A new chamber music series. That phrase evokes all kinds of associations. You might imagine wonderful music, performed by devoted, expert musicians, for a highly appreciative (if small) audience. You conjure up intimate spaces, and audience communication with the artists. And then you might imagine reading the back of the program, with its obligatory mantra: “Our ticket sales only cover a small portion of our operating costs. Whatever you can contribute would be much appreciated.”

Live at Mission Blue, named after the endangered butterfly in that area, is a different creature altogether. It is the brainchild of harpsichord builder Kevin Fryer, and it has hosted such well-known local and internationally renowned talent as Kitka, the San Francisco Saxophone Quartet, and lutenist Hopkinson Smith. On the upcoming fifth season, they will feature the men’s a cappela choir Clerestory, harpist Cheryl Ann Fulton, the New Esterházy String Quartet, and others.

Kevin Fryer

Fryer has worked hard to put together an organization that is fully funded each year before a single note is played, and one that also manages to contribute in more than only musical ways to the town that supports it. Fryer sees his project as far more than just a chamber music series. It’s an integral part of a vital community network. “Here we are in the rarified classical music world,” he mused in a recent interview, “and we don’t usually think, ‘Can a concert series do this? … Are the arts an important part of community-building efforts?’ The answer is absolutely. Absolutely.”

Linking Music to Civics

Brisbane Mayor Michael Barnes agrees. Live at Mission Blue, he says, is “a tangible benefit of city government for the citizens of Brisbane. … I’ve talked to some Brisbane residents who have been transformed by the experience of listening to a concert of Kitka, for instance. People are transported out of Brisbane. … They’re taken to a different place. It’s a public benefit, and I hope that they understand that it’s a benefit that is partially supplied by their local government.”

Indeed, Brisbane’s support for this series is exemplary for any town, large or small. It’s a testament to the far-sighted city officials and the civic pride of the 3,900 people who live there that the city itself funds the Mission Blue Center, which doubles as an arts performance space and a community center. The city also offers generous support to this particular concert series. City Manager Clay Holstein has referred to Live at Mission Blue as “the marquee event at the facility.” Like everyone else I talked to about Fryer’s series, Holstein is passionate about the music, but equally so about the benefits for the community at large: “Live at Mission Blue has given the facility a bit of a name and a bit of panache. It’s a rallying cry for this community to get around. … That’s not to be underestimated. It’s an important contribution to our community.”

The Mission Blue Center

So what, in tangible terms, has this chamber music series done for this little town? To begin with, it’s helped quell a controversy. The Mission Blue Center sits in the middle of a large housing development built by the Brookfield Homes corporation. Some town residents contested the development for often-heard reasons — everything from changing the city’s aesthetic to worries about harm to the San Bruno mountains’ natural environment. The latest controversy involves protecting the habitat of the rare Callippe Silverspot butterfly while still trying to expand the existing housing. Says Holstein, “The Center and the concert series have in some ways been a site of healing.”

Mayor Barnes stresses that point as well: “[The concerts] take people out of central Brisbane. They have to go over to the northeast ridge to enjoy this public benefit that was a result of some very controversial housing. And maybe it makes them think differently about new housing. Maybe it makes them think differently about development, that development is not all about spoiling the natural environment, but also has cultural benefits that a number of people in Brisbane get to enjoy. I do believe the concert series has brought both of the residential districts of the town together. There is no denying that; [it’s] absolutely true. And the performing arts center would not have been possible without the Brookfield Homes development.”

High-Concept, Grand Design

To mend some of the hard feelings that arose around this expansion, Brookfield Homes worked hand in hand with Carol Nelson, former director of community development for the city, to provide the town with a state-of-the-art community center. From the beginning, however, Nelson and her colleagues envisioned something more than the typical multipurpose building. They wanted, as she put it, a community center that “did not go down to the lowest common denominator, as so many of them do. [We didn’t want] something you could hose off.”

Nelson put together a team for planning the facility that included the architect for the Brookfield Homes townhouses, who ensured that the Center’s visual style matched that of the surrounding hillside homes, as well as Nancy Johnson, a consultant with a distinguished resume. Johnson has worked at the San Francisco Ballet School for many years (she was once a dancer with the company), and has also served as the executive director of the San Francisco Performing Arts Library and Museum, and as the director of operations for the San Francisco Symphony.

Armed with such an experienced arts advocate for a partner, Nelson was able to design a center that is a dream come true for chamber music and performing arts fans. The space seats approximately 200 people, and boasts such fancy accoutrements as technology for advanced lighting design, sprung floors designed by a specialist in dance floors (to prevent injury to dancers’ bodies), a proper “green room” for the performers, and a fully equipped kitchen for catered receptions.

And then, of course, there are the acoustics, of which Nelson is very proud: “If you appreciate acoustic music, and you love the intimacy of it, that’s what we achieved. I remember going to a lute concert there, and I felt as if I’d never really heard a lute before, because [there] you can hear every single note.” The experience is a unique one in this area. “There’s nothing else like it,” Nelson raves. “I’ve been a subscriber to early music for a long time; I mean, the [San Francisco Early] Music Society. They use different venues, and none of them has the acoustic that Mission Blue has.” Violinist Elizabeth Blumenstock agrees, having publicly deemed the acoustics at the Center “the best in the state of California for chamber music.”

The Center also enjoys extremely quiet surroundings that complement the acoustics inside. Unlike many other concert venues, this one will never be interrupted by sirens or street arguments. Concerts there may even lead people to forget that the site is so close to the center of San Francisco.

Classical for the People

All this city planning has paid off in spades. The municipal support for this project, which amounts to about one third of the total operating costs each year, pays for use of the space, piano rentals, lighting and lightboard operators, insurance costs, sound technicians, and concert promotions. Fryer works hard throughout the months between seasons to put together a donor base to cover performer fees, and Brookfield Homes remains one of the principal underwriters.

This generous funding base allows Fryer to charge low ticket prices: At just $12 to $20, Live at Mission Blue boasts one of the best cost-to-quality ratios for live musical performance in the Bay Area. I can think of no other space where music lovers can pay such low prices to hear both internationally and locally renowned musicians, such as the Netherlands-based trio that performed last season (Wilbert Hazelzet, Jacques Ogg, and Jaap ter Linden), the Four Cellos Ensemble, or harpsichordist Jory Vinikour. And Fryer, himself a longtime member of a small musical community, is careful not to stiff his players: “I aim to pay musicians a respectable amount, to treat them well, and to make available a beautiful acoustic that gives musicians one more opportunity to have public exposure,” he states.

Wilbert Hazelzet, Jacques Ogg, and Jaap ter Linden

Low ticket prices result in lots of sold-out concerts, with audiences consisting mainly of townspeople. Mayor Barnes stressed that, though Brisbane is close to the myriad cultural events available in San Francisco, residents are much more likely to attend something in their own backyard. “There’s actually a surprisingly high barrier to a large number of people to going to San Francisco to experience something that they may not expect to enjoy. … [This chamber music series] is made so convenient and so accessible to the people of Brisbane … and the cost is so low, that people take a flyer at it. They’re much more willing to experiment with something that is accessible physically — it’s very close to them — and is very inexpensive.” And they’ve got good company: “Their neighbors are attending this, as well. There are [other] people there who they’re comfortable with.”

Those neighbors were precisely the people Fryer hoped to reach when he started this series five years ago. He adopted a philosophy he calls “removing the proscenium arch,” by refusing to have any type of a stage, and by flanking the musicians with intelligently arranged seating in the round. Meet-the-artists receptions and informal preconcert talks have also helped him avoid the “highbrow atmosphere where if you don’t know where to clap, you’re made to feel stupid.” Fryer realized, realistically, that many people just wouldn’t pay $50 for music that they didn’t know very much about.

The financial support he received, and the inherent qualities of the Mission Blue Center itself, offered a new type of opportunity. “I believe that, where classical music is really well performed, in a space with good acoustics, without the pretensions that sometimes accompany arts events, it can speak to anybody. I love walking into the series and seeing local firemen sitting next to regular concertgoers.” By these accounts, the idealistic project seems to be working.

Sharing the Wealth

Yet the series contributes to the town in other ways (as if providing wonderful music in a beautiful space in a town of barely 4,000 people weren’t enough). Although the idea of a classical music organization generating money for a charitable group is a concept strange enough to make your head spin, that’s exactly what Live at Mission Blue does. While other presenters scramble after donations to keep themselves afloat, Live at Mission Blue actually gives every penny of its ticket sales to the Friends of the Brisbane Library. The library is a special place in Brisbane, characterized by Friends’ President Christie York as “the hub of activity” for the community. Last season, Live at Mission Blue generated some $6,000 for this organization, multiplying the Friends’ income tenfold compared to the year before the inception of the series.

York stresses that the fund-raising is not the sole benefit of the concert series, but it is certainly a concrete one. Live at Mission Blue contributes more to its community than pie-in-the-sky aesthetic joys; it also supplies money for actual needs. Underwriters of the concert series are therefore assured that their investment is well spent, going to help a worthy community in many different ways. In exchange, the Friends help out as ushers, box office workers, and an entire support staff of volunteers.

If any lesson can be taken from Live at Mission Blue, it’s this: Although this arrangement is unique in the Bay Area, as far as I know, there is little reason that the model it provides cannot be applied by other music organizations in other small towns. When you think of all the factors that would normally work against the existence of such a high-level music venue in Brisbane — the small population base, the out-of-the way location, the lack of reputation as a particularly distinguished artistic hub — the success that Fryer and his municipal colleagues have enjoyed might seem mystifying. Live at Mission Blue shows how the combination of volunteer effort, civic support, governmental wisdom, and artistic vision can combine to create something truly wonderful, and worthy of emulation.

Live at Mission Blue starts its new concert season this Saturday at 8:00 p.m. with the men’s a cappella ensemble Clerestory. See the series Web site for more details, and to purchase tickets.

The tour is dedicated to all victims of genocide, but the music, which includes Bartók, Ravel, Gideon Klein, and Nikolaos Skalkottas, along with Gomidas Vartabed, has a unifying character, according to conductor Manson. “To me, the program is less unified by the genocide theme and more unified by folk music,” she said. “These are all classical composers who set folk music. The Klein is based on a Czech folk song; the Skalkottas is based on Greek folk music; Bartók, obviously Romanian; the Ravel — he calls it Melodie hebraique, but it is slightly improvisatory and has that same quality.

“Gomidas traveled around collecting folk material, just the way Bartók did in Hungary,” Manson continued. “He traveled around in Armenia and he got Kurdish melodies and Persian melodies, as well. Like Bartók, he takes the intervalic structure of the melodies and uses it harmonically. He doesn’t tonalize the pieces, which is very interesting. So that’s really what unites the program musically and that’s what makes it approachable. It’s going to be a really fun one to listen to.”

