San Francisco Classical Voice

At 19th and Ortega: Masters Come and Go

The San Francisco Conservatory of Music is an especially busy place these days, with the master class program in high gear. Pianist Murray Perahia stayed overnight after his Sunday concert in Berkeley to entertain a full Hellman Hall Monday morning. Violinist Christian Tezlaff will vary his SF Symphony soloist schedule with a Conservatory master class on Friday (in the Agnes Albert Hall, open and free to the public).

Other free master classes are by cellist Peter Hoerr on April 16, guitarist Ricardo Iznaola on April 17, cellist Scott Klusdahl on April 27. Soprano Ruth Ann Swenson returns for a second master class, on May 3, and the good news is that Elly Ameling, who had to cancel an appearance before, will try again, on a yet undetermined date.

On Monday, Perahia worked with an all-Asian cast of talented young pianists in an unusual manner of coaching. It was an hour and 20 minutes before he first corrected a specific phrase. Otherwise, he spoke only of the over-all interpretation, the meaning of the piece, bringing up references to literature and the composer's background. Asked after the class about his priorities, he said interpretation comes first and foremost, "emotions and love, without which playing becomes mechanical; after that, you can pay attention to the drudgery of notes."

He teaches and gives master classes, Perahia said, because he is worried about the future of classical music and "education is the only way to assure the continuation of what is essential to human beings. Music is the only easy way to believe in God, it is full of miracles," he said. The faculty-chosen participants were two 23-year-olds from China, Ami Zhou and Hang Li; Eri Nakamura, 21, from Hiroshima, and Teresa Yu, 20, from Taiwan.

Susa and Wagner

Others may be visiting the Conservatory, but SFCM Composition Department chair Conrad Susa is going in the other direction, to pay a visit to the Wagner Society of Northern California and speak about conducting Wagner. The composer of Dangerous Liasions, among many other works, will discuss the conductor's role in preparing a performance, what is involved in learning conducting, the variety of different conducting styles and issues related to conducting different musical forms.

Susa will also speak about Wagner's ideas about conducting, as presented in his essay On Conducting, and his own work with such great Wagner conductors of the past as Karl Böhm and Georg Solti. The event takes place at 2 p.m., Saturday, April 13, in the San Francisco Ballet Building. For information, see www.wagnersf.org.

Rebranding the Opera

The late Walter and Josephine Landor — he from Austria, she from Italy — were "typical San Franciscans," who loved opera and all the arts. He also created a huge international agency that designed some of the best-known corporate logos in the world. Having attended San Francisco Opera performances with both and knowing how they valued the Kurt Herbert Adler era there, I wonder if they would gag on this announcement from Landor Associates:

"The rebranding of the second largest opera company in North America is a triumph for both San Francisco Opera and for the opera community at large. Landor Associates... has developed a new brand strategy and visual identity to reinvent the way people experience SFO.

"In order to transform San Francisco Opera from a name and a place into a memorable and distinctive experience, Landor developed a powerful brand strategy. The new positioning was designed to communicate the emotional depth and unique artistic approach of SFO. This strategy was not to downplay the operatic productions, but to provide them with a meaningful and consistent backdrop — the SFO brand — that audiences would come to recognize and embrace."

The new general manager, Pamela Rosenberg, has given clear indication of wanting to restore the programming and casting imagination and distinction of the Adler era, which formed the background of her own operatic youth. I don't think she would say what the awkward Newspeak of the agency she engaged intimates: from "a name and place" into a bright future... via "rebranding," mostly by puzzling and ugly images deliberately unrelated to the operas they advertise. There is no polite way to comment on this residue of Dotcom nonsense. Next, repurposing?

Of Satellites and Psychoacoustics

John Robinson Pierce, 92, a prominent presence at Stanford's Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA) for many years, died last week in Mountain View. Known as the "father of communications satellites" and a writer of science fiction, he was passionately involved in computer music and psychoacoustics.

John Chowning, founding director of CCRMA, said Mr. Pierce, already in his 70s, worked at and supported the Center for a dozen years without salary, holding the unusual title of visiting professor of music, emeritus. As director of electronic research at Bell Telephone Laboratories in Murray Hill, NJ, he was responsible for coining the term "transistor" and was first to propose unmanned communications satellites to NASA, actually designing the first satellite, Echo I, launched in 1960. He was also inventor of the Pierce Gun, a vacuum tube that transmits electrons and is used in satellites and, among other things, the klystrons that power the Stanford Linear Accelerator.

It was at Bell Labs in the late 1950s that Mr. Pierce became interested in acoustics, speech, hearing and computer music. As a director at the labs, he threw his support behind Max Mathews' pioneering research in the field of computer music. After retiring from Bell, Mr. Pierce took an engineering professorship at Caltech and, from 1979 to 1982, was chief technologist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. He then joined Stanford and there convinced the Systems Development Foundation to fund computer music research to the tune of $2.7 million. He was the leading researcher into psychoacoustics (the science of how people perceive sound), particularly interested in pitch perception but also studying all aspects of acoustics — how a sound is produced, how it travels through the air and how it is processed by the ear and brain.

Mr. Pierce's The Science of Musical Sound was the textbook on the field. It was one of 20 books he authored, in addition to 300 papers, and many works of science fiction under the pen name of J.J. Coupling. A memorial service is scheduled at 2 p.m., Friday, May 3, in Stanford Memorial Church. A reception and concert will follow at CCRMA.

Those `Sly' Domingos

Plácido Domingo sings the lead, Marta Domingo is the director for the upcoming radio broadcast premiere of Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari's Sly, on the ChevronTexaco Metropolitan network, at 10:30 PDT, on Saturday, April 13.

It is a novelty well worth hearing (at the cost of tuning in), even in face of Tuesday's Financial Times review: "An unreasonable facsimile of a lame opera materialized at the mighty Metropolitan, suggesting nothing more than a vanity affair in the house of Domingo... Their costly and pretentious ego-indulgence, borrowed from the Washington Opera, probably won't be around long. Even with a beloved superstar on duty, the Met couldn't sell out the first night.

"Wolf-Ferrari's cumbersome clichés invoke second-hand Puccini with a German accent. Marco Armiliato, the conductor, tried valiantly to deflect the inherent deficiencies with loud decibels and frantic motion. Domingo sang the low-lying platitudes of the inconsequentially tragic hero with automatic-pilot warmth. Maria Guleghina exuded conscientious sympathy despite some strain as the heroine with a heart of tarnished gold." Sounds like fun.

(Janos Gereben, a regular contributor to www.sfcv.org, is arts editor of the Post Newspaper Group. His e-mail address is janos451@earthlink.net.)

©2002 Janos Gereben, all rights reserved