Janos Gereben
Janos Gereben appreciates news tips, corrections, and words of encouragement at [email protected].
Articles by this Author
As someone coming from that neck of the woods, I will walk the plank with this about Eastern Europe: Notwithstanding the many splendid composers of the region, it has not done well as a source of great operas.
Laurie Cohen's 
Events at Berkeley's 
Every time I hear what Gustav Mahler did not call his “Resurrection Symphony” — but others did — I think about what the work must have sounded like to the first listeners 115 years ago. Sure, they had heard “big sounds” from Beethoven and Wagner, though without Stravinsky, Bartók, and others in their ears, what could they have made of Mahler’s dizzying complexity?
The San Francisco Symphony, launched in December 1911, is turning 99 next season (which runs from Sept. 2010 to June 2011), a rare accomplishment in the tough business of orchestral music. 
If the establishment of the Grateful Dead Archive in the Bay Area doesn’t sound like an item for Classical Voice, consider that Michael Tilson Thomas deemed it appropriate to inclu
As the Philharmonia Baroque announces its 30th anniversary season today, Music Director Nicholas McGegan ponders the then and now of the orchestra in terms unexpected from the renowned leader of a period-instrument orchestra:
His return to San Francisco will come 33 years after his participation in a historic event that took place in the War Memorial Opera House:
- The first time Luciano Pavarotti sang “Nessun dorma” on stage, in his role debut as Calaf
- Montserrat Caballé’s debut in the title role of Turandot
- And Chailly’s own conducting debut here, at age 24
about his upcoming concerts here: It is a great pleasure to return to San Francisco for the first time. I am coming back still with a fresh memory of the Turandot production I conducted as a young fellow, with Pavarotti and Caballé making sensational role debuts in the Jean-Pierre Ponnelle production.The focus on the night of Oct. 29, 1977, was on those great singers and the artistic-social hubbub in and around the Opera House, and only partially on the man in the orchestra pit.
Yet there he was: a wunderkind leading a triumphant performance, the same age as Gustavo Dudamel when the Venezuelan first conducted at the BBC Proms, as a replacement for the indisposed Neeme Järvi; and a year younger than Leonard Bernstein when he substituted for Bruno Walter to lead the New York Philharmonic.
Milano-born Chailly, a precocious conservatory student, was a teenage assistant to Claudio Abbado at La Scala and played drums in a rhythm-and-blues band. He went on to lead the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra for two decades, and to conduct major orchestras and at opera houses around the world.
While Chailly hasn’t been back to San Francisco, the Gewandhaus Orchestra has returned several times during its 33-year touring history, with 229 concerts in the U.S. alone. In Davies Hall, Gewandhaus concerts were led by a familiar figure. San Francisco Symphony Conductor Laureate Herbert Blomstedt, music director here 1985-1995, headed the Gewandhaus from 1998 through 2005. Chailly took over from him as Gewandhauskapellmeister in 2005.
Even now, in Davies Hall, Blomstedt will overlap with Chailly and the Gewandhaus, conducting SFS Feb. 18-20, in works by Haydn and Beethoven.
Blomstedt’s tenure here and in Leipzig were characterized by rigorous adherence to the classics. His successor will follow suit: Before the all-Beethoven concert on Feb. 22 (Piano Concerto No. 5 and Symphony No. 7), the Sunday, Feb. 21, lineup consists of Chopin’s Piano Concerto No. 1 and Dvořák’s Symphony No. 9. (Louis Lortie replaces the originally scheduled Nelson Freire as the pianist on both evenings.)
Why the lack of variety? Chailly’s response:
It was obvious to focus on the core repertoire with which the orchestra has forged its reputation. We bring to California composers who had a personal relationship with the LGO in its lifetime.As to that “personal relationship,” Gewandhaus — which calls itself the world’s oldest orchestra — was first formed in 1743, and Beethoven (1770-1827) himself touredDuring recent years, I have concentrated in Leipzig intensively on composers like Bach, Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Schumann, and Brahms. It was inevitable that we’ll come to the U.S. with composers who have been identified with the Gewandhaus and its tradition.
Leipzig in 1796, long after the orchestra moved into the “textile merchants’ building” — its residence and namesake. But, pressing on with the question about the strictly 19th-century programming, aren’t there any calls for more variety? Chailly’s answer is that, besides the orchestra’s own preference, it’s also a matter of local requests. He says, somewhat surprisingly in pointing the finger at local organizations:
We gave a variety of programs to our management in New York and they — as always — dealt with the local promoters who invited us. In those programs of course was present more than one composition of the masters of the 20th-century period. But this time the choice focused on our core repertoire of the LGO.Exactly the same programs are scheduled in Los Angeles, Boston, New York, and elsewhere. Apparently, nobody asked for more-current works or, at least, the music of LGO’s most famous music director, Mendelssohn.
Meanwhile, back in Leipzig, the LGO commissioned five works for the current season, in addition to presenting six world premieres. That’s well beyond “the core.”
Finally, back to the 1977 Turandot and Chailly’s initial career, which was primarily in opera, does he plan (with or without the Gewandhaus) to lead opera productions soon? The answer is no, though “There are talks with major European festivals about future possibilities.”
More about San Francisco Symphony »
The San Francisco Opera 
[The sound of Max Bruch’s Kol Nidrei is heard, starting with the full sound of the cello, as Arnold Schoenberg and Theodor Adorno listen.]Schoenberg: “Stop! Today is Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement when Kol Nidre is played. But why always Max Bruch’s? At least up here, on Parnassus, let’s hear my version for a change. Without the cello sentimentality of the Bruch. It needs words ... not just music!”