As Zerlina with Bryn Terfel as Don Giovanni in Mozart’s Don Giovanni at the Chicago Lyric Opera

Photo by Dan Rest

Isabel Bayrakdarian has sung leading lyric soprano roles at the Metropolitan Opera, Salzburg Festival, Royal Opera House, and Houston Grand Opera. In San Francisco she has performed with Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra. Her repertoire includes Mozart’s Susanna (in The Marriage of Figaro) and Zerlina (Don Giovanni), the title roles in Monteverdi’s Coronation of Poppea and Kurt Weill’s Marie Galante, and a particular favorite of hers, Blanche in Francis Poulenc’s Dialogues of the Carmelite, which she performed in Robert Carsen’s production at Chicago Lyric Opera.

I spoke with the soprano in anticipation of her San Francisco Performances recital, and asked her how she first came to singing.

Gomidas Songs

Gomidas had a huge output of songs, and we had to choose and dig, and we found a way to connect the songs together that complemented each other, which we didn’t really know because we lived in the diaspora. Even Armenians are not familiar with most of his work, solely because of the circumstances of our past. I am the granddaughter, on both sides, of survivors of the Armenian genocide. The fact that we maintained our identity was a big achievement, growing up.

How did it affect you, growing up as the granddaughter of survivors?

My grandparents weren’t keen to retell it. It was a horrifying experience. They lost their parents, some of their children, their wives — it wasn’t something they wanted to relive. They wanted to look forward. It’s something that is very much a part of all Armenians, who like to be proud of their identity, basically to acknowledge who they are. It’s very important, I think, to know who you are. If you’re ashamed of it or hide it, it’s just going to come back and bite you. In terms of coming to this project, it wasn’t until I went back and listened to this music with a more sophisticated ear that I said, “It isn’t just bias or emotional attachment; it has real musical merit.” It does have beautiful musical merit. And it’s a wonderful representation and a remembrance of the villages that are no longer there now, and of the people who have long been erased. Actually, a million and a half have been erased.

Can you tell me a little bit about how the tour came about?

It’s the reason my husband and I met, this project. [She is married to pianist Serouj Kradjian, who will play with the orchestra on the “Remembrance Concert Tour.”] We both had the same vision. He wanted to do this project. I suggested we orchestrate it with chamber orchestra instead of just with piano, the way it was written, so it has both personal and artistic importance to me. And now we have a baby! So, we have two babies. The CD is out, and the real baby!

We went to Armenia and researched there, to collect choral music, liturgical music, and to find the kind of orchestration that complemented and went along with Gomidas’ vision. Gomidas stopped writing because he was deported. He was saved because of the intervention of the American ambassador [to Armenia], [Henry] Morgenthau, but he had seen what had happened to his friends and colleagues and especially the people, and he had a mental breakdown. For 20 years he didn’t write anything and died in a mental institution.

Photo by Michael Agyan

Before he was deported, there are some old recordings of him on the piano, with cello and violin and a tenor singing. He was just about to start orchestrating when he was deported.

Is the traditional Armenian instrument, the duduk, used in these arrangements?

Yes, it’s very important. [The instrument] is made from the apricot tree and is specific to Armenia. It’s a beautiful complement and has a very beautiful melancholic, haunting sound, which is kind of what we all feel.

(Manson elaborated, “It’s got a very unique sound. It’s not just like an oboe but rawer — to me it sounds like something between an oboe and a saxophone.”)

Why was it important to you and to your husband that this tour be dedicated to all victims of genocide and not just those of the Armenian genocide?

The thing is that genocide is happening today. It is not something that ended in the 20th century. There is a universality to genocide. It doesn’t just affect those who survive it or those who lost their lives. Obviously, in this case, Gomidas himself was a victim of the Armenian genocide. But his music is heard not just by Armenians alone. And who knows what other genius or other great works of art are lost or not created because of genocide? Not just Armenian but it’s happening in Darfur, it happened in Rwanda, and before with the Jewish Holocaust.

Because of the universality of the music itself — in my humble opinion, of course — one doesn’t have to be Armenian to enjoy it. So music is a universal platform. It can have roots, but it has a mass universal outreach. That’s why I’m working with the International Institute for Genocide and Human Rights Studies. They are the ones who are sponsoring the tour: to raise awareness. Gomidas was just one great composer whose work was cut short because of the ethnic cleansing that happened.

Growing up with this family history, do you feel that it shaped you as an artist and inspired you to become a singer?

Definitely. Because I’ve sung it from a young age, when I sing Armenian [music] it doesn’t come from the mind. It comes from the soul. Not even the heart, because obviously my heart is in whatever I sing, but from the soul, and most times I don’t even think of technique. I rejoice, that’s what I do; I rejoice when I’m onstage when I’m singing it, and when I do that, as you do when you’re in your car and singing with the radio, you don’t think about technique, you’re just enjoying it, you’re in the moment.

That’s what happens when I sing Armenian music, whether it’s Gomidas or other composers. Because of how instinctive the language is, one block is removed already. I know Italian singers love to sing in Italian, because you know you are singing with the conviction that you almost wrote it, it’s your music. There’s a different register in your brain between what is a learned language and what is your mother tongue. So the information goes straight to my soul.

How important is it to you that Turkey still doesn’t recognize the events that happened as genocide? Is there some hope that a tour like yours might bring further action in that area?

That isn’t my aim at all. My aim is not to involve politics at all. It is just to raise awareness that it happened. I am in the direct line, and it is still happening. There are much better scholars who can speak about documents and facts that are out there and what needs to be done. My aim is to convey and sing and express music that I feel passionate about, and I hope that the listener is going to discover something new. Because that’s the whole aim of a concert and recital, isn’t it? To discover new things, whether newly written things or newly rediscovered works. To discover a new dimension, enjoy it, and just be a bit more educated or a bit more sophisticated by being exposed to different music.

There’s no question about it: The “greats” rule the roost in classical music, and they’re played over and over again. The League of American Orchestras keeps the U.S. and Canadian stats, which show that, for the 2006-2007 season, 11,501 pieces were performed on 3,710 concerts. In all, 2,209 different works played were composed by 630 composers. That’s 3.5 works per composer, and 5.2 repetitions per work, on average, but you can delve further and see that less than 1 percent of the compositions accounted for almost 10 percent of the performances. Brahms’ Second Symphony was the winner, with 72 performances. The previous season, Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony did even better, with 89 performances.

For every composer who receives dozens of performances, there are dozens upon dozens who get one or two performances. Thousands of composers are given none at all. This is not entirely a bad thing, as mediocre to incompetent composers don’t deserve equal time.

Yet there are other reasons for the discrepancy. Musicians and audiences want to play and hear certain works more than others, pieces that best speak to the sensibilities of the era. And concerts have undergone a cultural change over time that has frozen out new and unusual music as far back as the 1840s (see Alex Ross’ fine article on the subject). Sometimes this “rich get richer” state of affairs leads to some worthy works slipping through the cracks, works that, if they were better known, might give Brahms’ and Dvořák’s and Beethoven’s lesser works a run for their money.

The Staleness Specter

Even the best symphonic works, though they yield new joys on repeated listenings, can be overplayed and grow stale in a listener’s ears. The antidote could be discovering some unusual and possibly great music on a regular basis. Even if an unusual piece does not stand repeated hearings, it may give pleasure the first few times to many who are tired of warhorses. And occasionally, a find might even work its way into the repertory and provide some variety to the regular concert menu.

For such unusual works to get on a concert, almost as many hurdles have to be crossed as for my home movie to become a Blair Witch Project success. I’ve already written in these pages about the myriad factors affecting programming. It’s hard enough to get recently written music on a program, yet at least this kind of music has living composers, publishers, grants, and other means of recommending itself to the programming powers-that-be.

The situation for older music is worse. The composer is dead, forgotten. Scores are hidden away in family or institutional archives. Or maybe the best works are performed occasionally in the region of the composer’s origin, but fail to cross national boundaries. Unlike the situation with new music, music directors have fewer incentives to program older works, other than the little fame that may accrue from discovering it (and possibly some savings on royalty payments). But how is the music to be found, and who will advocate for it?

One neglected source for concert enrichment is the recorded repertoire, where a following can develop for certain composers never or rarely played in concert. A buzz develops on the Internet among collectors and reviewers of CDs, and enthusiasm spreads. Music directors should be tuned in to these trends. Occasionally, such buzzes burst forth into the light, as in the case of Górecki’s Third Symphony, which began reaching concert halls in the U.S. after it hit the best-seller charts. Usually, though, the excitement dies out as aficionados follow new enthusiasms.

A second source for concert enrichment comes from passionate advocates of unusual music who are in a position to do something about it. The conductor James Conlon presented fascinating concerts of music of Franz Schreker and Alexander Zemlinsky two years ago in San Francisco. While Michael Tilson Thomas and other Bay Area conductors are to be lauded for the relatively high percentage of new music included on their symphony programs, there is little unusual older music to be heard from the region’s orchestras.

For example, the San Francisco Symphony is presenting just one piece in this category all season (not counting lesser-known pieces by famous composers), namely Franz Schmidt’s Symphony No. 4. Perhaps the Szymanowski piano concertante also qualifies, though it was performed just a year ago at the Festival del Sole in Napa Valley. About 15 percent of the pieces this season are newish music by living, or recently deceased, composers.

Man With a Mission

Several American conductors are passionate about new music, such as James Levine on the Modernist side, and Marin Alsop on the populist side. The most passionate of all of them is Warren Cohen, music director of the MusicNova Orchestra, serving the northeastern Phoenix metropolitan area. Of the 12 pieces he is presenting this season in four concerts, 9 are regional premieres, including rarities by such composers as Joachim Raff, Adolf von Henselt, Aldo (not Gerald) Finzi, and William Alwyn. Cohen has been struck by the unusual ever since the day in his childhood that he heard a work by French pianist-composer Charles-Valentin Alkan. As he relates on his orchestra’s Web site,

All my life I have felt that my greatest thrill is hearing something that is wonderful, new and unique. I remember as a child hearing Raymond Lewenthal’s recording of the Alkan Symphonie for Solo Piano. Here was great music that sounded like nothing I had ever heard before. Since then I have been on a quixotic quest for great neglected music. When I hear something new and wonderful I want to share it with everyone so they can get the same thrill of discovery that I experience.

Cohen spends fully a fifth of his time reviewing scores, seeking out, as he describes it on the site, music that (1) has an immediate impact on him, and presumably the audience, (2) reveals an original voice, not a clone of another, more famous composer, (3) displays “killer instinct,” that is, its composer knows how to exploit the material all the way through to the end of the piece, and (4) stands “outside the corridors of power,” that is, not already championed by others. Even though he rejects outright 90 percent of what he hears, the remaining 10 percent can easily fill many seasons.

In a telephone interview, Cohen explained to me why few music directors follow his approach:

There are several problems here. The deepest problem is the fact that orchestra boards tend to be frightened and very conservative. They are always afraid that people won’t like it [the unusual]. As a result, they tend to stick to the tried and true. The orchestral world is most hidebound in that way. [The motivation] is partly a financial element — it costs a lot to put on a concert.

