San Francisco Classical Voice

Koret's acoustics are clean, perhaps not as warm as some prefer, but with an immediacy of sound, no excessive overtones, and crisp as all get-out, without being harsh. It's a pleasure to listen to an instrument there, and it makes you hope for a similarly welcome venue when it comes to voice. There is just the slightest sense of air conditioning at work.

Koret is steeply raked (even more so than Hertz, and similar to the Berkeley Rep thrust stage), with perfect sightlines, a small stage of parquet, and dark walls covered with a feltlike material. It is attractive visually, with a huge "panoramic" screen (a complex sound system embedded behind the porous canvas). A grillwork is above the screen that opens to the street, where passersby can be seen, which can be a bit distracting during a concert. Thanks to the work of architects Herzog & de Meuron, theater consultants Auerbach & Associates, and acoustician Charles Salter, the quality of sound in Koret far exceeds what you might expect from a hall without sufficient hard surfaces.

Formenti makes up for all the interruptions you suffer when symphonies and song cycles are chopped up by ignorant applause. Probably to the dislike of some, the pianist played through all pieces, without pause, and created one uninterrupted work of many, often "dissonant," components.

With his virtuoso brilliance, seductive intensity, and fluid chameleon shifts in the music, Formenti presented Kurtág-Ives-Bartok-Webern-Bach-Stravinsky-Haydn before intermission. Afterward, there was Purcell-Kurtág-Ligeti-Liszt (and many more), as well as two never-before heard "arias" without taking a breath. From, ppp to fff, and an endless variety of dynamics and timbres, this unique fare from a great pianist gave the hall's acoustics a trial no mechanical test could. To these ears, the grade was an A plus.

Formenti will perform a similar program at Koret Wednesday night at 8 p.m.. Another performance on Saturday night offers "Nothing Is Real: Music for the Present and for the Future," where he will supposedly play two or three pianos ... at the same time. On Sunday, there will be two, brief, low-cost family concerts, which will maximize the opportunity to take in both Formenti and the new hall.

Berkeley (Symphony) Line of Succession

The process of finding a successor to Kent Nagano as music director of the Berkeley Symphony began in earnest last week with the announcement of three candidates at a Claremont Hotel gala, which honored violinist Stuart Canin.

Guest conductors next season, in what is the first of a "two-year music director search," will be Hugh Wolff (Frankfurt Radio Symphony and St. Paul Chamber Orchestra), Guillermo Figueroa (New Mexico and Puerto Rico Symphony Orchestras), and Laura Jackson (Atlanta Symphony and American Symphony Orchestra League Conducting Fellow). Nagano will conduct one concert.

Concerning the replacement of George Thomson — who resigned as associate conductor, artistic coordinator, and director of the music education program — a Symphony spokesman said "we are not seeking to fill the position of assistant conductor until our next music director is in place, so that he or she may participate in the selection of that individual.

"For our Music Education Program, Ming Luke was selected to conduct this spring's "I'm a Performer" in-school concerts, the culmination of a yearlong sequence of visits by our musicians." Luke currently serves as general director and conductor of the Napa Valley Youth Symphony and as assistant conductor of the Sacramento Philharmonic.

John Adams Celebrates 60 Again

Springtime is better for celebrations than winter, so although John C. Adams was born on Feb. 15, 1947 (in Worcester, Mass.), the city of Berkeley chose April 21 to declare John Adams Day, in celebration of his 60th birthday. The event, free and open to the public, is at Crowden Music Center on Saturday from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. Berkeley Mayor Tom Bates will present Adams with an official city proclamation to express the community's appreciation for Adams' ongoing efforts on behalf of children and music.

Performances by young Crowden Music Center musicians are scheduled. Adams is expected to speak about his own childhood musical experiences, followed by the screening of film footage of Adams in the preparation of such works as his opera Doctor Atomic.

Adams and Crowden have been linked for many years: Both his children graduated from the school, and his wife, Deborah O'Grady, served for over a decade on Crowden's board of trustees. A close friend of founder Anne Crowden (1928-2004), Adams shares the Scottish violinist's vision of music education for the young.

