San Francisco Classical Voice

Klein Competition Winner to Houston First Chair

Angela Fuller, 29, was named concertmaster of the Houston Symphony last week. The Seattle Symphony violinist won the $10,000 first prize at San Francisco State six years ago, chosen from among 83 contestants from 20 countries in the 15th annual Irving M. Klein International String Competition.

First-prize Klein winners since 2000 include cellist David Requiro (2006), cellist Mihai Marica (2005), violinist Jung-Min Amy Lee (2004), violist Eric Nowlin (2003), cellist Min-Ji Kim (2002), and violinist Howard Zhang (2001).

MTT in Miami: New Music Fans Wish They Were There

In the past few years, there has been a marked decline in Michael Tilson Thomas' programming of "new and unusual music" for the San Francisco Symphony, but it's a different picture on the other coast. MTT's "other orchestra," the New World Symphony — also known as "America's Orchestral Academy," which he created in 1987 and has led since — is a prizewinner for innovative programming of contemporary music and is uniformly praised for its fresh, vital presence.

Compared with the bold explorations of recent years, New World's upcoming season is somewhat tame. But MTT still managed to include a three-concert "Sounds of the Times" series, and the three-week In-Context Festival, devoted to the life and music of Dmitri Shostakovich, with orchestral concerts, chamber music, film presentations, discussion sessions, and more. "Sounds of the Times" features recent scores by such diverse creative voices as James MacMillan, Brett Dean, H.K. Gruber, Henri Dutilleux, Michael Gandolfi, and Jennifer Higdon.

On the strength on MTT's leadership, this "training orchestra" also manages to attract soloists of the highest caliber. This season's guests included cellist Yo-Yo Ma, soprano Renée Fleming, baritone Thomas Hampson, and violinist Christian Tetzlaff. The orchestra will appear both at Miami's new Carnival Center for the Performing Arts and in Carnegie Hall.

Anna Russell Rides Again

Among the funniest classical-music acts ever, some of Anna Russell's illustrated lectures on The Ring of the Nibelung are now available for free download from YouTube. The offering includes Part I, Part II, and Part III of the basic Russell lecture.

For higher highbrow humor, check out Natalie Dessay singing Les oiseaux dans la charmille from Offenbach's Tales of Hoffmann; Dessay's performance of Glitter and Be Gay from Candide; two famed Merolini, Anna Netrebko and Rolando Villazon, singing the duet Chiedi all'aura lusinghiera from Donizetti's The Elixir of Love; or Luciano Pavarotti singing Venti scudi from the same opera.

From the World of Musical High Finance

A Boston Globe article last week reported that James Levine is the highest-paid conductor in the U.S., with a combined salary of $3.5 million a year from the Metropolitan Opera and the Boston Symphony. Tax records show the New York Philharmonic's Lorin Maazel receiving $2.6 million, San Francisco's MTT $2.1 million (including $545,000 from the New World Symphony), and Los Angeles Philharmonic's Esa-Pekka Salonen $1.26 million.

Herbert Hoover, Concert Promoter and Humanist

Lisa Trei, of the Stanford News Service, provides information on the opening of the university's "Herbert Hoover in Poland" exhibit, and its surprising musical connections.

Long before he became the 31st U.S. president in 1928, Stanford student Hoover invited Polish composer Ignace Jan Paderewski, one of the world's leading pianists, to give a benefit concert on campus. The year was 1892, and apparently the 18-year-old Hoover botched the job badly. Because of poor scheduling and lack of publicity, only a few people attended, and Hoover asked the pianist not to play. Paderewski performed anyway, waiving his concert fee.

When Paderewski discovered that Hoover owed thousands of dollars for rental of the concert hall (in 1892?!), he covered the bill. The incident — which should have ended the relationship right then and there — instead marked the beginning of a friendship between the two men that would last a half century, until Paderewski's death in 1941. During and after World War I, when the Poles faced massive starvation, Hoover repaid his debt to Paderewski, who became Poland's prime minister in 1919, by organizing the largest relief operation ever mounted in Europe.

Between 1914 and 1922, the Hoover-created American Relief Administration (ARA) fed 200 million people. In Poland alone, more than 1.5 million people were being fed six months after the ARA entered the country in 1918. Later, during World War II, Hoover led the Commission for Polish Relief, which assisted hundreds of thousands of Poles. And in 1946, Hoover visited Poland to draft another plan that would aid Poles for the next three decades, well beyond Hoover's death in 1964.

The exhibit is open 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday at the Herbert Hoover Memorial Exhibit Pavilion.

Everybody Loves Dead Man Walking?

The Jake Heggie-Terrence McNally Dead Man Walking keeps on rolling, from its 2000 world premiere in the San Francisco War Memorial (a previous place of employment for Heggie, who worked for the S.F. Opera public relations department) through Cincinnati, New York City, Austin, Michigan, South Australia, Pittsburgh, and Calgary. This year, it was Baltimore's turn, then the European premiere in Dresden, then Malmö. Next year, it's a revival in Dresden, a production at the Vienna Klangbogen Festival, and then ... "to the moon!"

Reviews over the years have ranged from positive to ecstatic, with one notable exception. The NYC Opera premiere was met by Martin Bernheimer in the Financial Times as "a tear-jerker ... sauntering into NYCO repertory ... amid considerable brouhaha ... meretricious when it wants to be engrossing, manipulative when it needs to be poignant. It ends up shamelessly sentimental, soapy platitudes clogging simplistic messages. ... In moments of nervous agitation, Heggie's orchestra thumps out edgy rhythmic patterns and nasty dissonances in the manner of Strauss' Elektra. When lyrical flight is required — for old-fashioned set pieces that seem far too neat, far too rigid, far too pat — one encounters vibrations of the Menotti slush pump." There's always one in every crowd.