|
MUSIC SHORTS
January 23, 2001
|
By Janos Gereben
Moonlighting Sonata
You can't keep a good musician down, and members of the San Francisco Symphony prove that these days, in spades. In addition to their virtually year-round heavy schedule of rehearsals and performances, they are now popping up all over town, playing music.
Symphony violinist Florian Parvulescu and cellist Larry Granger will join pianist Priscilla Carter Granger as soloists in the Beethoven Triple Concerto, in a Symphony Parnassus concert at 3 p.m., Sunday, February 4, in the SF Calvary Presbyterian Church, at Fillmore and Jackson streets. Also on the program — conducted by veteran SFS bassoonist Stephen Paulson, Parnassus music director — is Anton Reichas' 1806 Overture in 5/8 Time and Brahms' Second Symphony. For information, see http://itsa.ucsf.edu/~lder
At 12:30 p.m. on Tuesday, February 6, Symphony oboists Julie Ann Giacobassi, Evgeny Izotov, and Roger Wiesmeyer play an unusual trio for two oboes and English horn by Beethoven and a recent piece by John Marvin called Music from the Night. The concert is part of the noontime series of free programs in the Bank of America's Giannini Auditorium, at California and Montgomery.
Mackerras "Slowing Down" Charles Mackerras, who celebrated his 75th birthday last month conducting Der Rosenkavalier in San Francisco, told the Financial Times on Saturday that he is not retiring, but easing up on his schedule. "I really am not going to be able to continue conducting much longer," he said, mostly because of a continuing shoulder ailment, which deprived San Francisco of his presence for the last four years. He is accepting engagements through 2003 but cannot guarantee that he will fulfill them. "I treat each orchestra differently," Mackerras said, comparing his Semele performances in London and in the War Memorial. "The orchestra at Covent Garden is always sympathetic. I did Semele a few times, and I rather think it got better each time, more Handelian. In San Francisco, although they said they didn't like it, they were extraordinarily good at doing Baroque-style bowings."
New Home For NYC Opera? Nobody will confirm it, but everybody is talking about renewed hopes for a facility of its own for the New York City Opera, which is sharing Lincoln Center's State Theater with the NYC Ballet, none too readily or happily. The new impetus for the long-wished-for theater is New York City's pledge last week of a quarter of a billion dollars to support a $1.5 billion overhaul of Lincoln Center. A master plan for the entire project — also involving extensive rebuilding of Avery Fisher Hall and the Metropolitan Opera — is due this summer, and groundbreaking is expected by early 2002. Next time somebody (perhaps from the new presidential administration?) talks ill of subsidy for the arts, you may mention this fact: In the 40 years since the birth of the performing arts center in a former slum area, the real estate boom in the 10-block radius around Lincoln Center has resulted in the building of 34 high-rise towers and billions of dollars in income and profit from sales, rentals, and the creation of dozens of businesses — all around those "useless temples of elitist arts." The Sydney Opera House both revitalized and became the symbol of a whole metropolis. Closer to home, check out the difference Davies Hall and the arts facilities at Yerba Buena Gardens made to whole neighborhoods. Performing arts centers usually create more business and wealth than new sports stadiums, but you hear few objections to government funds sunk into the latter.
Brain Music at the San Jose Museum of Art Dr. Hideo Tuge mapped the brain of his deceased wife, Chiyo, a composer. After Chiyo's death, he systematically dissected her brain in order to find physical evidence of her artistic ability. While not making any unusual discoveries along those lines, Tuge did demonstrate a grieving husband's loving memory in a museum installation. Chiyo Tuge's compositions, recorded by pianist Lewis De Soto, are currently being performed at the San Jose Museum of Art on a digital player Yamaha. But the "score" on the rack being processed by an automatic page turner is not her music that museum visitors are hearing but Dr. Tuge's analysis, "The Atlas of the Brain of a Pianist." (Janos Gereben is the Alicia Patterson Award-winning Arts Editor of the Post Newspaper Group and San Francisco-based senior editor for www.the451.com) ©2001 Janos Gereben, all rights reserved |