Premiere at Crowden

Students at Crowden School will turn attention from one Berkeley composer (see item above) to another, as they present the premiere of Laurence Rosenthal's Vienna: Sweet & Sour, at 7 p.m. on May 24 at the First Congregational Church in Berkeley. Musicians from the sixth, seventh, and eighth grades will be conducted by Oakland East Bay Symphony conductor Michael Morgan, in the culmination of the school's annual "Celebration of Spring" concert. On the program: chamber works by Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven, José White, Chausson, and Bloch, as well as choral works by Brahms. Admission is free.

Deborah Voigt Debut Closes Stanford Season

The Stanford Lively Arts season closes on April 29 with Deborah Voigt's recital debut on campus. Accompanied by pianist Brian Zeger, the soprano sings works by Mozart, Strauss, Verdi, and Bernstein in the Memorial Auditorium. The next performing arts season will be announced tomorrow.

A Cheerful Fundraiser

A Cheerfull Noyse, a once-and-(possibly)-future East Bay music store, presents "Music in the Community," on April 22, in Albany's St. Alban's Church. The event is in support of the effort to continue services by the defunct store, possibly via the Internet.

Not Quite a Dream, But It's Still Britten

So, what's the San Francisco Conservatory of Music doing in Cowell Theater performing an opera? We are talking about the Conservatory, which just this September opened an $80 million "teaching, performance, rehearsal, and practice complex" on Oak Street. Oops: There's no facility for dramma per musica. Too bad. Still, this exported production of Benjamin Britten's 1960 A Midsummer Night's Dream went through swimmingly in four performances, Thursday through Sunday.

Cowell is a fine, cozy facility, well-suited to youthful opera by the San Francisco Opera Center. The younger and less experienced Conservatory students held their own, with some good voices and an orchestra — under Andrew Mogrelia's tight direction — firing on a good number of cylinders. It was a kind of Siamese-Ceylonese (think The Pearl Fishers with gold temple crowns) production by Jean-Francois Revon (sets) and Alexaw Visel (costumes), directed by Richard Harrell.

The rewrite of the Shakespeare play by Britten and Peter Pears provides no improvement on the original, which is twice as long, and the elimination of Act 1 is lamentable. More to the point: Britten's music is all light and shimmer, as magical as any of his works. It's extremely difficult to perform well, or to do justice to many whisper-quiet string passages.

To Mogrelia's credit, the student orchestra stayed together: The former San Francisco Ballet conductor both controlled and supported the players. Co-concertmasters David Southorn and Thomas Yee (woodwinds), and — surprisingly — the small brass section all did well.

On the stage, in the Thursday "A" cast, Jennie Litster's big-voiced (yet not excessive) Tytania ruled. She was well-matched against Jennifer Nadig's more subtle but effective Oberon. Good balance was also in evidence in case of the two pairs of lovers, sung by Kaileen Miller, Crystal Philippi, Eric Therialt, and Adam Meza. Kate Smith excelled in the speaking (and cartwheeling) role of Puck, and William O'Neill's portrayal of Bottom was powerful in both of the character's manifestations, as an asinine stage-hugger and an actual Equus asinus (as the result of Puck's machinations).

As is true in many school productions of the original or of Britten's version, young people have a great time with the antics of the Rustics. Perhaps it's not as humorous for the audience as it would be in a professional performance, but it was extremely hilarious for the participants.

S.F. Symphony Program Changes

San Francisco Symphony has announced a number of program changes for this season and the next:

• At the April 18-21 subscription concerts, Ravel's Le Tombeau de Couperin replaces Martin's Petite Symphonie concertante. The Symphony's principal pianist, Robin Sutherland, withdrew from the performances because of an illness.
• Following two Grammy Awards for the S.F. Symphony recording of Mahler's Symphony No. 7, an extra performance of the work is scheduled on June 10, after a series of concerts June 7-9, which are sold out.
• Oliver Knussen's Symphony No. 3 will have its local premiere here during the 2008 subscription concerts, Jan. 9-13. It will be conducted by MTT, who led the work's premiere at the 1979 BBC Proms.
• S.F. Symphony Resident Conductor Benjamin Shwartz makes his subscription concert conducting debut June 5-7, 2008. He'll lead the orchestra in the premiere of Mark-Anthony Turnage's The Torino Scale. (Shwartz is leading the SFS Youth Orchestra next month, on May 20, at the 25th anniversary concert, which features Beethoven's Symphony No. 9.)