A second thing that is also related to money has to do with rehearsal time. With a lot of orchestras, if it’s a piece of music they know, you can whip it out with not a lot of rehearsal. You would need more time with the type of stuff that we do.

Third, there are a lot of conductors who don’t want to venture out. If you are a real careerist as a conductor, you’re going to be interested in building your career with the standard repertoire. Also, I can’t dismiss the idea of laziness, either, from anybody. It’s a lot easier to do stuff that you already know.

The fact that the MusicNova Orchestra has completed five seasons and presented 57 regional premieres says that, at least in the Phoenix area, Cohen’s experiment has not fallen on deaf ears. The conductor reported the reaction of one revitalized concertgoer: “Keep up the good work! You’ve given me a reason to return to going to concerts after 20 years of avoiding them because I couldn’t bear to hear another Brahms Four.”

There are plenty of examples of worthy, overlooked composers that Bay Area orchestras might consider if they became inspired by Cohen’s example. Here’s one program as a teaser, a standard structure, but consisting solely of neglected works meeting Cohen’s criteria — as borne out by the “buzz” associated with their recordings:

• Juventus Overture, by Victor de Sabata. This work includes one of the all-time great melodies.
• Concerto for Violin and Orchestra, Op. 52, by Johan Kvandal. Has an opening motive as attention grabbing as that of Beethoven’s Fifth.
• Geysir, Op. 51, by Jon Leifs. Leaves hot water on your suit.
• Symphony No. 3 in C Minor, by Julius Röntgen. I’d place this symphony right up there with those by Brahms and Dvořák.

If I heard any one of these on Muzak as I was shopping, my heart would burst with as much pleasure as a soda can hitting the floor when knocked from a shelf.

Leonard Bernstein and Michael Tilson Thomas

I do love Bernstein’s work as a composer. But he was extremely successful at the job, and his work doesn’t need to be treated like the Olympics or the World Cup. A festival can serve a consciousness-raising purpose for a less frequently programmed composer, or one who is represented in the concert hall by only a work or two. But that’s not Bernstein.

Samuel Barber and William Schuman have 100th anniversaries coming up in 2010. We could honor Bernstein equally well by doing a complete retrospective of their works, which he was indefatigable in championing. (He even wrote an occasional piece in Schuman’s honor, the Seven Anniversaries for Piano.) And if you want to delve deeply into Bernstein’s simultaneously haunting and playful Symphony No. 2, The Age of Anxiety, you might counterpoint it with a retrospective on W.H. Auden, the poet whose 100th birthday anniversary passed in 2007.

The point is, it doesn’t make sense to honor Bernstein as if he were outside a historical context. That’s what often happens when we celebrate composers and works we already know well and love. We treat them as abstractions, as blazing comets of individuality, and we forget that there’s a place for all of us in the wider human history.

On one level, we already know this from Bernstein himself. His curiosity and his ability to assimilate influences within a recognizable style made him a superb composer. His music is openly a guide to his times, especially in the theater works that are featured on the San Francisco Symphony program. (Tilson-Thomas has, however, chosen a more interesting and varied approach than the standard “Bernstein on Broadway” concert.) All of them are admixtures of popular song forms, jazz and Latin pop styles, Romantic longing for (and visions of) escape to peace and quiet, and surging, symphonic-scale music powered by contemporary dance rhythms.

People Power

Yet, dig a level deeper and there’s the Bernstein who grew up in the populist–left wing atmosphere of the 1930s and early ’40s, which fed into an overt, optimistic musical style to which we tend to allot fewer performances these days (with the exception of Aaron Copland’s popular scores). Not just admiration for George Gershwin animated Bernstein’s embrace of a variety of jazz. Like his close friend Marc Blitzstein, he was reaching out to “the masses” and trying to tell them something.

You can see this in Candide (1956). Bernstein’s love letter to European operetta is also a well-known denunciation of McCarthyism. (”These days, you have to be/In the majority,” sings the Old Lady, a lyric Bernstein wrote himself.) Lillian Hellman’s original book for the musical ends with furious despair at human nature, but the music and lyrics of “Make Our Garden Grow” sound a restorative note. As Candide begins it, with the wide-sweeping, Copland-esque interval of the “Cunegonde” motif, he invites first Cunegonde, and then everyone else, into a new communal endeavor, perhaps a little more tempered with real expectations. (”But come, and be my wife/And let us try, before we die/To make some sense of life.”)

Bernstein, the man

Photo by Jack Mitchell

Naturally, Bernstein’s old Left orientation occasionally became a little embarrassing later on. Yet the musical stamp of that era is clear in his scores. If we want new perspectives on the composer, we could begin here … oh, well, maybe at the next festival.

Already the subject of multiple biographies, “Bernstein the man” seems to have captured the public imagination. Obviously, his personality is intertwined with his art. The search for human contact and love, and the reality of missed connections, the tragedy of loss, and relationships falling apart — these are the basic themes of all of Bernstein’s theater music, as they were in his life. Famous though he is for big, romantic tunes, they almost all appear through the gauze of dreams of faraway places.

The “Subway Ride and Imaginary Coney Island” ballet from the composer’s first hit musical, On The Town (1944), stands at the head of these moments. A lonely sailor on a subway train at 3 a.m. imagines a dream date, which is balanced by the horseplay and comic deflation of “The Real Coney Island.”

Finding a Quiet Place

The same theme lies at the heart of the intimate sorrow of Dinah and Sam in Trouble in Tahiti (1952). Although “What a Movie!” is the most commonly excerpted number from the opera, the climax of the piece (and the end of its first half) is Dinah’s dream narrative (”I was standing in a garden”), in which her longing empties into a gorgeous melody to the words “There love will teach us harmony and grace/Then love will lead us to a quiet place.” Nested within that number is Sam awkwardly instructing his secretary to forget about his passes at her. At the end of the opera, as the pair try to rediscover the threads of feeling in their marriage, their duet is intertwined with a caustically smooth-jazz trio that mocks the facade of success and well-being surrounding the couple (”Suburbia,” sung to the famous motif of “New York, New York” from On the Town).

West Side Story (1957) offers the same juxtaposition, with continual tragic irony. The “Somewhere” ballet music yields to the hard-bitten satire and street comedy of “Gee, Officer Krupke” (or, if you prefer the 1961 movie version, to the nervous bravado of “Cool”). Maria’s aria “I Have a Love” triumphs, oh so briefly, over Anita’s “A Boy Like That,” though the vision of love is again shattered by violence in the Taunting Scene.

Bernstein’s embrace of so many musical currents is validated by the way in which they integrate into the larger artworks. The juxtapositions serve dramatic purposes, portraying poles of human emotions, while giving another musical voice to New York City in the 1940s and 1950s.

Stephen Sonheim and Leonard Bernstein

But in a larger context, that theatrical achievement was a collaboration of many hands. The Broadway musical is a tribute to specialization all along the line. Even Bernstein’s orchestrations for West Side Story were fleshed out and finished by Sid Ramin and Irwin Kostal, two top pros at the time. As the show’s lyricist, Stephen Sondheim, has related, in Steve Swayne’s book How Sondheim Found His Sound, Bernstein was always ready to learn from his collaborators. In writing “Something’s Comin,’” Sondheim explained a bit of technical showbiz speak, showing him the standard songwriting method of adding a legato thumbline to a piano vamp.

So what I did was: I took Lenny’s tune from the verse and turned it into the chorus [”Could it be? Yes, it could”]. And that’s my contribution to the music.

Certainly Bernstein arrived with an idea of how music went together with drama, but he thrived in musical theater because he was a bridge-builder and loved the theater’s fast-paced give-and-take. The view of the composer as demigod is simply at odds with this reality of Broadway. And it’s at odds with reality everywhere else, too.

Still, festivals are about mythmaking — and who am I to stand in the way? I merely suggest that, if we’re going to be doing a Bernstein festival every five or 10 years, we devote some time in between to honoring a few of his buddies and contemporaries, as well.

The Chronicle advertising blitz is but part of a slew of public-relations and marketing initiatives (”made possible, in part, by a generous grant from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation”) attendant upon Salerno-Sonnenberg’s assuming the post vacated two years ago by Krista Bennion Feeney. The NCCO’s revamped Web site parades links to Salerno-Sonnenberg’s video introductions to the season, its “featured composer,” and individual programs on YouTube. And there’s a “let’s draw in the young” initiative: The orchestra offers half-price tickets (season or individual-concert) for anyone under 30.

Is this an awful lot of hoopla for a small string orchestra playing four sets a year? Of course, but given the quality of the band that a few musicians launched 16 years ago (first headed by Stuart Canin), and the magnitude of the change Salerno-Sonnenberg’s appointment represents, it’s not a bit excessive. The new director has sweeping plans, and they include making the NCCO — which, despite a Grammy nomination in 1997, isn’t well-known outside the Bay Area — a household word.

Upping the Ante

When I spoke to her early last month, Salerno-Sonnenberg was full of enthusiasm about the orchestra and her plans for it over the span of her initial three-season contract. “They’re such fantastic musicians,” she said. But they haven’t, she argued, gotten anything like the exposure they deserve, and for that matter they don’t seem to know themselves how exceptional the band is. She sees it as her mission to get NCCO the recognition it ought to have, but also to take the orchestra “to a whole new level.”

Salerno-Sonnenberg and members of the NCCO

Photo by Steve Jennings

Certainly the plan she’s put in place can’t be faulted for timidity. Besides inaugurating the featured composer program — this year’s is the 30-year-old Brazilian pianist, singer, and composer Clarice Assad — and taking the orchestra into the recording studio for the first time in several years, Salerno-Sonnenberg envisions a West Coast tour in the 2009-2010 season and an East Coast one the following season.

The release of the orchestra’s first CD under her leadership, on her own NSS label, will be timed to coincide with the latter tour. The CD’s contents are still up in the air, except that the Piazzolla Four Seasons of Buenos Aires, headlining this week’s opening set and due to be recorded immediately afterward, will be on it.

We talked about the relative smallness of the string orchestra repertoire. Salerno-Sonnenberg stressed that the main point of the featured composer program is to enrich that repertoire and to allow NCCO — as a direct inspiration to composers — to add to it. Assad’s Impressions, receiving its first performances this week, draws on the composer’s interactions with the orchestra last September, during Salerno-Sonnenberg’s “audition” concerts. Individual lines were designed for the particular players who will perform them. (A second Assad commission, Dreamscape for violin and strings, will be premiered on the last program of this season.)

Assiduous Assad

Salerno-Sonnenberg seems to have run across Clarice Assad by virtue of performing with her father and uncle, the great Brazilian guitarists Sergio and Odair Assad. Clarice is a young composer with, as yet, a scanty orchestral catalog, though the scope of her musical activity (see her Web site for particulars) suggests a veritable musical dynamo. Her contribution to last fall’s program — a violin-and-strings arrangement of Kreisler’s Praeludium and Allegro — didn’t provide much of a hint as to what her own music might be like, apart from revealing considerable skill in writing for strings and a taste for long, lyrical lines. (When they weren’t there to be teased out of Kreisler’s original piano accompaniment, she supplied them herself.)

