeles Philharmonic has extended the contract of its music director, Esa-Pekka Salonen, for two more years. The Finnish conductor is now in his 13th season with the Philharmonic. Anxious to spend more time composing, Salonen, 47, indicated that he may renew his contract beyond 2008 on an annual basis.
A New Generation of Four-Legged Opera Lovers Passing on Seattle Opera's announcement last week about a training program for guide dogs, encouraging blind music fans to attend performances, we heard from a friend in New York, who has long experimented with this trans-species effort. David De Porte, president of the Guide Dog Users of New York, has been a NY City Opera subscriber and frequent Metropolitan Opera attendee. He writes: "Thanks for the news from Seattle. It's fascinating to me as Siri, my guide dog, has been to more operas than most humans in our seven years together, from [Pasiello's] La Molinara to [Schoenberg's] Moses und Aron, with much in between, at many venues. She seems to prefer Mozart, which is calming. "Moses und Aron was the first opera Siri attended and she loved it. One reason for that: there was almost no applause. When exposed to live music, most dogs' ears are hurt by very few things other than simulated thunder in a work such as The Return of Ulysses, (which did bother Siri). However, they are known to be bothered by applause of any sort. Though Rossini is one of my favorites, especially the serious works, Siri attends these somewhat grudgingly, as the singing tends to be at fever-pitch and each aria is followed by a great deal of applause. Ballet is out of the question. Applause for every move each dancer makes." For information about the Seattle Opera's cooperative plan with Guide Dogs for the Blind, see www.seattleopera.org/Puppies.pdf.
Agreement, But No Joy in St. Louis Music critic Sarah Bryan Miller of the Post-Dispatch reports that musicians and management of the St. Louis Symphony are "cautiously optimistic" about a tentative labor agreement which is expected to result in a new contract. The orchestra season was put on hold when the old contract expired at the beginning of this year. Miller reported that orchestra members "showed signs of hurt, stress and fatigue," even after word got out about the agreement. Last week, the National Labor Relations Board found that the musicians were engaged in an illegal strike because of a technicality, involving a filing by the union's lawyer. Terms of the proposed contract will not be released until this week, when the musicians vote by mail ballots.
Obituaries Bass Ara Berberian (who frequently appeared with the San Francisco Opera in the 'Sixties, pianist Lazar Berman, conductor Sixten Ehrling, and composer Hugh Davies, a pioneer in electronic music were among noted musicians who passed on in February.
(Janos Gereben, a regular contributor to www.sfcv.org, is arts editor of the
Post Newspaper Group. His e-mail address is janosg@gmail.com.)
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