Corporations and Their Employees

Earlier this year, EMC, for which I used to work, "temporarily suspended" its 401(k) match, which was an annual match of up to $3,000. EMC has around 27,000 employees, so we're not looking at a small amount of money here. (It is true that EMC is apparently granting stock to employees in lieu of the match, so there is potential upside, with the emphasis on potential.)

Today, EMC agreed to shell out $2.4 billion to acquire Data Domain, winning a bidding war with Network Appliances. That $2.4 billion is a multiple of what a year of 401(k) match would cost the company. EMC is also a conservatively managed company, and when I left, I think they had something like $6 billion in cash reserves. Maybe that has gone down. Maybe, in the face of decreasing profits, they just had to cut the 401(k) match. But, apparently, they also needed to spend $2.4 billion to buy yet another company.

Update: I have corrected the name of the company EMC is acquiring to Data Domain.

Trouper to End All Troupers

Joyce DiDonato finishes a Covent Garden performance on crutches, discovers at the hospital that, yes, she broke a leg. She's planning to continue the run....using a wheelchair!

And she asks that, in the future, well-wishers stick with "bocca di lupo."

I Will Have to Hear for Myself.

The reopening of the renovated Alice Tully Hall was widely greeted with pleasure (though note Alex's reservations). Today, Allan Kozinn discusses why he is not happy with the renovations.

Recommendations Sought

John Banville, a reader of this blog, asks:

Could you recommend a recording of Schubert's Sonata for Arpeggione, but with viola instead of cello? I have the britten/rostropovich and martha argerich/ mischa maisky versions. Thank you!

Anyone have suggestions? I've heard the Arpeggione on record only, with cello, not recently, and don't know a thing about recordings of it.

Compare and Contrast 18, Italian Soprano Division

I forgot to mention in my comments on Tosca that while Adrianne Pieczonka has fine technique and a warm voice of ample size - certainly more than enough for the role - she doesn't sound at all Italian. Certainly this is partly owing to the fact that her Italian is on the loose side, lacking in bite - and so is her voice. It doesn't have the same kind of vibrancy or edge as an Italian spinto or dramatic soprano. I commented similarly on Heidi Melton and Stephanie Blythe in the Verdi Requiem. Excellent singers all, idiomatic in Italian, no.

Let's take a look at a few YouTube performances of the greatest of all Verdi arias, "Tu che le vanita," from Don Carlo, starting with Sena Jurinac. She sang many Italian roles in her long career, bringing to them deep understanding, a magnificent line, and pinpoint accuracy. But the weight of her voice isn't quite right, she doesn't have a strong chest voice, and the cool tone is more Strauss than Verdi. Still, it's an admirable performance, sorrowing and dignified.

Next, let's listen to a pair of legendary mid-century Italian sopranos, Renata Tebaldi and Anita Cerquetti. The cut of their voice couldn't be more Italian; both voices are big, rich, and vibrant, deep as a river.

Tebaldi is usually considered past her best by 1964, when this was recorded, but what I would give to hear the aria performed this way.

And here's the meteoric Cerquetti, in her very brief prime:

Missing from this collection, because she never recorded it: Rosa Ponselle, who sang Elisabetta in the 1920 Metropolitan Opera premiere. Now that must have been something, as young as she was. (And she was in good company, with Adamo Didur as Philip, Giovanni Martinelli as Don Carlo, Giuseppe de Luca as Rodrigo, and Margarete Matzenauer as Eboli.)

Musical Minds, on PBS's Nova

Tonight most PBS stations will broadcast a Nova show called "Musical Minds." It's based on Oliver Sacks's book Musicophilia - perhaps "musicophilia" was too long or too risque-sounding for Nova. In any event, it's a great book and this sounds like a fine show.

Senator Franken!

Minnesota Supreme Court rules; Norm Coleman concedes. Presumably Gov. Pawlenty will sign the election certification.

If you're wondering why this went on so long, the initial count was so close - with Coleman in the lead - that Minnesota law required a recount. Coleman suggested at the time that Franken should concede. The statutory recount put Franken ahead, and Coleman spent a lot of money and time going to court. Nate Silver at fivethirtyeight.com has had some interesting analysis of why Coleman's quest might have been worth it to him and the Republicans regardless of the outcome. And a friend tells me that if Coleman had pursued the matter into the federal courts, he could have gotten Justice Alito to hold the initial hearing.

Tosca, San Francisco Opera

Tosca is one of the trio of Puccini works that opera companies haul out like clockwork, along with La Boheme and Madama Butterfly. They're crowd-pleasers, they sell tickets, and there aren't too many expensive principal roles to fill.

I've seen all of them at least three times each, and as far as I can tell, Tosca is by far the hardest to bring off, Boheme the easiest. Where youthful singing, enthusiasm, and half-decent direction are more than enough to carry Boheme successfully from attic feast to teary conclusion, Tosca is full of improbabilities, requiring oversized personalities and sharp conducting to persuade or move.