Clarice Assad

The violin concerto she wrote for Salerno-Sonnenberg a few years ago (her first orchestral work, as it happens) adds to the picture. The piece is a terrific Salerno-Sonnenberg vehicle, crammed with all the stuff the soloist does best: soaring lyrical moments, and much flashy but not bone-crunchingly awkward passagework. If you had to place it temporally, you’d probably guess the middle of the last century. Samuel Barber’s concerto (1939) is the nearest thing, maybe, in the standard repertoire, though certain places recall William Walton, too, and there is something ineluctably ’50s-cinematic about the orchestration. (You can listen to the work online here.)

Does Salerno-Sonnenberg plan to use the featured-composer program to introduce other young composers like Assad? That’s not the point of the program, she tells me. Next year’s composer, for example, is someone “very established” (she would not say more). The point is to enrich the repertoire and to give the players something new and raw to get their teeth into.

Those last few words are mine, not Salerno-Sonnenberg’s, but as I’m talking to her it’s clear that she’s eager to challenge this orchestra that, in taking her on, has proven itself eager to be challenged. When I suggest that her role will be one of “goosing” her players, she agrees enthusiastically. It’s not just that they’re better than they know, she stressed, but that they have no idea how much better they might be.

Certainly she incited them to amazing heights in her “audition” concerts last September. And “incited” is indeed the word. The NCCO has never been less than polished in technical terms, but, generally speaking, it lets loose only when prodded. Salerno-Sonnenberg, last fall, was magnificent, goading the players into some of the most impassioned music-making I’ve heard them deliver.

Tackling Bach Head-On

Among the surprises of that program was a performance of Bach’s Violin Concerto in A Minor, in which the sometimes dubious extravagances of Salerno-Sonnenberg’s solo playing were partnered with about the gutsiest and most idiomatic Baroque playing I’d ever witnessed from this orchestra.

It’s never been clear where the NCCO stands with regard to Baroque music. If there’s a core string orchestra repertoire, an awful lot of it belongs to the 17th and 18th centuries — everything from Arcangelo Corelli’s Concerti Grossi, Op. 6 (ca. 1690-1710), through the Handel Op. 6 concerti (1739), to the “Hamburg Sinfonias” of C.P.E. Bach (1773-76) and to Mozart’s early string-ensemble divertimenti (mid-1770s). But in a Bay Area teeming with specialist Baroque ensembles, NCCO understandably hasn’t made this music a mainstay of its programming. And when it has dipped into these waters, the results have been, to say no more, variable.

But following Salerno-Sonnenberg’s lead in the Bach A-Minor, the NCCO played like good Baroque players — which is to say not prim, detached, and expressionless, but on the contrary rough, passionate, and gleefully, not to say wickedly, interventionist in their inflection. I asked Salerno-Sonnenberg about her attitude toward Baroque music generally. Was she planning to explore much 18th-century repertoire?

It doesn’t look like it. She holds out a recording of the Bach violin concertos with NCCO as a possibility, and this first season includes two of Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos, plus orchestral excerpts from Handel’s Solomon, on the December program. But Salerno-Sonnenberg’s repertoire-expansion plans mainly involve the other end of the timeline: new works and new transcriptions.

If her inaugural season is anything to go by, Salerno-Sonnenberg’s programming is going to feature many more transcriptions than has been usual in the ensemble’s past. Beside Assad’s transcriptions (of Villa-Lobos’ Bachianas Brasileiras No. 5 on the first concert, and a variety of songs and carols on the second), we have Leonid Desyatnikov’s of Piazzolla’s Four Seasons of Buenos Aires (first program); Rudolf Barshai’s of some of the Prokofiev Visions fugitives (third program); and Mats Lidstrom’s of music from Johann Strauss Jr.’s Die Fledermaus (fourth program).

That’s on top of the Borodin Nocturne, expanded from its original string-quartet scoring, which is also on the fourth program. NCCO has frequently played expansions of string chamber works — that Grammy nomination was for a disc of Shostakovich quartets in Barshai’s string-orchestra versions — but I can’t recall a season so full of arrangements as this one.

Guest Artist Bonanza

Another departure is in the number of guest artists and other extra musicians. The holiday concert features a guest soprano (Melody Moore) and the chamber choir Schola Cantorum San Francisco. The March program brings in Salerno-Sonnenberg’s longtime recital partner, pianist Anne-Marie McDermott. The December set also involves a handful of yet-to-be-named guests for its two Brandenburgs, and the March one promises a likewise yet-to-be-named trumpeter for the Shostakovich First Piano Concerto.

Salerno-Sonnenberg told me that Erwin Stein’s chamber version of Mahler’s Fourth Symphony (designed for Schoenberg’s Society for Private Musical Performances in the early 1920s) is tentatively scheduled for next year, so, going forward, we can expect to see more guest singers and wind players.

I’d be prepared, though, for changes in the orchestra’s playing to overshadow those in the programming. There will be some differences in personnel, for starters. (Principal violist Linda Ghidossi-DeLuca is on sabbatical and her colleague Kurt Rohde is off enjoying the fruits of his recent Rome Prize, so the viola complement in particular is going to be different.) But it will be more than that. I don’t know of many orchestras whose sounds vary so easily and so dramatically with their direction.

I fear that if I liken the NCCO to tofu, the analogy will be misconstrued. But if ever I encountered a band whose savor varies according to the musical juices it’s been steeping in, this is it. Better, perhaps, to say that it’s an orchestra whose listening skills are so finely honed that it takes only a short encounter for its players to cohere — unanimously and joyously — around the vision of a charismatic leader.

And that Salerno-Sonnenberg certainly is. The prospect of her borderline-unsustainable intensity fused somehow with the NCCO’s ensemble chops is something to anticipate — with glee, or at least lively curiosity. As I wrote on hearing this partnership a year ago,

The risks are obvious. But all the same, this could be fun.

Cooler heads might have said it couldn’t be done. Yet for composer Stewart Wallace, inspiration trumped practical concerns. Reading Tan’s novel, he says, left him no choice. “I read it,” explains Wallace, “and said, ‘This is an opera.’”

Amy Tan

Now, seven years after the book was published, The Bonesetter’s Daughter is indeed an opera. Composed by Wallace, with a libretto by Tan, the new work will be premiered on September 13, in a San Francisco Opera production at the War Memorial Opera House, where it plays for seven performances through October 3. A co-commission by the San Francisco and Dallas opera companies, it features an international cast directed by Chen Shi-Zheng and conducted by Steven Sloane.

Multiple ancillary events accompany this highly anticipated premiere, including the release of Ken Smith’s book Fate! Luck! Chance! Creating the Opera of the Bonesetter’s Daughter (Chronicle Books); the filming of a documentary scheduled for release on public television next year; and lectures, panel discussions, and preshow talks at the opera house and throughout the Bay Area.

Ghostwriter Haunted by Ghosts

The Bonesetter’s Daughter tells the story of Ruth Young, a successful but troubled San Francisco–based ghostwriter of self-help books. Spurred by questions posed by her ailing mother, LuLing, and escorted by the ghost of her grandmother, whom she calls Precious Auntie, Ruth travels to China to uncover long-buried truths about her ancestors and herself.

Stewart Wallace

Wallace, who is best-known for the opera Harvey Milk (produced by S.F. Opera in 1996), admits that Tan’s novel posed an enormous challenge. “If you look at it structurally, it’s not a natural for an opera,” the composer said in a recent interview. “It’s a huge story, a huge canvas.”

It was also irresistible, says the Philadelphia-born, Texas-raised composer. “There were a few things that really resonated for me, the first of which was the idea that things that happen to your family in the past affect you whether you know about them or not,” says Wallace. “This was very much like Harvey Milk for me, this idea of the things that we carry with us in our bones, in our genes, in our collective memory. It’s a powerful operatic idea, and a very musical one. And then there was that ghost.”

Wallace and Tan had been friends for nearly a decade when The Bonesetter’s Daughter was published. They met in the early ’90s at Yaddo, an artists’ colony in upstate New York. When the novel was released in 2001, Wallace composed a short piece to celebrate both the book and Tan’s 50th birthday.

Handing Off From Novelist to Librettist

That piece became the genesis of the opera, though the original plan was that Tan, who had never written a libretto, would collaborate on the adaptation with Wallace’s Harvey Milk librettist, Michael Korie. When Korie got tied up with other projects — including the Ricky Ian Gordon opera, The Grapes of Wrath — Wallace and Tan simply forged ahead.

“Amy kept saying, ‘I don’t know what to do,’” recalls Wallace. “And I said, ‘Let’s just try it.’ We started with the Prologue, because we knew it would be these three women. “Amy sent me what she called ‘notes,’” he adds with a laugh. “I thought it was ‘a scene.’ It was amazingly specific — trio, solo, trio, six pages of wall-to-wall text. I went through it and kept the structure, and just cherry-picked until it was two pages of lean column.”

The Bonesetter’s Daughter

Calligraphy by Patrick P. Lee

Wallace says he was “blown away” by Tan’s nascent skill as a librettist, and found that they worked extremely well together. “I discovered that we shared a lot of similar approaches. In her books she’ll take a small phrase that’s kind of tossed off in the beginning. She’ll slowly turn it like a screwdriver. By the end, it’s something very significant. That works the same way a musical cell will work, the way you use it in variation, repeat it, or put it in a different context. So we were using a lot of the same techniques in our different worlds.”

Wallace credits Tan for her willingness to refashion the novel into an entirely new work. The story has undergone numerous changes; for example, LuLing, who is still alive at the end of the novel, dies in the opera. Characters were jettisoned, plot points rearranged. “Amy has been extremely free about changing details of the story,” says the composer. “What she was absolutely firm on was keeping to the emotional truth.”

Opening Eyes and Ears in China

According to Wallace, the project coalesced when he and Tan traveled to China, the first of four trips they took together while working on the opera. Wallace attended traditional Chinese kunju opera performances, sat in on village funerals, met with prominent Chinese musicians, and, according to the composer, “opened my very American ears.”

Wallace and Tan with a singing master from Dimen Village in Southeast Guizhou

Photo by Ken Smith

A pivotal moment came at a funeral, where the music consisted of two suonas (a double-reed instrument similar to an oboe) and four percussion instruments. “It’s a funeral, but it’s like a celebration,” Wallace remembers. “I heard this music, and I felt like my head would explode. It felt very intuitive, or serendipitous, and it was very exciting.” He began studying with master percussionist Li Zhonghua, leader of the Beijing Opera percussion section, and eventually asked that the Chinese musicians participate in the opera’s premiere.

