San Francisco Classical Voice

Coming attractions in SF's other opera house

The San Francisco Symphony, of the Michael Tilson Thomas variety, has been cultivating vocal music consistently ever since MTT became music director in September, 1995, but especially so in the past three years. At Wednesday's announcement of the next season, the Symphony identified these voices to be heard in Davies Hall:

Audra McDonald, in the season-opening gala, September 5; Rebecca Evans and Peter Mattei, in the Brahms Requiem, October; Pamela Coburn, Larissa Diadkova, Valentin Prolat and Gustav Belacek, in the Dvorak Stabat mater, directed by Jiri Belohlavek, in November; Susan Graham in a French program, November; Andreas Scholl, with the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, in December; Lauren Flanigan, in MTT's December Italian Mavericks program (of Monteverdi, Berio and Respighi); Vance George's SFS Chorus in a December Pan-American Mavericks program (of Brant, Varese, Piazzolla and Villa-Lobos); Iris Vermillion, Marcus Ullman and Dietrich Henschel, in a Helmuth Rilling-conducted Bach Christmas Oratorio, in December.

Also, John Mark Ainsley, in the Liszt Faust Symphony, in January; Michael Schade and Thomas Hampson in Das Lied von der Erde, in February; Renee Fleming, in the February premiere of MTT's Emily Dickinson Songs, and in the Strauss Four Last Songs, in March; Jessye Norman, in the Schubert Winterreise, in March; and Dmitri Hvorostovsky, in the premiere of an SFS-commissioned work by Giya Kancheli in May.

"Academy Awards" for Bay Area composers

Composers Kurt Rohde of San Francisco and Hubert Cliff Ho and Tom Swafford, both graduate students at UC Berkeley, were among 17 chosen to receive awards this year from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Rohde, violist as well as composer and current director of the Chamber Music Partnership here, receives the Walter Hinrichsen Award, which provides for the publication of an engraved edition of his composition. Ho (a pupil here of John Thow, Olly Wilson, and Cindy Cox) and Swafford (a pupil at UC Berkeley of Edwin Dugger, Olly Wilson, Richard Felciano, and Andrew Imbrie) receive Charles Ives Scholarships of $7500.

The Academy's four major awards, honoring lifetime achievement, going to Gerald Plain, Allen Shawn, Bright Sheng, and Augusta Read Thomas, consists of $15,000, half of which is applied to the recording of a work. The other winners are James Barry, Braxton Blake, Michael Djupstrom, Gabriela Frank, Louis Karchin, Mark Kilstofte, Sally Lamb, Jonathan Newman, Russell Platt, Erik Santos, and Allen Shawn. The Academy members making the selection were Jack Beeson, Leslie Bassett, Andrew Imbrie, George Perle, and Ned Rorem.

NY Phil catches up with Elgar

The performance this week of Elgar's Dream of Gerontius, Colin Davis conducting the New York Philharmonic, with singers Anthony Dean Griffey, MTT favorite Michelle de Young, the San Francisco Opera Center's John Relyea, and the Westminster Symphonic Choir, will be the 100-year-old masterpiece's first ever performance by the Philharmonic!

Tomorrow's singers have their names here today

The San Francisco Conservatory of Music's annual opera performance is always a delight, giving opera fans the first opportunity to discover voices at their youngest. This year, the fully staged, English-language production of Tales of Hoffmann will leave the small confines of the Conservatory's concert hall, moving to Fort Mason's Cowell Theater (which served the San Francisco Opera Center's Albert Herring so well last year). There will be four performances, April 5–8. For information, see http://www.sfcm.edu.

In the double-cast production, Daniel Montenegro and G. Q. Wang will sing the title role; Michael Shaw and Joshua Brown, the four villains; Kati Robers and Jiyon Son, Olympia; Tara Generalovich and Kristina Kenney, Antonia; Kristin Barrett and Teri Lynn Regalado, Giulietta; Lisa Marie Bolin will be Stella in both casts; the combined role of Muse/Nicklausse will alternate between Bonnie Eastman and Elza van den Heever.