[Schoenberg’s Kol Nidre (Op. 39) is heard through the musical introduction, the male singer reciting the text.]
Adorno: “Enough! You’ve made your point, but this isn’t about music — 12-tone or otherwise ...”
In fact, this work, Carl Djerassi’s Schoenberg on Parnassus, is about music, but also about chess, philosophy, politics, Paul Klee’s Jewishness, Theodor Adorno’s musicology, Walter Benjamin’s Marxism, and much, much more.
This wild and crazy multimedia event, coming to San Francisco’s Contemporary Jewish Museum, opposite Yerba Buena Center, on Feb. 7, is a sophisticated, esoteric, academic play-conversation-concert. It is clever and chaotic and challenging and — to some — simply perplexing.
Djerassi, 86, is a Stanford chemistry professor emeritus, novelist, and founder of the Djerassi Resident Artists Program near his home in Woodside. The name may be familiar from his most famous accomplishment, Djerassi being one of the fathers, so to speak, of the birth control pill.
Schoenberg on Parnassus is a staged segment of his book Four Jews on Parnassus: A Conversation, or imagined posthumous conversations among Schoenberg, Benjamin, Gershom Scholem, and Adorno.
The four are interconnected in multiple ways, and through these dialogues Djerassi is exploring ideas of identity, canonization, and his own story as a Jew who had to flee Nazi Austria in 1938.
This production, directed by Vienna-based Isabella Gregor, features the London opera singer Loré Lixenberg; actors Gerry Hiken, Ken Sonkin, and Bill Wolak; and Stanford drama professors Kay Kostopolous and Rush Rehm. The music ranges from Schoenberg to a commissioned rap song by Eric Weiner, a San Franciscan, to an Icelandic pop song.
Paul Klee’s artwork is also prominent; Djerassi is a major collector of his works and has bequeathed his entire Klee collection to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
The San Francisco event is cosponsored by the Stanford Institute for Creativity in the Arts and the National Center for New Plays at Stanford. There will be what organizers call a “related but different reading” in Stanford’s Pigott Theater at 7:30 p.m., Feb. 6. The two events represent the U.S. premiere of Schoenberg on Parnassus; numerous performances of various segments of the work have been given in Europe.
More about Contemporary Jewish Museum »
Going back about six decades now, there were Alan Watts in Marin and the American Academy of Asian Studies in San Francisco, the pioneering Esalen Institute in Big Sur, Lou Harrison’s gamelan works from San José and Santa Cruz, Berkeley’s Center for World Music, and countless others.
Northern California has long been a vital crossroad of East–West intellectual, spiritual, and artistic exploration and conflation.
The next journey to this crossroad is Stanford University’s sixth annual “Visions of Asian Music,” held on the Palo Alto campus, Feb. 5-21.
Festival founder and Artistic Director Jindong Cai has put together a remarkable East–West roster for the festival, including:
- Do You See My Heart? — a concert by Mohsen Namjoo, a classical singer and contemporary composer from Iran; his works encompass Hafez, Rumi, Saadi, blues, and rock; he has been called “Iran’s Bob Dylan” (Feb. 5).
- St. Lawrence String Quartet and Stanford Philharmonia Orchestra, joining in the West Coast premiere of Japanese-American composer Takuma Itoh’s Concerto for String Quartet and Orchestra. The program also includes Hawaii-based Canadian composer Neil McKay’s koto concerto called Voice of the Phoenix and Menlo Park native Henry Cowell’s 1957 Ongaku (Feb. 12)
- Gamelan Sekar Jaya, giving the premiere of Sekala-Niskala: Seen and Unseen, a Balinese dance suite. Ethnomusicologist and UC Santa Cruz Music Department Chair Fredric Lieberman calls the East Bay ensemble “serious students of the music of Bali, who have graduated from an amateur group, playing this dynamic music for its sheer excitement, to a semiprofessional performing ensemble” (Feb. 13).
Husband-and-wife composers Zhou Long and Chen Yi present his Song of Eight Unruly Tipsy Poets From Tang and her Rhyme of Fire. Cai conducts the Stanford Symphony in Tan Dun’s Concerto for Paper and Orchestra, and in the premiere of Korean composer Dohi Moon’s Fragile Waves, for laptop computers and orchestra. Chinese percussionist Beibei Wang is soloist; she has been a featured performer in several Tan Dun works, including the opera Tea and Paper Concerto (Feb. 20).
UC Santa Cruz’ Lieberman is also calling attention to his school’s hosting of the Pacific Rim Music Festival, April 21-25. Hi Kyung Kim is artistic director of the festival, which will showcase new music by composers from East Asia.
Participants include the farflung groups Contemporary Music Ensemble Korea, New York New Music Ensemble, and Lydian String Quartet, as well as the Bay Area’s own Del Sol String Quartet, Ensemble Parallèle, and Gamelan Sekar Jaya. The festival will also present the U.S. premiere of Frank Scheffer’s film Varèse: The One All Alone, a documentary about French-American composer Edgard Varèse (1883-1965).
More about Stanford Pan-Asian Music Festival »
There it was, news over the weekend of the election victory of 
After a "Wozzeck event" at the S.F. Conservatory Thursday night [see next item], I turned one way instead of another when leaving, and wound up bumping into a notice about a student concert. 
Pages