Wallace gets a lesson on a Chinese ethnic wind instrument

Photo by Ken Smith

The orchestra for the San Francisco performances will include approximately 85 musicians, plus the same instruments he heard that day — two suonas, and four percussion instruments played by Beijing Opera musicians led by Li. The latter instruments, says Wallace, “carry the emotion of the opera.”

That said, Wallace insists that his goal was not to write a Chinese opera. “My objective was to write something in my own language that felt like China,” he says. “I’m not Chinese, I’m not trying to be Chinese. I didn’t try to do Chinese melodic lines, Chinese harmonies, or Chinese modes. What I really was thinking about was timbre, textures, space. Things that we don’t have any equivalent to.”

Steven Sloane, who has conducted Wallace premieres, including the composer’s Percussion Concerto (written for Evelyn Glennie), says that the Bonesetter’s score represents a unique hybrid. “There are quite a few contemporary composers, including Tan Dun, who have used Chinese instruments in their compositions,” says Sloane. “But they’ve used them in a more characteristic way, where they represent another world. Stewart’s intention is really to create a synthesis between these instruments and Western instruments.”

Steven Sloane

Interviewed after a week of rehearsals with the San Francisco Opera orchestra, Sloane expressed high praise for the ensemble. “What an orchestra!” raved the conductor. “In my career, I’ve had the opportunity to do quite a few new pieces. The openness of this orchestra, the technical ability, and the attitude — I just can’t say enough about them. What a jewel this city has in this orchestra.”

Wallace agrees: “In a way, they play like chamber musicians. When I was here for Harvey Milk, their playing was so beautiful. This time, even though we had this big palette, I really wanted to let the character of each part of the orchestra come through. There’s a lot of soloistic writing in this piece. There are Big Moments, but there’s also a lot of intimate writing. I wanted them to play in a way that was expressive. I always think of Harvey Milk as sort of a ‘wall of sound’ piece — more Phil Spector [the noted recordings producer]. This is more like chamber music.”

For Sloane, the Chinese instruments lend the opera a fantastic dimension. “This is a first for me,” says the conductor. “The exotic nature of these instruments is still a surprise, every time they play.”

Dual Roles, Double the Experiences

The San Francisco cast also represents an unusual conjoining of Eastern and Western traditions. Mezzo-soprano Zheng Cao, who sings the dual role of Ruth and Young LuLing, is a native of China who lives in the Bay Area; mezzo Ning Liang, cast as old LuLing, was the first Chinese singer ever to perform at the Metropolitan Opera. Qian Yi (Precious Auntie), known throughout China as a kunju opera star, made her U.S. debut at Lincoln Center in 1999 in the Chinese opera The Peony Pavilion, a production that was staged to great acclaim by Chen Shi-Zheng, who is directing The Bonesetter’s Daughter.

Chen Shi-Zheng

Zheng Cao, who has sung numerous roles with San Francisco Opera — most recently, Suzuki in last fall’s revival of Madama Butterfly — loved Tan’s book, and feels a deep connection with the character of Ruth.

“I can certainly relate to her,” she says. “When I came to this country, I also discovered cultural gaps, and I understand how hard those gaps can be. It’s complicated to work things out, to understand how heritage and culture and relationships fit together.” Zheng Cao, who has probably sung more Suzukis than she can count, and has earned consistent critical praise for her nuanced portrayal of the character, says it’s nice to be cast as a Chinese-American, in a role written for her. “It’s like the old days, having a composer writing for your voice,” she says. “It’s a real blessing.”

Zheng Cao

Director Chen Shi-Zheng, a native of Hunan province who is now based in New York, also connected with the story in a personal way. “San Francisco is where the first Chinese immigrants came,” says Chen. “And I thought this story, of escaping China and coming here and finding a kind of identity crisis, was quite interesting. Most of Amy’s work is about trying to find personal identity in this whole transmigration. For myself, I was a new immigrant the first time I came to this country 20 years ago, so I wanted to find my own way to depict these things — the myth and drama of China, the humor of the modern American setting, and the misunderstandings between these cultures.”

The bottom line for Chen was the opera’s complexity. “I always like things that have a little bit of dimension,” says the director. “It’s not like La Bohème.” Chen notes that Chinese acrobats will function as the production’s Greek chorus. “They’re part of the fabric of the opera. They’re flying, they’re dancing, they form the images and the energy to accompany the music. American and European opera is very voice-driven; this is a very image-driven, physical kind of performance. It’s a different way of telling the story that doesn’t fall into the American or European tradition at all.”

As opening night approaches, it’s left to audiences to decide whether The Bonesetter’s Daughter represents a new kind of tradition. Yet, on the day we spoke, Wallace was clearly pleased with the work he and Tan have created.

“In a way, this is an only-in-America kind of piece,” says Wallace. “Amy and I have our American perspective, and the others have this kind of Chinese perspective on America. Together we make a whole. I think a Chinese audience would listen to the opera and think, ‘I know those sounds, this is very American.’ An American audience will sit here and think, ‘It sounds so Chinese.’ That’s really the spirit of the piece itself.”

September

Angela Gheorghiu in Concert

One of the highlights of the 2007 opera season was Angela Gheorghiu’s San Francisco Opera debut. (Read review.) Appearing as Magda in Puccini’s La Rondine, the Romanian soprano sang with warmth, radiant tone, and indelible theatricality. This month, Gheorghiu returns to the Bay Area for a concert at Zellerbach Hall. Joining the San Francisco Opera orchestra under Marco Armiliato, she’ll perform arias by Puccini (including “Ch’il bel sogno di Doretta” from Rondine), Verdi, and Giordani, as well as selections by Delibes, de Curtis, Ernesto Lecuona, Eduardo di Capria, and Romanian composer George Grigoriu. The event is copresented by San Francisco Opera and Cal Performances.

Sept. 6, 7:30 p.m., Zellerbach Hall, UC Berkeley Campus, $35-$100, (510) 642-9988, www.calperformances.org. (G.R.)

Angela Gheorghiu

Photo by Eduard Sandu

New Century Chamber Orchestra Season Opener

It’s a new era for the New Century Chamber Orchestra. Following an extensive two-year search for a music director to replace Krista Bennion Feeney, the San Francisco-based string ensemble named violinist Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg to the post earlier this year. Salerno-Sonnenberg officially takes up the reins Sept. 11, as the group launches its 2008-2009 season with a program titled “Nadja Plays Piazzolla: the Sounds of Brazil and Argentina.” She’ll serve as soloist for Piazzolla’s Four Seasons of Buenos Aires and Ginastera’s Glosses on Themes by Pablo Casals. The program also includes the premiere of Impressions, a suite for chamber orchestra by the frequent Salerno-Sonnenberg collaborator Clarice Assad, as well as Assad’s arrangement of Villa-Lobos’ Bachianas Brasileiras No. 5.

Sept. 11, 8 p.m., St. John’s Presbyterian Church, Berkeley; Sept. 13, 8 p.m., Herbst Theatre, San Francisco; Sept. 14, 5 p.m., Osher Marin Jewish Community Center; Sept. 16, 8 p.m., First United Methodist, Palo Alto; $16-$54; $125 for box seats at Herbst; (415) 357-1111, www.ncco.org. (G.R.)

Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg with members of the NCCO

Photo by Steve Jennings

Myth and the Muse

If you really want to feed your love of music, see a Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra concert at least once a year. Conductor Nicholas McGegan opens up this season with two rarities that are still right up both his and Philharmonia’s alley. The orchestra’s sensuous string sound and brilliant winds are sure to be tested by master orchestrator Jean-Philippe Rameau in his short opera, Pygmalion. Thomas Arne’s Comus, after the famous masque by John Milton, will showcase more of that composer’s theatrical talent. McGegan has assembled some excellent soloists in sopranos Sophie Daneman and Meredith Hall, and tenor Colin Ainsworth.

Sept. 13, 8 p.m., First Congregational Church, Berkeley; Sept. 14, 7:30 p.m., First Congretional Church, Berkeley; Sept. 16, 8 p.m., Lafayette-Orinda Presbyterian Church; Sept. 19, 8 p.m., Herbst Theatre, San Francisco; Sept. 20, 8 p.m., First United Methodist Church, Palo Alto, $30-$75, (415) 252-1288, www.philharmonia.org. (M.Z.)

World Premiere in San Francisco

Over a decade after San Francisco Opera co-commissioned Stewart Wallace to compose his opera, Harvey Milk, Wallace returns with the premiere of another San Francisco-specific opera, The Bonesetter’s Daughter. Adopted from the novel by Amy Tan, the opera follows the women in a Chinese family over the course of three generations, from China to San Francisco. With gifted mezzo-soprano Zheng Cao singing the title role, we have much to look forward to.

Sept. 13 – Oct. 3, times vary, War Memorial Opera House, San Francisco, $20-$290, (415) 864-3330, www.sfopera.com. (J.V.S.)

Amy Tan

Western Wind, When Wilt Thou Blow?

Schola Cantorum San Francisco is one of the most consistently excellent professional choruses in the Bay Area, and that’s saying something. Their season begins at Old First Concerts, with a performance of John Taverner’s influential, beautiful Western Wind Mass, and other English polyphony from the reign of Henry VIII.

Sept. 20, 8 p.m., Old First Church, San Francisco, $12-$15, (415) 474-1608, www.oldfirstconcerts.org. (M.Z.)

Die Tote Stadt

The Dead City is one of Erich Korngold’s most gripping and richly melodic operas, written at age 23. The music is reminiscent of both Puccini and Richard Strauss. Strangely, it will have its premiere here only now, 88 long years after its great success in Europe. From the man who became one of Hollywood’s most successful film composers, this is a work reminiscent of Hitchcock’s Vertigo. The story is about a man (sung by Torsten Kerl) whose obsession with his dead wife (Emily Magee) places him in a world torn between painful reality and yearning fantasy. Willy Decker’s intriguing production arrives in San Francisco from the Vienna State Opera and the 2004 Salzburg Festival. Donald Runnicles conducts.

Sept. 23 and 26, 8 p.m.; Oct. 1, 7:30 p.m.; Oct. 4, 8 p.m.; Oct. 9, 7:30 p.m.; Oct. 12, 2 p.m., War Memorial Opera House, $15-$260, (415) 864-3330, www.sfopera.com. (J.G.)

Thorston Kerl (center), who will sing the role here

Romeo and Juliet, on Motifs of Shakespeare

Choreographer Mark Morris returns to Berkeley with his latest evening-length work, Romeo and Juliet, on Motifs of Shakespeare. Morris is always interesting, but this event offers something more: an opportunity to hear one of the world’s beloved ballet scores as the composer intended it. With Romeo and Juliet, Prokofiev departed significantly from Shakespeare, conceiving an alternate ending in which the star-crossed lovers live. The Soviet regime intervened, and Prokofiev was forced to make major revisions; as a result, he never heard the original score during his lifetime. It was recently recovered from the Russian State Archive by Princeton musicologist Simon Morrison and was revived last month at Bard College, with Morris’ new choreography and Leon Botstein conducting the American Symphony Orchestra. Cal Performances presents the production’s West Coast premiere. The Mark Morris Dance Group is joined by the Berkeley Symphony Orchestra under Stefan Asbury in four performances at Zellerbach Hall.

