Harold Shapero

Photo: Gordon Parks for Life

I logged on to Twitter a while ago to tell Alex Ross that we won't have much Wagner in SF on the 22nd either, but before I could get that tweet off, I saw Alex's For Harold Shapero link, and knew what had happened. The composer died last night in his sleep, peacefully, from complications of pneumonia, at 93.

Harold Shapero was one of my professors at Brandeis in the 1970s. (If you didn't already know my approximate age, you do now.) When I started, he was some years into what we thought was a major-league composer's block. Over at Sequenza 21, where there's a statement up from the Shapero family, Christian Hertzog notes in the comments that Mr. Shapero "retreated from composing after being attacked by some of his peers in the late 1940s/50s."

I don't personally have any information about why Mr. Shapero stopped composing, but given the quality of his early work, that retreat, or block, or whatever it was, was a sad thing. He was a good teacher; I took electronic music and analysis with him. If you ever hear me refer to the later variations of Beethoven's Op. 111 piano sonata as "the heavenly raindrops," I'm quoting Mr. Shapero. And I think he must have been great to study composition with.

The electronic music class was a lot of fun. Brandeis had a Buchla and a Moog, and Mr. Shapero wouldn't let us touch the Moog. "You will just be writing for keyboard if you use the Moog. Go play with the Buchla." So I learned a little about what a sequencer could do. I still have the resulting tape, my only extended composition ever. It's right over there in a bookcase, and has not been played since the 1970s. And I have a '70s era music department brochure that has a photo of me sitting in the electronic music studio in front of the Buchla. (The brochure also stars David Urrows's boots.)

I was last in touch with Mr. Shapero about ten years ago, following Arthur Berger's death, and he was much as he had been in the 70s: warm, funny, sharp. That correspondence was in an old email account; it's still active, but it seems I deleted most email from 2003 at some point, owing to storage limits. He remembered me (though not what I looked like), and we had an entertaining exchange. In one of the lost emails from him, he lamented the loss of a beloved cat and said he and his wife were not getting a new cat more because he couldn't stand to lose another. He was also composing again and had been for some time, a good thing.

I pitched an interview with him a few years ago and was turned down; I should really have pitched harder. It would have been good to have a few extended conversations with him.

Hail and farewell, Harold Shapero, and condolences to his wife and daughter, who survive him. You will be missed.

Updated May 19 with links and some more comments.

• Alex Ross met the Shaperos once. Yes, he was boisterous!
• Brandeis University remembers Harold Shapero
• Sequenza 21 has the family's statement and nice comments
• Anthony Tommasini plumps for the Symphony for Classical Orchestra

Defending the Indefensible

The Times has a puff piece on the dismantling of The Machine, that nasty unit set used for the Met's current Ring production, which is going into storage for the nonce. Ho hum, except for the quotations from Peter Gelb, who inserts his foot farther into his digestive system with every comment:

Mr. Gelb suggested that the machine had become a scapegoat. “One of the reasons the ‘Ring’ has been criticized so much is people disagree with his approach, not the machine,” he said, referring to Mr. Lepage. “The machine is a victim, not entirely innocent because of its creakiness, but, you know, every production at the Met makes some noise.” 

He said he had not lost his enthusiasm for the machine. “It worked far more times than it didn’t work, and when it didn’t work sometimes, the machine was blamed when it wasn’t its fault.” He mentioned a moment in “Das Rheingold” last month when a jam on a separate “track-and-trolley” device prevented acrobats from zooming over the stage. Still, that problem forced the crew to stop the machine. 

He added that while it had delayed that 2011 “Die Walküre,” it had never interrupted a performance. “I’ve been to Broadway shows where the performance was stopped and the audience sat with the house lights on because things weren’t working,” he said. “That never happened to us.”

Yeah, that 45-minute delay to reboot the thing for Die Walkuere, who cares?

Nobody believes a word Peter Gelb says about the production at this point; actually, people disagree with the approach (brainless) and The Machine (worthless, dull). I'd suggest that he cut his losses by keeping his mouth shut.