Ligeti's adventures in the Hollywood wonderland

On the occasion of this year's "Berlinale" revival of Stanley Kubrick's 2001, an article in Die Welt discloses the story behind the film's famous music. Not only did the movie put Strauss' Thus Spake Zarathustra "on the map," but it exposed a whole new (and large) audience to the modern Hungarian composer György Ligeti's Atmospheres. The road to that now-historic soundtrack was not a smooth one, Die Welt says.

Kubrick, the newspaper says, was familiar with Ligeti's music, and he engaged Alex North to write the entire score in the "Ligeti manner" (Strauss was not yet part of the deal). When North finished, Kubrick scrapped the score and went on to put together bits and pieces from various existing works, including a good chunk from Atmospheres, not bothering to tell Ligeti about it. The composer found out only after 2001 was released, and he engaged a Berlin lawyer, asking for a fee of $30,000. The studio offered $1,000, eventually settled for $3,000, which — the newspaper says — was held up by Kubrick. The movie director evidently had good taste in music but didn't believe in excessive compensation for musicians.

Dawning of the Stulberg era?

I have always liked the San Francisco Ballet Orchestra, even if it's clearly a distant third behind the city's Symphony and Opera orchestras. Then something happened during the still-young 2001 season, and I heard some exceptional playing in the background — but kept being distracted by all that dancing, of course. Still, by last Tuesday, all my attention was on the sound from the pit as a red-hot performance of Prokofiev's Prodigal Son began, and was sustained throughout. The sound equaled many evenings (if not all, of course) when another orchestra occupies the same place, that of the San Francisco Opera.

On the podium: Neal Stulberg, a man without the slightest interest in playing the maestro. All his attention is on the orchestra, and he gets better results than just about anybody in the past — and that includes some fine veteran conductors, past and present.

Who is Stulberg? I had to dig around a bit, because his career hasn't taken off in a big way yet, although it may happen soon. He is a pianist as well, with conducting experience in many U.S. cities, making his European debut in 1997, conducting the Netherlands Radio Orchestra, and scheduled to lead the Dutch premiere of Glass' Akhnaten in Rotterdam in October. He may be better known elsewhere, but he is certainly a "new discovery" here. He could well turn out to be the best candidate to fill the Ballet's long-vacant music director position, filled memorably for many years by the late Denis deCoteau.

Nous aimons la musique libre!

When the Toulouse-Lautrec and the Spirit of Montmartre exhibit opens on March 10 in the California Palace of the Legion of Honor, the French-music spinout begins right there and then. On March 10 and 11, at 4 p.m., in the Spreckels Gallery, sopranos Alexandra Ivanoff and Mimi Ruiz join organist John Karl Hirten for a concert of works from La Belle. Admission to the concert is included in the price of the ticket to the museum.

L.A. Opera's la Copa de la Vida is full

Ricky Martin rules. His is the top name in the announcement from the Los Angeles Opera for the March 21 gala welcoming Plácido Domingo as artistic director. This is not a drill, but a true story (the press release is printed on the company's letterhead).

Also ran: Frederica von Stade, Catherine Malfitano, Jennifer Larmore, Ruth Ann Swenson, Julia Migenes, Samuel Ramey. "More than a billion television viewers in 187 countries felt the full force of Rickymania when he performed at the 41st annual Grammy Awards" a week ago, the opera announcement goes loca over Ricky. (Just asking: Was it Ricky singing a duet with Elton John?) Conductors for the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion gala: Valery Gergiev, Kent Nagano, Esa-Pekka Salonen, and John Williams.

(Janos Gereben is arts editor of the Post Newspaper Group and technology editor for www.the451.com. Contact him at janos451@earthlink.net)

©2001 Janos Gereben, all rights reserved