Sept. 25-27, 8 p.m.; Sept. 28, 3 p.m., Zellerbach Hall, UC Berkeley campus, $42-$94, (510) 642-9988, www.calperformances.org. (G.R.)

Dancers in Mark Morris’ Romeo

Wondrous Free

Chanticleer, the celebrated men’s chorus, opens its local season with a festival of American song stretching from Francis Hopkinson’s “My Days Have Been So Wondrous Free” (1759), to a newly commissioned work by David Conte (also the director of the San Francisco Conservatory’s fine chorus).

Sept. 25, 8 p.m., First Congregational Church, Berkeley; Sept. 26-27, 8 p.m., Sept. 28, 5 p.m., San Francisco Conservatory of Music; $25-$44, (415) 252-8589, www.chanticleer.org. (M.Z.)

Pablo Sáinz Villegas

Winner of the Gold Medal at the inaugural Christopher Parkening International Guitar Competition, Pablo Sáinz Villegas presents a program of Spanish classics by Albeniz, Turina, and Rodrigo as well as music from outside the European tradition by Villa-Lobos and Domeniconi.

Sept. 27, 8 p.m., Green Room, San Francisco $30, (415) 242-4500 or (650) 726-1203, www,omniconcerts.com, www.omniconcerts.org. (S.C.)

Garrick Ohlsson

One of the great interpreters brings his alternately vigorous and distinctively delicate touch on the keyboard to the South Bay in a solo recital program of early sonatas by Beethoven (the “Pathétique” and Op. 22) and by Scriabin (No. 2, the “Sonata-Fantasy”).

Sept. 28, 7 p.m., McAfee Center, Saratoga, ticket prices not yet available, (408) 295-6500, www.steinwaythebayarea.com. (D.B.)

Garrick Ohlsson

Eccentric Escher

The always interesting Escher Quartet, veterans of the two most recent Music@Menlo Festivals, bring their motoric rhythms and compressed interpretations to San José’s chamber music series. They’re eccentric but worth a listen. The varied repertoire includes Mozart, Zemlinsky, Shostakovich, and — to crown the concert — Beethoven’s Third “Razumovsky” Quartet.

Sept. 28, 7 p.m., Le Petit Trianon, San José, $25-$40, (408) 286-5111, www.sjchambermusic.org. (D.B.)

Escher String Quartet

Photo by Tristan Cook

October

Charpentier the Pleasure-Seeker

When Warren Stewart’s Magnificat performs their core 17th-century repertory, the appeal of this music becomes instantly obvious, and not a matter for specialists and hard-core fans. Expect the usual sparks to fly when the group takes up Marc-Antoine Charpentier’s divertissements Les Plaisirs de Versailles and La Couronne des fleurs. This is Charpentier in a vein you will have rarely encountered, and it should be a jewel of a concert.

Oct. 3, 8 p.m., First Lutheran Church, Palo Alto; Oct. 4, 8 p.m., St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, Berkeley; Oct. 5, 4 p.m., St. Mark’s Lutheran Church, San Francisco, $10-$30, (800)-853-8155, www.magnificatbaroque.org. (M.Z.)

Isabel Bayrakdarian Sings of Armenia

The visually and artistically spectacular soprano Isabel Bayrakdarian, accompanied by the Manitoba Chamber Orchestra, sings a concert that is not for the faint of heart. It centers on the celebration of a contemporary composer all but completely unknown in these parts. The composer in question is Gomidas Vartabed (1869-1935), the soprano’s fellow Armenian, the country’s national composer. Besides Vartabed’s Songs of Yearning, Songs of Nature of Love, and other works, the soprano will also sing works by Bartók, Ravel, Nikos Skalkottas, and Gideon Klein.

Oct. 4, 8 p.m., Herbst Theatre, $40-$65, (415) 392-2545, www.performances.org. (J.G.)

Isabel Bayrakdarian

Three-Legged Monster Symphony Concert

Those of you who love that black monster, the concert-grand piano, will get 45 minutes of it as Emmanuel Ax tackles not one but two of the greatest pieces ever written that are not called piano concertos. Peter Oundjian conducts the San Francisco Symphony in the “Concertante” Symphony No. 4 by Karol Szymanowski, a hit at the 2007 Festival del Sole, and Richard Strauss’ Burlesque, an inspiration for Bernstein’s tune There’s a place for us somewhere. Another great tune appears in Tchaikovsky’s Francesca da Rimini, also on the program. If you attend Oct. 10, you miss a Mozart overture but in its place you get an illustrated lecture on the rest of the music.

Oct. 9, 8 p.m., Oct. 10, 6:30 p.m., Oct. 11, 8 p.m., Davies Symphony Hall, San Francisco, $30-$130, (415) 864-6000, www.sfsymphony.org. (J.D.)

Emmanuel Ax

David Tanenbaum

If you love the guitar but want to hear something new and unusually engaging, David Tanenbaum is your most reliable guide. He follows last summers ear-opening program of music by Jorge Liderman and Terry Riley with a fall concert of guitar in combination with other instruments. This time Bach’s Sonata BWV 539, Astor Piazzolla’s Histoire du Tango, Steve Reich’s Nagoya Guitars, and Aaron Jay Kernis’s work for guitar and string quartet, 100 Greatest Dance Hits, will be featured along with guitarist Peppino D’Agostino, harpsicordist Corey Jamason, and violinist Axel Strauss.

Oct. 11, 8 p.m., San Francisco Conservatory, $36, (415) 242-4500 or (650) 726-1203, www.omniconcerts.org. (S.C.)

New Esterházy Quartet

A year after its launch, the New Esterházy Quartet’s Haydn cycle continues with five more programs this season. The first year’s happy mingling of the familiar and the almost unknown holds for the remaining programs, as well. The season-opening program, titled “Haydn at the Opera,” is typically enticing: four quartets, four magnificent slow movements with a decidedly operatic cast. Op. 20, No. 2, which has a honey of a cello part and an entire (wordless) operatic scena at its heart, is deservedly often played. But how many know that movement’s little sister in Op. 17/5, or the very different, but equally beguiling, violin arias in Opp. 1/2 and 33/6?

Oct. 11, 4 p.m., St. Mark’s Lutheran Church, San Francisco, $10-$25, mail@newesterhazy.org, www.newesterhazy.org. (M.D.T.)

New Esterházy Quartet

Kirov Classics

The Kirov Ballet is one of the world’s most famous dance institutions. The technical perfection of their corps de ballet is incredible, rivaled only by that of their Parisian comrades. And assuming that Diana Vishneva is not still nursing an injury that prevented her from strutting her stuff in an American Ballet Theater program earlier this year, the company will bring sufficient star power to make their appearance in Berkeley a must for balletomanes. They perform a program of excerpts from Russian 19th-century faves, including the “Kingdom of the Shades” scene from La Bayadère, and also the full-length comic ballet Don Quixote.

Oct. 14-15, 17-19, 8 p.m.; Oct. 18, 2 p.m.; Oct. 19, 3 p.m., Zellerbach Hall, Berkeley, $50-$125, (510) 642-9988, www.calperfs.berkeley.edu. (M.Z.)

Idomeneo, San Francisco Opera

Idomeneo may be the most brilliant opera you’ve never seen. Set on Crete in the aftermath of the Trojan War, Mozart’s 1781 opera seria has only been presented three times by San Francisco Opera — most recently, in 1999, with a cast that included Barbara Bonney as Ilia, Vesselina Kasarova as Idamante, and the late, great Gosta Winbergh in the title role. This fall, the company revives the opera for six performances starring today’s reigning Idomeneo, tenor Kurt Streit. The cast also features San Francisco Opera debuts by Genia Kuhmeier (Ilia) and Iano Tamar (Elettra); Alice Coote sings Idamante. Donald Runnicles conducts, and John Copley directs.

Oct. 15-31, War Memorial Opera House, San Francisco, $15-$290, (415) 864-3330, www.sfopera.com. (G.R.)

Emerson Quartet plays Shostakovich

There’s no more bleak and depressing music than late Shostakovich, yet somehow through the grimaces and pain it gives its listeners the strength to carry on. Here’s your chance to wallow in despair and come out with catharsis as the great Emerson Quartet plays Shostakovich’s last three string quartets, Nos. 13-15, all in one concert. Wear your most somber late-Soviet-era garb.

Oct. 15, 8 p.m., Dinkelspiel Auditorium, Stanford, $23-$52, (650) 725-2787, http://livelyarts.stanford.edu (D.B.)

Yuja Wang

Photo by Mitch Jenkins

BluePrint Project

Nicole Paiement’s ongoing BluePrint series opens this year with what is obviously (though not billed as such) a pre-election special: a program whose anchoring pieces react, in varying but similarly pain-fraught ways, to political events. On the program are the late Andrew Imbrie’s From Time to Time for 10 musicians (reflecting on the Japanese invasions of China and other nations before and during World War II); John Harbison’s Abu Ghraib; and Frederic Rzewski’s Coming Together, whose text (from a letter written by one of the leaders of the 1971 Attica prison uprising) will be declaimed by the brilliant violinist/vocalist Carla Kihlstedt. Pieces by Bright Sheng (Postcards, for chamber orchestra) and John Halle (Homage) complete a program that, in the typical Paiement manner, throws light on a difficult theme from many and unexpected angles.

Oct. 18, 8 p.m., Concert Hall, San Francisco Conservatory, $15-$20, (415)503-6275, www.sfcm.edu. (M.D.T.)

Nicole Paiement

Bach Family Frolic

J.S. Bach came from a long line of distinguished Thuringian church musicians, dating all the way back to the 16th century. Meet some of the elder Bachs, along with Dietrich Buxtehude and others in this concert exploring Johann Sebastianʼs musical heritage. Music of Johann Christoph, Johann Michael, and more — itʼs a full batch of Bachs. Erica Schuller is the soprano soloist and Katherine Growden brings her richly satisfying voice to the mezzo-soprano parts.

Oct. 18, 8 p.m., Oct. 19, 4 p.m., Calvary Presbyterian Church, San Francisco, $15-$28, (415) 441-4942, www.sfbach.org. (M.Z.)

Prized Pianism

Eighteen years after winning the Leeds Piano Competition, Warsaw-born Piotr Anderszewski continues to touch the heart with rare poetic nuance. His return to Cal Performances finds him performing music by two masters, Mozart and Bach.

Oct. 19, 5 p.m., Hertz Hall, UC Berkeley, $46, (510) 642-9988, www.calperformances.org. (J.V.S.)