On the Air

James Levine's return to the podium is tomorrow, and the concert will be broadcast on the web. Details from the Met press release:

The Sirius XM Radio broadcast of this Sunday afternoon’s MET Orchestra at Carnegie Hall concert—Met Music Director James Levine’s first public performance in more than two years—will be simulcast on the Met’s Web site.  The broadcast can be heard live on Metropolitan Opera Radio on SIRIUS XM Channel 74 and streamed live at www.metopera.org/stream.aspx beginning at 2:55 p.m. on Sunday. The concert begins at 3 p.m. this Sunday, May 19. The program will include the prelude to Wagner’s Lohengrin; Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 4 in G Major with soloist Evgeny Kissin; and Schubert’s Symphony No. 9, “Great.”

A pretty tame program for Levine: no Carter, Webern, etc.

Note: 3 p.m. eastern time. That's noon for us here on the west coast.  Good luck, Jimmy, and don't fall off the scooter.

What is the Right Order for Listening to These Performances?

Chronologically? By conductor? By orchestra? By edition?

By quality? 

Curious Flights Celebrates Britten

Direct from clarinetist Brenden Guy comes an update on the upcoming Curious Flights concert. It is a fabulous program of little-heard works by Benjamin Britten:

A Britten Celebration

Tuesday, June 4, 2013 at 8 p.m.

San Francisco Conservatory of Music Concert Hall, 50 Oak Street, San Francisco

Britten – Wind Sextet                                                                                      

            Valinor Winds

Britten – Phantasy Quintet in F minor                                                             

            Friction Quartet & Jason Pyszkowski

Britten – Canticle III, Op. 55: Still Falls the Rain

            Brian Thorsett, tenor

            Kevin Rivard, horn

            Ulysses Loken, piano

Britten, Matthews – Movements for a Clarinet Concerto                                                 

            Curious Flights Symphony Orchestra

            Alasdair Neale, conductor

            Brenden Guy, clarinet

I heard Brian Thorsett and Kevin Rivard in the Britten Serenade at NCCO a couple of years back and they were great. It's a wonderful program all around!

I am grieved that I can't be at Curious Flights (jujitsu class in Berkeley Tuesday nights), but I hope you can be. Tickets are a bargain at $10 (students) and $15 (general); buy from Brown Paper Tickets or at the door.

White Smoke over the Back Bay: It's Nelsons

Finalmente!

Andris Nelsons has been appointed Music Director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. For the 2013-14 season, he has the title Music Director Designate. After that, he's the MD.

The photos in the press release include one of Nelsons with his wife, soprano Kristine Opolais. Presumably this appointment means she will be more available to companies in the US, although of course she presumably also has a schedule going out five years or so.

I've read a lot about Nelsons in the last few years, but haven't heard a note of his work. Anyone?

Update: Joshua Kosman has heard Nelsons, with the BSO, no less, in Mahler, and wound up scratching his head.

Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes!

San Francisco Opera's Tales of Hoffman takes a couple more hits:

• Alice Coote has withdrawn "for personal reasons," and is replaced by American mezzo Angela Brower.
• Soprano Jacqueline Piccolino replaces Jennifer Cherest as Stella.

What Was He Thinking?

While we were on the east coast, I took my mother to the New York City Ballet. My uncle Sonny, who has more connections than I can describe in the theatrical community, had offered to get Met tickets for me, but the schedule for the last 12 days was all operas I had seen and had no particular desire to see again, plus I was concerned about accessibility issues for my mom. So, no opera, but the Jerome Robbins program at NYCB looked promising.

Well, I liked it about as much as I usually like ballet, which is to say, I'm fascinated by the freakish things the dancers can do with their bodies but prone to getting bored. This particular program was more interesting than most, perhaps because the middle work was Fancy Free, which has a great Bernstein score, a story of sorts, and a whole lot of style, even though the 40s sexism gets tiresome quickly.

The last piece on the program was a huge problem, though. It's a ballet called I'm Old-Fashioned, which is also the title of a Kern & Mercer song. The ballet, to music of Morton Gould, is a set of variations on the dance that Fred Astaire and Rita Hayworth do in the following film sequence:

Gould's music is a set of variations on the Kern song, without singer, naturally.