More of Gustav Mahler's No. 7

The MTT/SFS recording of Mahler's Symphony No. 7 (see item above) is also in the news as it returns to a top position on the Billboard classical chart. Other returnees are: Renée Fleming's Homage: The Age of the Diva, Rolando Villazón's opera recital disc for Virgin Classics, and Jonathan Biss' disc of Schumann piano works on EMI Classics.

New classical hits include The Essential Joshua Bell, a two-disc, digitally remastered compilation by Sony BMG Classical; Simon Rattle's new recording of Brahms' Ein deutsches Requiem, with the Berlin Philharmonic, Berlin Radio Choir, and soloists Thomas Quasthoff and Dorothea Röschmann; The Art of the Guitar, an anthology of music by composers ranging from Albéniz to Grieg to Villa-Lobos, played by David Russell; and a Harmonia Mundi release of Handel's Concerti Grossi Op. 3, performed by the Academy of Ancient Music.

Sound of the Soul in Bay Area Theaters

How about some Islamic songs about love and friendship — would that come in handy right now? Against the sensational headlines and ceaseless barrage that associates terrorists with millions of innocent people, a stunning, wonderful surprise awaited me in Morocco.

It was 2003, just a few months after the beginning of the war in Iraq, and yet at Fez ("Fès" in the French legacy) and its Festival of World Sacred Music, there was this overwhelming musical-spiritual unity on display between Arabs, Jews, Christians, and just plain folk. Not since the Summer of Love — closer to home and 40 years ago — has there been such innocent, sincere expression of people trying to come together in a world bent on tearing them apart.

Fez is magic: In the maze of the narrow alleys of the ancient (but vibrantly alive and cellphone saturated) medina, donkeys pass in the middle of teeming humanity — they've had the right-of-way since the city's birth in the eighth century, and the rule stands, even as satellite dishes crowd the rooftops of every building.

In this fabled imperial city, the festival brings together musicians from various cultures, societies, religions, and ideologies. It allows them to leave all that excess baggage behind and celebrate music and humanity. The American opera singer Julia Migenes appears along with Iran's great Sufi singer Mohamed Reza Shajarian. There's Yungchen Lhamo of Tibet chants and the Anointed Jackson Sisters and their Gospel songs, Brazilian Gilberto Gil and Indian Madhavi Mudgal. There are artists from Pakistan, Vietnam, Sénégal and, yes, even Iraq (the wonderful Farida Mohamed Ali), who make the musical scene of this historically cosmopolitan and tolerant city a model of what the world should be.

The year before and after my experience of the Fez Festival, another Bay Area visitor, the filmmaker Stephen Olsson, went to Fez. He returned with tons of video, which he fashioned into a remarkable documentary, Sound of the Soul. It was introduced at the Mill Valley Film Festival and is now in commercial distribution and playing in local theaters.

A concert film, a travelogue, a history lesson, and a mild-mannered homily, Ohlsson's work is a grand upper. It unites Berber women, a fabulous Portuguese Fado singer, a French early music ensemble, players and vocalists from Afghanistan, England, Russia, Ireland, Mauritania, Turkey, and finally, a gospel band from New York City. Among the featured groups: Farida Mahwash — the first woman in Afghanistan to be named an "Ustad" or master musician — and the Kabul Ensemble.

Ecstatic Sufi performers dominate the concert. But the sound, the music, and the "message" are all infused with sincere expressions of love and longing, against the background of a great heritage of tolerance and an ancient sanctuary for people of different faiths. Yes, it's about time again for a dose of this artless art, these legions of Candides whistling in the dark about the best of all possible worlds.

Peter Sellars: (French) Toast of the Town

Peter Sellars will have a big day here on April 29: Not only is he the featured speaker at the San Francisco International Film Festival's 50th season, he will also be honored at the French-American School's annual gala at the Four Seasons Hotel. Being in two places at virtually the same time should be no problem for the opera director who often makes a silk purse out of a sow's ear (or vice versa).