Piotr Anderszewski

The Borel Script

Distinguished harpsichordist Davitt Moroney is also known for marvelous discovery, often unearthing long-lost manuscripts and putting on performances that can generate an unparalleled buzz in the international music world. In his October concert, put on by MusicSources, he gives the West Coast premiere of newly discovered French works in the Borel Script (c. 1660), a significant keyboard manuscript recently acquired by the Hargrove Music Library at UC Berkeley. You may know Moroney for his exceptional keyboard skills, or as one of the foremost interpreters of Byrd (he won a Gramophone Award in 2000 for his recording of the complete keyboard works), but what can be most exciting about the musicologist/musician is everything you don’t know, showcased in the little-known repertoire that he brings to light.

Oct. 19, 5 p.m., St. Mary Magdalen Church, Berkeley, $25-$30, (510) 528-1685, www.musicsources.org. (C.G.)

Davitt Moroney

Hen in the Foxhouse

See what happens when the Berkeley Symphony, noted for cheering on the academic-rich audience with atonal premieres, allows William Eddins, a candidate for the position of music director, to conduct and be soloist in Alan Gilliland’s new pastiche, Dreaming of the Masters II: Rhapsody GEB. The GEB stands for Gershwin, Ellington, and Bernstein; the style is cocktail-lounge relaxing; and the beginning of the program, consisting of short French baubles, will kill ‘em with kindness. Bohuslav Martinů’s Symphony No. 1 after intermission will sound like Karlheinz Stockhausen by comparison, if any professors are alive to hear it.

Oct. 23, 8 p.m., Zellerbach Hall, UC Berkeley, $20-$60, (510) 841-2800, www.berkeleysymphony.org. (J.D.)

William Eddins

Paean to the Lost

A huge gap will be filled when a masterpiece by the vastly underrated Franz Schmidt (1874-1939) is performed for the first time by the San Francisco Symphony, conducted by Fabio Luisi. Schmidt, a former cellist in the Vienna Court Opera Orchestra under Mahler, wrote his Fourth Symphony in 1934, in honor of his only daughter, who had died in childbirth two years previously. In the symphony’s spare motto theme, tight-knit yet expansive structure, and gorgeous cello melody that dominates the second movement, you can hear the composer’s longing for Old Vienna, as well as his daughter. Violinist Joshua Bell will also be there to play Ravel and Saint-Saëns.

Oct. 23, 24, 25, 8 p.m., Davies Symphony Hall, San Francisco, $30-$130, (415) 864-6000, www.sfsymphony.org. (J.D.)

At Home in the Security State

Performance artist and composer Laurie Anderson brings her most ambitious work ever, Homeland, to Cal Performances. As usual, the piece mixes song and story with vocal processing and visual art, and addresses contemporary politics, following the model of her previous pieces, United States I-IV. Don’t forget about the live interview with Anderson on Saturday, Oct. 25, at 2 p.m., at Wheeler Auditorium, on the UC Berkeley campus.

Oct. 24-25, 8 p.m., Zellerbach Hall, Berkeley, $28-$56, (510) 642-9988, www.calperfs.berkeley.edu. (M.Z.)

Laurie Anderson

Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra

Leon Botstein, long known as a champion of contemporary music, brings the Jerusalem Symphony to Cal Performances to perform 20th-century works, some more familiar than others. With the superb violinist Robert McDuffie in tow, Botstein conducts Miklós Rózsa’s not-heard-enough Violin Concerto. Also on the program are Ernst Toch’s Big Ben Variations and Copland’s Symphony No. 3. The latter will, audiences may hope, end with an uncommon performance of the much-beloved Fanfare for the Common Man.

Oct. 26, 7 p.m., Zellerbach Hall, UC Berkeley, $46, (510) 642-9988, www.calperformances.org. (J.V.S.)

Leon Botstein

The Elixir of Love

The simplest and most enchanting of love stories, with Donizetti’s irresistible music, and a brilliant cast, including Inva Mula (the seven-foot-tall “blue diva” of The Fifth Element) as Adina, Ramón Vargas as Nemorino, and the San Francisco debuts of Giorgio Caoduro (Belcore) and Alessandro Corbelli (Dulcamara). Bruno Campanella conducts, James Robinson is stage director. The opera is 2 1/2 hours long, but a “family edition” presents a 2-hour version, with recent Adler Fellows in the principal roles, and reduced admission.

Oct. 29, 7:30 p.m.; Nov. 1, 8 p.m.; Nov. 5, 7:30 p.m.; Nov. 9, 2 p.m.; Nov. 14 and 18, 8 p.m.; Nov. 23, 2 p.m.; Nov. 26. 7:30 p.m. For families: Nov. 8 and 15, 12:30 p.m., War Memorial Opera House, $15-$260, (family performances: $20-$80), (415) 864-3330, www.sfopera.com. (J.G.)

Inva Mula

Musica Pacifca

Early Music mavens — Judith Linsenberg, recorder; Elizabeth Blumenstock, violin; David Morris, cello, viola da gamba; Charles Sherman, harpsichord — set their sights on entertainment with pieces that are inspired by Playford’s collections, “The Division Violin” and “The Division Flute.” Spicier sonatas by Matteis, as well as more somber ones from Purcell and his Italian contemporaries, share the program with fresh improvisations and a gamba fantasias. Guests include Robert Mealy, violin, and Peter Maund, percussion.

Oct. 31, 8 p.m., First Lutheran Church, Palo Alto; Nov. 1, 7:30 p.m., St. John’s Presbyterian Church, Berkeley; Nov. 2, 4 p.m., St. Mark’s Lutheran Church, San Francisco, $22-$25, (510) 528-1725, www.sfems.org. (C.G.)

The Phantom of the Opera

The iconic Lon Chaney silent film from 1925, the first of a myriad Phantoms of the Opera, will be screened in Davies Symphony Hall, as Dennis James provides musical accompaniment on Davies’ 9,000-pipe Ruffatti organ, the largest such instrument in North America. Chaney followed up on the great success of his previous monster movie, The Hunchback of the Notre Dame, made just two years before.

Oct. 31, 8 p.m., Davies Symphony Hall, $25-$55, (415) 864-6000, www.sfsymphony.org. (J.G.)

The Ruffatti Organ

November

Paris Piano Trio Debut

There are few better ways to spend your Sunday than in a mansion listening to great music. Three former prize-winning students at the Paris Conservatoire turned distinguished professors — Régis Pasquier (violin), Roland Pidoux (cello), and Jean-Claude Pennetier (piano) — make their debut at the Kohl Mansion. Their solo careers are impressive enough, but their rapport together should be something to enjoy. The program: Fauré’s Piano Trio in D Minor, Op. 120; Schumann’s Piano Trio in G Minor, Op. 110, and Mendelssohn’s Piano Trio in D Minor, Op. 49.

Nov. 2, 7 p.m., Kohl Mansion, Burlingame, $20-$42, (650) 762-1130, www.musicatkohl.org. (C.G.)

Dance Inventor

The prodigiously creative dancer/choreographer Merce Cunningham has lived long enough to see dance history written around him. In November, he brings his company back to Berkeley, a tour stop for half a century now. The programs include some of his iconic works with John Cage, including 1958’s Suite for Five, as well as some newer works such as eyeSpace (2006-2007), and Split Sides (2003), to music by Radiohead and Sigur Ros.

Nov. 7-8, 8 p.m.; Nov. 14-15, 8 p.m.; Zellerbach Hall, Berkeley, $26-$48, (510) 642-9988, www.calperfs.berkeley.edu. (M.Z.)

Santa Rosa Symphony

Under Jeffrey Kahane, the Santa Rosa Symphony’s programming set a standard that most of the Bay Area’s regional orchestras didn’t really try to match — enterprising, thoughtful, offbeat, and graced moreover with an unusually interesting roster of guest artists. Those of us who wondered initially whether Bruno Ferrandis — now beginning his third season as Kahane’s successor — would follow his predecessor’s lead can now answer the question heartily in the affirmative. Santa Rosa’s 2008-2009 season is full of goodies, from Haydn’s “Lord Nelson” Mass to Carl Maria von Weber’s piano-and-orchestra Konzertstück to Nikolai Miaskovsky’s Cello Concerto to three movements of Olivier Messiaen’s Turangalîla-symphonie. The November set opens with a double whammy. First there’s György Ligeti’s 1967 Lontano, a wondrously intricate, glacially shifting study in orchestral color; then Gilles Apap in Alban Berg’s Violin Concerto. (Lovers of the Berg will, naturally, be looking forward to Gil Shaham’s return visit with the piece to the San Francisco Symphony next spring, but Apap — a sort of panstylistic violinist possibly better known as a fiddler than as a classical musician — has the kind of hyperinflected violinistic voice that would be fascinating to hear in this music.) It’s a heady combination, leavened (at “heavenly length”) by Schubert’s Ninth Symphony.

Nov. 8, 8 p.m. (also Nov. 9, 3 p.m.; Nov. 10, 8 p.m.), Wells Fargo Center, Santa Rosa, $27-$50, (707) 546-8742, www.santarosasymphony.org. (M.D.T.)

Bruno Ferrandis

Anthony Marwood & Thomas Adès

To the extent that American audiences know violinist Anthony Marwood at all, it’s likely as a member of a number of busy British chamber ensembles (foremost among them the Florestan Trio), with whom he has recorded all sorts of mostly 19th-century repertoire staples. Adès, meanwhile, is far better known as a composer than as a pianist. But those who have heard Adès at the keyboard on his previous visits to the Bay Area still talk about the experience, and Marwood, for whom Adès wrote his 2005 violin concerto Concentric Paths, turns out to be as comfortable well away from German Romanticism as in it. The duo’s program — Stravinsky’s violin-and-piano music, nearly all of it adapted by the composer from his own earlier works at the behest of violinist Samuel Dushkin — might seem a limiting one. Actually, there’s plenty of variety in there, from the Baroque and Tchaikovskian sources of the Suite italienne (after Pulcinella) and the Divertimento (after Le Baiser de la fée) respectively, to the sinuous, early Pastorale (originally a vocalise), to the astringent Duo concertant of 1932.

Nov. 8, 7 p.m., Herbst Theatre, San Francisco, $32-$49, (415) 392-2545, www.performances.org. (M.D.T.)

The Messiaen Centenary

Olivier Messiaen’s centenary is in December, and Stanford Lively Arts celebrates the visionary composer in style. Scott St. John, violin, and Christopher Costanza, cello, both from the St. Lawrence String Quartet, are joined by clarinetist Todd Palmer and pianist Jamie Parker for Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time. Written while the composer was a prisoner of war during World War II and a product of Messiaen’s Catholic mysticism, the Quartet is a seminal 20th-century chamber work. Robert Huw Morgan rounds out the program with a selection of organ works, Messiaen’s own instrument.

Nov. 13, 8 p.m., Memorial Church, Stanford University, $22-$44, (650) 723-2551, http://livelyarts.stanford.edu (L.H.)