First off, I'd say the ballet is about 30% longer than it should be, even accounting for my own comparative disinterest in ballet. I mean, the music overstayed its welcome, though there's a suitably amusing fugue with pseudo-Baroque choreography.

But the bigger problem is the structure of the ballet. It starts with the film sequence projected on the stage backdrop, then the ballet dancers come out and do their thing for, I dunno, 20 minutes? Longer? I didn't check my phone for start & end times, since it was turned off, and I'm not going to dig up the program.

Then, for the last variation....god help me, the film is projected again and about 20 or 30 NYCB dancers are on stage doing a variation (I think) of what Astaire and Hayworth are doing, 40 feet tall, behind them.

PEOPLE.

Fred Astaire was one of the greatest and most famous dancers of the 20th century. The man was a genius, poetry in motion, a dancer with the kind of eye-drawing power that I have seen only in the greatest of opera singers. Think Rysanek, LHL, Chris Merritt (that is not a mistake) in his last two SFO appearances. You could not take their eyes off them and you hardly noticed anyone else on stage.

Those poor NYCB dancers, set up as miniature Astaires and looking, ah, stylistically a good distance from him. Ballet is a highly artificial and stylized style, while what Astaire is doing looks completely natural and easy even though only a handful of dancers could possibly do what he did. And Astaire had about four times the charisma of the NYCB dancers.

It was not fair. I felt so sorry for the ballet dancers. It's not right to create a ballet that makes your dancers look so totally outclassed.

Hiatus Explained

I was out of town on the east coast starting on May 1, mostly taking my mother around to see friends and relatives. She moved to the Bay Area in 2006 and hadn't visited the east since 2010; in the last couple of years, it's definitely gotten to the point where it's best for me to travel with her. So, there you have it. I missed the Beethoven weird-stuff programs (and the repeat of the Missa), which I regret deeply, and gave my Goerne Winterreise ticket to a friend because I was at my wit's end the last weekend in April.

I'm back now and resuming blogging.

Wagner & Dvorak at San Francisco Symphony

It's a double-header of Matthias Goerne and Christoph Eschenbach this week at Davis; tonight is the last of three programs of Wagner excerpts and the New World Symphony, tomorrow it's Schubert's Winterreise. I attended the symphony concert last night and came away with what you might call mixed feelings:  dissatisfaction with Eschenbach over a few issues, and love for Goerne co-existing with mild frustration.

Let's start with the length of the first half of the program. Okay, the two excerpts are nice bleeding chunks, but man, Die Frist ist um is an odd way to open a concert, creeping on stage as it does. Why not fatten up the program by starting with the overture to The Flying Dutchman? Rehearsal time issues? Um, maybe. I can't think of when I last heard so many messy brass entries as last night, and from a brass section that has been sounding unbelievably great for the last couple of years.

Goerne sang with his characteristic virtues: a gorgeous voice and an unerring line, deep intelligence combined with raw passion. I really could listen to him singing the telephone book; I'm sure he would project each individual's life story effortlessly based only on their name and address.

He could be the greatest Wotan ever, but only under highly controlled circumstances: if he has the stamina,  in a small house with a conductor willing to keep the orchestra's volume under control. In the giant barn that is Davies, he really didn't have a chance. His low notes disappeared - this happened in last year's stunning Mahler / Shostakovich recital as well - and Eschenbach gloried rather too much in the SFS brass, so that Goerne's voice disappeared in the racket at some critical moments. It's pretty impressive to hear an orchestra of this quality cutting loose in Wagner, but you have to wonder how much opera Eschenbach conducts, considering that he did a pretty poor job of supporting the singer.

And you'd also have to wonder how much Wagner he conducts. I do not know Dutchman well, so no comments on the tempos in Die Frist ist um, but jeez, the tempos of the last 2/3 of Wotan's Farewell seemed slow almost to the point of dragginess. Well, presumably they were at least partly Goerne's idea, and they did not cause him trouble. It's not as though the tempo caused any of the balance problems.

