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Reviews
FESTIVAL
Monteverdi, Transplanted
By Heuwell Tircuit
Carmel Bach Festival Chorale & Orchestra
(7/25/05)
FESTIVAL
Supercharged
By Scott MacClelland
Carmel Bach Festival Orchestra
Bruno Weil
(7/26 & 28/05)
FESTIVAL
Gravity's Rainbow
By Janos Gereben
Music@Menlo
(7/28/05)
FESTIVAL
Subtle Sensibilities
By David Bratman
Attacca Quartet
Kashii Quartet
Miró Quartet
Music@Menlo
(7/30/05)
FESTIVAL
A Masterly Achievement
By Anatole Leikin
Jeffrey Kahane
Music@Menlo
(7/31/05)
CHORAL
Gallic Charms
By Bruce Lamott
Pacific Boychoir
Jeune Choeur d’Île de France
Choeur d'Enfants d’Île de France
(7/29/05)
MUSIC NEWS
Music by Students for Students
By Janos Gereben
FESTIVALS
California Music Festivals, a Listing
QUESTION OF THE WEEK
Responses to Our 7/26/05 Question of the Week
Robert Commanday, Senior Editor
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These are the dog days, so-called, as if that were bad, when in fact, dogs are wonderful and these days of glorious weather and lowered activity levels are great. I love the dog days. For one thing, one can sit back and more easily contemplate human and society failings with a calm detachment. That’s not easy.
I wonder at our citizenry for its almost bovine acceptance of craziness. No one is up in arms that the money wasted on NASA’s two and a half years work on the space shuttle’s insulation is not going into education or public health. And that shuttle money is just small potatoes. And when I last looked, the right to bear arms is something a majority of our Congress is dead set on defending. And that’s just for starters.
There are things you can do, protests you can make with guaranteed effectiveness. Let’s just say that you are disappointed at the classical music coverage in the print media and perhaps the quality of the content overall in the monopoly newspaper at hand (no names please). It’s a coverage bound to get worse with the announced recent intention to cut staff by 120 (buy-outs and if necessary, lay-offs), a pay cut for 40 per cent of the staff, a loss of one week’s vacation and half of the allowable sick days and other provisions not seen in a labor contract here since they were instituted somewhere back in the Depression. So the paper lost $62 million last year, it says. Could the content offered be responsible for some of that?
Well, what it says is that if the newspaper-as-we-knew-it is going to survive at all around here, it’s not going to satisfy those interested in higher culture, classical music, dance, literature, drama, the arts. So what can you do?
Support efforts in the replacement or successor medium, the Internet, efforts like San Francisco Classical Voice a non-profit enterprise (very non-profit). SFCV puts more than 80 per cent of its income (all from individual contributions and grants) into its content, specifically for the staff of three, and the writers who write the reviews. During our summer fund-raising effort, the response has been good from a core of our loyal readers, repeat winners who have stepped up before — but not yet matching last year’s effort. We hope you join that hardy band that keeps us going. As we gird our computers for the fall season and our eighth year of publication, we plan changes that should broaden our scope. We invite you to come alongside and join our mission.
We serve a classical music scene ranked by 150 music critics last year as second only to New York's in the United States (and that would also be in the continent, even the hemisphere). With so little newspaper coverage, the challenge is to keep up the energy, keep the anticipation, the excitement going. The classical music audience here (which is, by the way, loaded with young people) needs the stimulus to keep everyone thinking and talking about the events, the music. Our regional symphony orchestras and opera companies, half-dozen contemporary music ensembles, chamber orchestras (including the country’s leading early music ensemble, the Philharmonia Baroque), our 500 choruses and the steady river of recitals — all need coverage. The scene needs more music critics, not fewer; more media carrying the discussion, not fewer. That’s where we come in, with your help.
Any help you can manage, by check to San Francisco Classical Voice, 6000 Wood Drive, Oakland, CA 94611, or by e-mail (by clicking on the contribution link at the top of the page) will be matched by a generous grant from the Anne and Gordon Getty Foundation, making possible continuance and growth in our eighth year.
(Robert P. Commanday, Senior Editor of San Francisco Classical Voice, was the music critic of The San Francisco Chronicle, 1965-93, and before that a conductor and lecturer at the University of California, Berkeley.)
©2005 Robert P. Commanday, all rights reserved
SFCV is a not-for-profit enterprise supported by foundation grants and individual contributions. If you enjoy what you find here and can help with a contribution, that support will help insure our continuance. By virtue of a generous matching grant, it will be doubled. Your contribution (tax-deductible) may be made by credit card
by
clicking here, or by a check sent either to San Francisco Classical Voice, 6000 Wood Drive, Oakland, CA 94611, or to the San Francisco Foundation CIF, (San Francisco Classical Voice account), 225 Bush St. # 500, San Francisco, CA 94104.
From September 1, 1998 to July 1, 2005, SFCV has published, in addition to the Music News, feature pieces and weekly editorials 2140 reviews of Bay Area performances by: 52 symphony orchestras (458 reviews), 89 chamber groups (265), 36 new music ensembles and programs (231), 39 opera companies (290), 28 choral groups (132), 15 music festivals (86), 33 early music ensembles (167), 24 chamber orchestras (88), 6 musical theater groups (14), world music (14), recitals (373), youth music (10), other (12)
Michelle Dulak Thomson, Editor
Richard Thomas, Associate Editor
Also — all previous reviews and articles are available. For last week's issue and articles, click on "Last Week." To retrieve earlier pieces, click on "archives" at the bottom of the page, enter the category and/or specifics of the search query, then click "Submit." If an article fails to appear, please notify us by e-mail (editor@sfcv.org).