St. Lawrence Quartet

Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra

“Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven” may sound like a chapter heading in a music-history text, but in the context of a Philharmonia Baroque program with Nicholas McGegan at the helm, it’s a recipe for a fine two-hour romp. The centerpiece is the Beethoven “Triple” Concerto, which is one piece that the historical-performance movement — ordinarily gung-ho to tackle Beethoven — has given suspiciously scant attention. Can the ridiculously difficult solo cello part have anything to do with that? Tanya Tomkins tackles the beast here, with Colin Jacobsen on violin and Eric Zivian, better known in his modern-pianist guise, on fortepiano as co-soloists. Mozart (the “Haffner”) and Haydn (No. 88) symphonies round out the program.

Nov. 13, 8 p.m., Herbst Theatre, San Francisco; Nov. 14, 8 p.m., First United Methodist Church, Palo Alto; Nov. 15, 8 p.m., Nov. 16, 7:30 p.m., First Congregational Church, Berkeley; $30-$75, (415) 252-1288, www.philharmonia.org. (M.D.T.)

Piano Fever

Concerts Grand, the North Bay’s only piano recital series, curated by SFCV’s own Terry McNeill, charges into another season, with the local debut recital of Russian Elena Ulyanova. The program is full of big pieces, from Beethoven’s “Appassionata Sonata,” and Chopin’s Andante spianato and Grand polonaise brillante, to Rachmaninov’s Sonata No. 2 in B-flat, Op. 36.

Nov. 14, 7 p.m., St. Hilary’s Church, Tiburon, $25-$50, (707) 526-2447, www.concertsgrand.com. (M.Z.)

Elena Ulyanova

Crazy in Love, and Just Plain Crazy

Two people coming together is celebrated by Michael Morgan and the Oakland East Bay Symphony, with a new piece by Nathaniel Stookey dubbed “a breathless affair for two singers and orchestra,” and Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet suites. The Stookey work, Zipperz, will incorporate the zippered-poetry form pioneered by librettist Dan Harder (see www.danharder.com for an example). The concert begins with a 12-minute funhouse of jokes by the “bad-boy of music,” George Antheil — his Jazz Symphony.

Nov. 14, 8 p.m., Paramount Theater, Oakland, $20-$65, (510) 444-0801, www.oebs.org. (J.D.)

Symphony of a Thousand

That title for this 1910 Mahler symphony is usually a bit of an exaggeration, but this is an enormous work, in length, breadth, ambition, majesty … and the number of performers. The text includes medieval Latin hymns and the hour-long closing scene of Goethe’s Faust. Michael Tilson Thomas conducts a full orchestra, offstage instruments, three choruses, and eight soloists, including Laura Claycomb, Anthony Dean Griffey, and James Morris.

Nov. 19, 21, 22, 8 p.m.; Nov. 23, 4 p.m., Davies Symphony Hall, $35-$65, (415) 864-6000, www.sfsymphony.org. (J.G.)

Guarneri Farewell

After 45 years, the fabled Guarneri String Quartet bids farewell, not with tears, but by embracing the new. In the company of the young Johannes String Quartet, their San Francisco Performances program balances the time-honored beauty of Mendelssohn’s Octet with the Bay Area premiere of William Bolcom’s Octet: Double Quartet. Two additional Bay Area premieres, quartets by Esa-Pekka Salonen and Derek Bermel, make for a night of rejoicing and promise.

Nov. 20, 8 p.m., Herbst Theatre, San Francisco, $32-49, (415) 392-2545, www.performances.org. (J.V.S.)

Guarneri String Quartet

Toreador Revived

Ballet San Jose brings an unusual and rarely performed full-length work to the stage in November, The Toreador, choreographed by Flemming Flindt, after the renowned 19th-century master of the Royal Danish Ballet, August Bournonville. Symphony Silicon Valley, under the baton of Dwight Oltman, will breathe life into the score. The costumes and scenery come straight from Denmark’s Royal Opera House.

Nov. 20-22, 8 p.m.; Nov. 23, 1:30 p.m., San Jose Center for the Performing Arts, $25-$85, (408) 288-2820, www.balletsanjose.org. (M.Z.)

Redwood Symphony Plays Jewish Music

The Redwood Symphony continues its quest for interesting programming with a concert of Jewish-themed (mostly) music by contemporary Jewish composers, performed in one of the Bay Area’s most beautiful contemporary-styled synagogues. How cool is that? The program includes the klezmer-inspired Dreams and Prayers of Isaac the Blind by Osvaldo Golijov and Steve Reich’s amazing psalms setting Tehillim, as well as works by Philip Glass and Lukas Foss. Music director Eric Kujawsky conducts.

Nov. 23, 3 p.m., Congregation Beth Am, Los Altos Hills, $10-$25, (650) 366-6872, www.redwoodsymphony.org (D.B.)

Eric Kujawsky

Kafka Fragments

Dawn Upshaw, soprano, MacArthur Fellow, majestic champion of new music, and Geoff Nuttall, first violinist of the St. Lawrence String Quartet, bring to Cal Performances an acclaimed production of György Kurtág’s Kafka Fragments. Under the direction of Peter Sellars, the two have performed the piece several times since 2005, when the staging was created for the Perspective series that Upshaw curated at Carnegie Hall. Kurtág sets excerpts from Kafka’s diaries, letters, and notebooks. In a 2005 interview with Jeremy Eichler, then of The New York Times, Upshaw said that on first hearing Kafka Fragments she was devastated by it and thought she was not up to singing it; Nuttall termed the violin part “borderline unplayable.” Nevertheless, despite the daunting musical and dramatic challenges of the piece, Upshaw and Nuttall have been acclaimed in previous performances, and this promises to be one of the highlights of the fall season.

Nov. 23, 7 p.m., Nov. 24, 8 p.m., Zellerbach Playhouse, Berkeley, $68, (510) 642-9988, www.performances.org. (L.H.)

December

Venetian Christmas

Every year, as December rolls around, I wonder who will create the most original or interesting seasonally themed concert. This year’s list of finalists includes the California Bach Society, presenting a full program of 16th- and 17th-century choral music from Venice’s St. Mark’s Cathedral. The bold and brilliant music on this program, including Monteverdi’s four-voice Magnificat from 1640, is chock full of beautiful and (at the time) innovative ideas, including the famed “cori spezzati” (divided chorus) effect. You just hope Cal Bach can re-create that effect in humbler quarters than the Venetian cathedral.

Dec. 5, 8 p.m., St. Gregory of Nyssa Episcopal Church, San Francisco; Dec. 6, 8 p.m., All Saints’ Episcopal Church, Palo Alto; Dec. 7, 4 p.m., St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, Berkeley, $10-$25, (415) 262-0272, www.calbach.org. (M.Z.)

Aurific Atonality

There is no way around it: Atonal music is the signal contribution to Western music from the 20th century. And what better way to learn why Elliott Carter is the most universally respected exponent of the style than to hear the Master Music Explainer, Bob Greenberg, run through Carter’s five string quartets on one day, and all the piano music the next. The works are performed on the respective evenings by the Pacifica Quartet and Ursula Oppens.

Dec. 6, lectures 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., string quartets 7 p.m.; Dec 7, lecture 2 p.m., piano music 4 p.m.; Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Forum, San Francisco, $95 (see Web site for separate-event charges), (415) 392-2545, www.performances.org. (J.D.)

Pacifica Quartet

Mozart and Tchaikovsky at Symphony Silicon Valley

Symphony Silicon Valley has dropped the “Behind the Score” lecture-demo it originally scheduled on Tchaikovsky’s Fourth Symphony, but kept the work. In the lecture’s place it has agreeably substituted the Mozart Clarinet Concerto with the band’s own excellent principal, Michael Corner, as soloist, with a Suppé overture for openers. The Mozart alone should make it worthwhile to attend this concert, conducted by frequent guest Paul Polivnick.

Dec. 6, 8 p.m., Dec. 7, 2:30 p.m., California Theatre, San José, $37-$73, (408) 286-2600, www.symphonysiliconvalley.org. (D.B.)

Michael Corner

With Guests Like These

There are a lot of holiday concerts to pick from, but the New Century Chamber Orchestra offers one that is hard to pass up, with special guests soprano Melody Moore (an Adler Fellow with a glowing track record at the S.F. Opera) and Schola Cantorum (the church choir without a church, celebrated for its refinement and expert musical ensemble). The program includes Brandenburg concertos by Bach and Handel’s Solomon, Overture and Entrance of the Queen of Sheba.

Dec. 11, 8 p.m., St. John’s Presbyterian Church, Berkeley; Dec. 12, 8 p.m., First United Methodist, Palo Alto; Dec. 13, 8 p.m., Herbst Theatre, San Francisco; Dec. 14, 5 p.m., Osher Marin Jewish Community Center; $32-$54; (415) 357-1111, www.ncco.org. (C.G.)

Members of the New Century Chamber Orchestra

Heggie and Flicka’s Autumnal Love Fest

In one of her farewells to the operatic stage, the great mezzo-soprano Frederica von Stade teams up with composer Jake Heggie for the West Coast premiere of the chamber opera he wrote for her, Three Decembers. Based on a play by Terrence McNally, the work merges operatic and Broadway idioms to tell the tale of the challenging relationship of an actress with her two grown children. In a story that will have immediate resonance to many, one of her sons is a gay man whose partner is dying of AIDS. This special coproduction with Houston Grand Opera and Cal Performances features a 10-piece instrumental ensemble that includes Heggie and conductor Patrick Summers on piano.

Dec. 11-14, times vary, Zellerbach Auditorium, UC Berkeley, $48-$86, (415) 864-3330, www.sfopera.com. (J.V.S.)

Twelfth Night

Jonathan Dimmock directs the Artists’ Vocal Ensemble in this program of both sacred and secular music, exploring the relationship between the religious holidays and the New Year — the Saints’ Days between Christmas and Epiphany at the heart of the religious calendar of Europe — as found in the great tradition of Renaissance choral music.

Dec. 12, 8 p.m., First Lutheran Church, Palo Alto; Dec. 13, 7:30 p.m., First Congregational Church, Berkeley; Dec. 14, 4 p.m., St. Mark’s Lutheran Church, San Francisco; $22-$25, (510) 528-1725, www.sfems.org. (C.G.)

Symphony Friends

Friends from the San Francisco Symphony — Geraldine Walther, viola; Amy Hiraga and Sarn Oliver, violins; Nancy Ellis, viola; Peter Wyrick, cello; and Robin Sutherland, piano — get together for a special holiday benefit concert (and the special holiday buffet that follows). Two quintets, Mozart’s String Quintet No. 3 and Brahms’ Piano Quintet in F Minor, share the program with Frank Bridge’s Two Pieces for Viola and Piano, a chamber piece that demonstrates the technique the composer passed along to his student Benjamin Britten.

Dec. 14, 7 p.m., Kohl Mansion, Burlingame, $85 each ($65 for season subscribers), (650) 762-1130, www.musicatkohl.org. (C.G.)