Eschenbach's New World performance, lacking a soloist, didn't have the kinds of balance problems the two Wagner excerpts had. I think I have never heard it live, and what a beauty, though a discursive beauty, it is. Still, I left vaguely dissatisfied: the brass issues continued, making the gorgeous chords at the opening of the slow movement less than mysteriously beautiful; some tempos were off (slow movement could've been slower, scherzo could have been quicker and more savage, etc.), and there were a couple of times when you knew, really knew, that Eschenbach is German, not Bohemian. Why the performance got a standing O is beyond me, other than that the loud parts were really, really loud.

UPDATE: Joshua Kosman and I were at the same concert, though he was there Thursday. He's blunter about Eschenbach's failings, too. He reminds me to say: Russ deLuna, you are a marvel. I hope to hear you play the Tristan solo some day.

Mobius Trio

Via Joe Barron comes word of a local group, the Mobius Trio, which was formed at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music and is dedicated to commissioning and performing new music for guitar trio. Very cool!

Less cool is the unreadable web site: guys, I have a large, high-quality monitor and I can hardly read 6 point grey-on-black type. Suggest you reconsider the hipster design; I know the Command-+ trick for making the type bigger (Control-+ on Windows), but not every potential ticket buyer does.

On Stage at SFS

Some personnel notes, with thanks to SFS Communications for providing the information -

• Jeremy Epp, who is a substitute, was the excellent timpanist for Herbert Blomstedt's two programs. It'll be interesting to see who is on stage this week for Christoph Eschenbach.
• Stephanie McNab played third flute and piccolo in the bang-up Nielsen Fifth last week. Her usual gig is flute & piccolo with the San Francisco Opera orchestra.
• Chris Gaudi will play principal oboe for the nonce. Auditions for principal oboe haven't been scheduled yet. (You can check the schedule of planned auditions here.)

You Need Me to Proofread Everything

Found in a novel I'm reading: The front and back covers and the title page call the book The Atrocity Archives. The header on every page of the text calls it The Atrocity Archive.

My bad: Daniel Wolf quite rightly points out that The Atrocity Archive is the name of one of the novellas in the book, so the header is correct.

LA Times, what's wrong with this picture?

Cal Performances 2013-14

I'm sorry, I have to start out with a boring statement you've all heard from me before: once again, Cal Performances has a great season coming up, loaded with great performers, premieres, the rarely-seen-or-heard, the new, the old, the in-between.

Okay, it doesn't have this past year's lineup of operas (Wozzeck, Einstein on the Beach, The Secret Garden), but it does have the return of the Vienna Philharmonic and terrific piano and vocalist series, plus a Mark Morris premiere or two.

Almost everything counts as a highlight:

• Ojai North! curated by Mark Morris. Too much good stuff to describe, even though mostly it's dead guys. One highlight will be Morris's take on Le Sacre du Printemps with music by The Bad Plus.
• Three performances by the VPO, with Danielle Gatti, Andris Nelsons, and Franz Welser-Most each taking a program. The three programs aren't in and of themselves that thrilling, but I'll go anyway.
• Mark Morris Dance Group with McGegan & the PBO, Handel's Acis & Galatea, orchestra by WA Mozart
• Manny Ax with Ann Sofie von Otter (Brahms, Mazzoli, Muhly)
• Manny Ax with Yo-Yo Ma (Brahms, Hillborg, Dean)
• Kronos Quartet 40th birthday program
• Vocal series: Kelley O'Connor & Jessica Rivera with Robert Spano; Gerald Finley with Julius Drake (Winterreise), Iestyn Davies with Thomas Dunford, lute, Christianne Stotijn with Rick Stotijn and Joseph Breinl (the latter program has lots of new music)
• Piano series: Wosner, Goode, Bronfman with P. Zukerman, Lewis, Biss, Uchida
• New music series: Eco Ensemble, Calder Quartet, Kronos Quartet
• Chamber music series: Musicians from Marlboro, Danish String Quartet, Jerusalem Quartet (all-Shostakovich program), Takacs Quartet (all of the Bartok quartets in two programs), David Finckel  & Wu Han
• Jordi Savall, Hesperion XXI, and Tembembe Ensemble Continuo
• Mariza (fado)
• Wu Man (pipa)

There's also a jazz series, some theater, lots of dance, and a "family" series.