Featured at the school fundraiser will be WOW! Women of the World, who perform music of all continents. Says event cochair Patricia Kristof Moy, Music at Kohl Mansion executive director: "I'm very proud of this school. My children received an unbelievable perspective on the world from their years there. So far, my son, who is 21, has lived in New York, Paris, and Berlin, and has traveled to China, Japan, England, Spain, Austria, Turkey (last week), and Denmark (next week), all on his own, because the school imbued him with an insatiable thirst for adventure. For a tiny idea of the school's current projects, see the ABC News coverage of the school's "Project Ethiopia."

Besides Sellars, ACT Artistic Director Carey Perloff, a French-American parent of two school children, will participate in the event featuring ODC dancers with Brenda Way's Scissors Paper Stone. Peter Grunberg accompanies soprano Elza van den Heever in a concert that includes "an operatic surprise." The Culinary Honoree is Chilean-born Agustin Heneeus, innovative proprietor-vintner of Quintessa winery in the Napa Valley.

James Gaffigan: Has Baton, Will Travel

San Francisco Symphony Associate Conductor James Gaffigan just beat the East Coast's winter-storm-in-spring when he made a well-received debut at the New York Philharmonic's Young Peoples Concerts. Gaffigan also spent a week conducting his Cleveland CityMusic Chamber Orchestra. A sample program: the premiere of a violin concerto by Margret Brouwer, Stravinsky’s Danse Concertantes, and Mozart’s Symphony No. 39.

This week, Gaffigan is in Germany, conducting the Frankfurt Museum Orchestra in Bruckner's Symphony No. 6. After Frankfurt, he leads the Columbus Symphony for a week of concerts: excerpts from Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet, Faure's Pelléas et Mélisande, and Ravel's Piano Concerto in G Major with Gilmore Artist Award winner Ingrid Fliter, who is due in Davies Hall in October to perform Chopin's Piano Concerto No. 2.

Pianist Aging Gracefully, Still Not Allowed to Play in a Bar

When Yuja Wang returns to Davies Hall to play the Beethoven Piano Concerto No. 2 with the San Francisco Symphony, April 18-21, will she still be the teenage piano prodigy acclaimed on three continents? No, she says, laughing but perhaps with a tinge of regret in her voice.

On the phone from Philadelphia, where she attends the Curtis Institute, Wang isn't coy about age, the forbidden subject in the world of stars. She admits having turned 20 on Feb. 10 — so she is a teen no more, but a prodigy she remains. After next February, she might also pick up a gig in a bar. But for now, when it comes to alcohol, she is still a minor.

Born in Beijing, Wang started playing at the age of 6. She went on to study at the Central Conservatory of Music, and to perform in China and abroad. She made a habit of winning competitions and prizes, first in China, and after she moved to Canada at 14, in North America and Europe. Last year, she won the prestigious Gilmore Young Artist Award, which means, among other honors and opportunities, she will give a recital here, sponsored by Ruth Felt's San Francisco Performances. She will be featured in the Young Masters Series, on Feb. 10, 2008, at the S.F. Conservatory Concert Hall.

Since the time she landed at Curtis almost five years ago, her teacher has been Gary Graffman, former president of Curtis, and one of the most respected pianists and teachers anywhere.

Besides making her debut with some of the top orchestras here and abroad, Wang also created a unique record of "A Star Is Born" substitution. Just last month, she was called in by the Boston Symphony to replace no other than the great, if cancellation-prone, Martha Argerich. Before that, she was called to substitute for Radu Lupu in Ottawa. She has been engaged as soloist in China, Switzerland, Poland, Japan, Holland, and elsewhere — and so far, no one has ever need to substitute for her.

The Philadelphia Inquirer review after she substituted in Boston said: "Wang is a seasoned chamber musician whose best moments come from small jewellike phrases that can be particularly arresting in majestic works of Beethoven, where one doesn't always expect them. In fact, the big final flourish of Tchaikovsky's first movement wasn't pounded out to the gallery — as per usual — but integrated into the overall sonority."

Wang's previous Symphony appearances here included last September's "All San Francisco" concert, with MTT, where she played the Ravel Piano Concerto in G Major. Before that, she performed at last year's Chinese New Year concert, with Grieg's A-Minor Piano Concerto, conducted by Edwin Outwater.

On her Web site, you can hear Wang play Prokofiev, Ligeti, and Ravel, among others.