Reviews

Russian music is internationally popular and much programmed. But for last week's San Francisco Symphony concerts under guest conductor David Robertson, we got three masterpieces by Slavic composers born west of Russia: a Pole, a Slovak, and a Czech.

The last quarter-century has seen musical talent bursting out of Finland, a country of only 5.3 million that, owing to ample public funding of music education, has produced a steady stream of great conductors, performers, and composers. Among the prominent composers are Aulis Sallinen, Kaija Saariaho, Esa-Pekka Salonen (who also conducts), and Magnus Lindberg.

It’s been a great month for Donizetti aficionados in the Bay Area.

Lucia di Lammermoor went crazy last Tuesday night at the San Francisco Opera House, and the audience went crazy for her. Natalie Dessay was magnificent in the title role of Donizetti's opera. Not only does she possess the range and technical command needed for the famously demanding Mad Scene, but she also is an actress capable of expressing a wide range of emotions.

For the 12th year running, New Music Bay Area and Lifemark Group Arts sponsored the Garden of Memory, an annual celebration of the summer solstice through new music and sound installations. For four hours on Sunday, more than three dozen artists took over the labyrinthine Chapel of Chimes, a mausoleum on the edge of Oakland's Rockridge district. It was with some trepidation that I attended.

A bit quixotically, the San Francisco Symphony Youth Orchestra's "Bon Voyage" program, offered Sunday in Davies Symphony Hall, took on three demanding symphonic monsters from early last century. Conductor Benjamin Shwartz's program turned out to be a little less than I had hoped for, but better than I had feared.

In the last decade of his life, Haydn entertained a number of visits from Georg August Griesinger, who transcribed their conversations and published them as a series of biographical notices.

On an old episode of the irreverent animated series South Park, the Colorado boys' parents force the gang into a children's choir called, not so subtly, "Getting Gay With Kids." I think the character Cartman best summed up many Americans' attitude: "Dude man, choirs are gay." Choral singing in the 19th century, however, developed as a large participatory cultural activity.

Handel's Italian operas live through great singing, more so than many of their bel canto brethren. The subject matter and sensibility of their stories can seem foreign to us, and the arias are founded on emotions and metaphors that recur in every one of the operas.

The Thomashefskys are back.