Women? Missy Mazzoli has something on the ASvO/Ax program and Wu Man will play some of her own music.

More on the BSO Season

I count six orchestral works by living composers and six chamber works by living composers. Looks like two of the 50th anniversary commissions for the BSO Chamber Players are by women, plus...argh, Amy Beach's dreadful piano quintet makes its appearance. So, two of 12 new pieces are by women and 1 of the rest is by a woman.

UPDATE: Oh, wait, links:

• Season Press Release
• Season Chronological Listing

The web site itself is useless: they still have a format where you see a photo and a tagline for a concert, but can't see who all of the performers and works are without clicking through and mousing over. Folks, this is the worst possible design. Alex Ross and I have been complaining about this kind of thing for years. Just stop doing it.

Bill Bennett Memorial at SFS

From the press release:

The San Francisco Symphony and the family of the late William Bennett, the Principal Oboist for the Orchestra who passed away in February, invite the public to a memorial tribute in celebration of his life onMonday, May 6 at 4 pm in Davies Symphony Hall. This event is free and all seating is general admission; no tickets are required. 

Paying tribute to Bill and honoring his life, in words and music, will be members of his family and friends, SF Symphony Music Director Michael Tilson Thomas, musicians of the San Francisco Symphony, SF Symphony President Sakurako Fisher, and SFS Executive Director Brent Assink.

TICKETS: This is a free, general admission event. This is not a concert, and no tickets are required.

Monday, May 6

4 pm
Davies Symphony Hall
201 Van Ness Avenue, San Francisco, CA

False Alarm, Sorta

The BSO announcement went out at some point yesterday - not to me (?!), but I saw reports elsewhere. And....it's another season of guest conductors! No new music director!

While one article I read said "a season with something for everyone," I'm scratching my head. An Asia tour led by Lorin Maazel? Yefim Bronfman plays the Beethoven piano concertos? (He has the same gig at NYPO.) All of the conductors and almost all of the non-vocal soloists are men (I saw Anne-Sophie Mutter, Alisa Weilerstein, and Yuja Wang). No music by women that I saw. The season schedule is here.

How much longer can this go on??

"Very, very soon. :-)"

Hmmm! IF there is a new music director, who might it be?

Augustin Hadelich with Blomstedt, SFS

So, two things you need to know about this week's SFS program, which I attended on Wednesday:

• Alone of all attendees, I hated the Beethoven violin concerto.
• The Nielsen 5 was absolutely fantastic and worth the price of admission. (Everyone agrees with this.)

Why did I hate the Beethoven? It was deadly dull, boring as hell. Beethoven should never be boring! It was pure moderato, everything well-behaved and in place, without any vigor or inner muscularity at all.  

Joshua Kosman writes that "Blomstedt and the orchestra were oddly tentative," so presumably that's what he heard. He also noted balance issues at the start. Hmm. The balances were fine from where I sat, two rows behind and five seats to the left of Joshua. As for Augustin Hadelich, eh. He also put me to sleep, and unlike JK, I heard intermittent intonation issues.

Meanwhile, David Bratman also heard energy problems; sitting closer than me, he has an interesting take on Hadelich's sound qua sound. We were at the same concert. 

Other commentary:

• Joshua Kosman, Chronicle (behind the paywall, sorry)
• David Bratman, SFCV
• Stephen Smoliar, Examiner.com

Season Announcements

I have fallen far behind in tracking season announcements. There are just a few major announcements still to come, from my perspective.

• Boston Symphony Orchestra. Will they, or won't they, name a new music director, two years after James Levine's resignation?
• Cal Performances. The announcement is a week from tomorrow. They put on the best show and I plan to be there.
• S.F. Performances. Coming soon, either late this month or early next month.

Are there any other major orchestras that have not announced? I need to do some reportage on Philly, Chicago, Cleveland, etc.

It's a Great Day for Errors at the Times

They need me to proofread everything they say about musicians.

• In the obituary for the late pianist and composer David Burge, the author refers to the tenor Axel Schiotz. By the time Mr. Burge worked with the singer, Schiotz had suffered a stroke and retrained as a baritone.
• In the ArtsBlog obit for the late, great Sir Colin Davis, the author says that "It was not until 1992, with his masterful interpretation of the Sibelius cycle with the London Symphony, that his authority became apparent and his fame began to spread." Um, what? Davis was world famous long before 1992, especially for his interpretations and championing of Berlioz. Alex Ross mentions a run of Peter Grimes at the Met in 1969 that got national attention. Davis had a gigantic discography, with a recording career going back to the 1960s. The claim in the obit is outrageous and ignorant. I hope there's a full-length obit still to come that's written by a member of the music criticism staff. 

Which is Which?

Sunken Garden, Secret Garden, can you tell the difference?

I can assure you that SF Opera didn't make extravagant claims about how The Secret Garden represents a new phase of operatic production. And West Edge (nee Berkeley) Opera has been presenting terrific productions with projections for quite some time, at least since their first Bluebeard's Castle in 1996.

Note to writers and bloggers everywhere: the composer of Sunken Garden is Michel van der Aa, not Michael. I can mention this without guilt because I made the same damn mistake a while back.

Sir Colin Davis

From the LSO home page

Sir Colin Davis has died at 85. He had been in poor health for some time and I believe was hit particularly hard by the loss of his wife a few years ago.

He was a major figure in the Berlioz revival of the last 40 or 50 years. I assume he recorded all of Berlioz's orchestral and operatic works at least once; he is certainly among the go-to conductors for Berlioz. I also have him in Sibelius and a most graceful and charming recording of most or all of Mendelssohn's incidental music to A Midsummer Night's Dream.

My favorite story about Davis is that, as a wind player in the early 1950s, he was denied entrance to a conducting degree program because he wasn't a pianist. Given where he went as a conductor, the joke is on the degree program and that requirement.

He was a towering figure in British musical life, and will be greatly missed.

It's Over.

San Francisco Symphony and its musicians officially ratified a new 26-month contract a day or two ago. A big sigh of relief here, and also some real perplexity over the musicians' statement, which contains all kinds of inflammatory remarks.

Seriously, folks? You have a strong case that you presented as badly as possible; you keep sniping at management (which has been entirely professional in its public communications); your statement sounds as though you're still on strike and still fighting.

Do you understand the concept of declaring victory and celebrating? Okay, obviously not. And that's from someone who is on your side and who thinks orchestral musicians should be paid much better than even the best-paid are. Next time you're faced with a labor dispute, please hire better PR people and think carefully about who speaks for you publicly.

Pile-Up

Yes, folks, it's one of those weekends, when there are about eight concerts you might want to attend. Let's take a look at the last weekend of April, call it April 25 to 28:

• Christoph Eschenbach conducts SFS in a program of Wagner & Dvorak. Note: the Wagner is a couple of bleeding chunks sung by the great baritone Matthias Goerne.
• Goerne & Eschenbach perform Schubert's Winterreise on Sunday, April 28
• California Bach Society presents the Symphoniae Sacrae by Heinrich Schuetz
• Opera Parallele presents Trouble in Tahiti and A Hand of Bridge
• Volti performs David Lang's battle hymns at Kezar Pavilion
• SF Conservatory stages Die Fledermaus. (I like this a lot, but SFO put it on brilliantly a few years ago and I don't need to see it again just now.)
• Handel & Haydn Society - of Boston - presents Handel's Jeptha
• Pocket Opera has Orpheus in the Underworld at the Hillside Club in Berkeley (Sunday only)

I have a ticket to Winterreise and am weeping as I debate what to see next. battle hymns is currently in the lead because it sounds quite remarkable, but SIGH.