I vaguely think I saw Tosca at some point in the 1980s, though nothing in the San Francisco Opera archives is particularly ringing a bell. I caught the current Thierry Bosquet production when it was new in 1997 and again in 2004, both times with a vocally threadbare and underpowered Carol Vaness doing her Callas imitation, accompanied by weak tenors and the genial Scarpia of James Morris or the ramrod stiff, in a bad way, Mark Delavan. Genial - now there's a word I don't want to see describing Scarpia.

The current revival, starring debuting dramatic soprano Adrianne Pieczonka, debuting baritone Lado Ataneli, and returning tenor Carlo Ventre, had more promise; Pieczonka's roles include Sieglinde, at least guaranteeing enough volume and heft to make a credible go at the Roman diva. I was unimpressed with Ventre in a previous appearance, but Ataneli's been getting good reviews elsewhere.

Imagine my concern upon seeing this in handouts from the Opera about Pieczonka:

The Los Angeles Times praised Adrianne Pieczonka's role debut as Tosca with Los Angeles Opera in 2008 as "radiant," noting that "she sang with effortless purity and impeccable taste."

Uh-oh. Radiance, and even purity, I can deal with, but impeccable taste? Tosca's not the Countess Almaviva, after all; what I want to hear is little filth, and some willingness on the part of the soprano to get down and dirty with the music and the role. It's melodrama, for crying out loud.

And unlike you (and you, and you, and you), I've even read the Sardou play, La Tosca, a Sarah Bernhard vehicle, on which the opera is based. Is it ever a melodrama. But it's in five sprawling acts, where Puccini's opera is a compact three, and thus there's more time and space for fleshing out the leading lady.

And you know? She needs it. Do you buy anything about how she behaves in the opera? She's deeply religious, insanely jealous, easily led, untrustworthy, and stupid; she's also an unworldly innocent (who spends nights with her lover), beautiful, passionate, and a great singer. She tries to out-maneuver Scarpia, with disastrous results. She gives away a secret moments after her lover makes it clear he's willing to endure any pain to protect that secret.

Are we supposed to admire this woman? Or love her? Well, maybe. And maybe a singer with the stature of Callas, Tebaldi, Price, or Olivero can persuade us that there's something admirable or lovable about her - a tough sell with me, given her capricious and foolish behavior, which leaves four dead.

The performance I saw got off to an unpromising start: the Scarpia chords sounded, the curtain went up, and there stood Angelotti (Jordan Bisch). Yes, stood. The libretto says he's supposed to hurry in, nearly running. This isn't a difficult stage direction to observe, requiring no special equipment or effects. And it was just the first of several misjudgments in the act on the part of director Jose Maria Condemi - which surprised me, because I've read a number of good reviews of his work.

The Cavaradossi/Tosca scene was something of a shambles. If Tosca's not a tigress - and Pieczonka was more of a domesticated than a wild cat - if there's not much chemistry between the lovers, if the conductor doesn't have the music well in hand...well, sadly, that's what the first half of Act I was like. Whatever errors Condemi made, Marco Armiliato's slack account of the score did much more damage. Joshua Kosman called it fluid; I call it soggy.

Worst of all would be the thudding, leaden performance of "Recondita armonia," Cavaradossi's first-act aria, which should be a lilting, radiant paen to Tosca's beauty. It wasn't, and Carlo Ventre, in coarse voice, sounded worn and verging on wobble. He got an enormous hand, though, presumably for holding the last note for a long time. Sigh; audiences!

With Scarpia's entrance, the opera perked up quite a bit; Lado Ataneli has a beautiful voice and succeeded in projecting menace and power through a sinister manner, with no snarling, sneering, or moustache twirling. He could have used somewhat more vocal firepower; in the Te Deum, the orchestra, which was loud without projecting the right feeling, occasionally swamped him.

Act II pretty much played itself, thanks to Puccini and his librettists, and came across well despite Armiliato's continuing lack of tension. Here Pieczonka came into her own, given a situation that unambiguously calls for the fierce Tosca. And her "Vissi d'arte" was magnificently sung, with a firm line and sterling control. She deserved the ovation that followed. Ataneli continued to be the menacing and sadistic Scarpia; I can carp only about the amount of time he spent casually sitting on a corner of his desk, which seemed...undignified.

Ventre improved in Act III, or perhaps he was saving himself. "E lucevan le stelle" was acceptable, though not what it could have been in the hands of a great (or better) tenor. Personal to CB: JS is a fine clarinetist, but remembering your past glories at SFO, I missed you in the intro to that aria. The opera hurtled to its harrowing conclusion even without Ataneli's vicious magic, ending better than it began.

How I'd like to see a great Tosca performance some day. And perhaps we'll get one, with Nicola Luisotti in the house.

Maazel's Mahler

If you're interested in hearing what outgoing NY Phil maestro Lorin Maazel can do with Mahler, and you didn't catch any of it during his NYPO tenure, HDTracks to the rescue! You can download live performances, for a price, here.

Joana Careiro on the Radio

If you're not partying or at the Opera seeing Netrebko Sunday afternoon, you can catch the broadcast of a Berkeley Sympony concert conducted by incoming music director Joana Carneiro this past December - her audition concert. Nice program, too:

Beethoven, Syphony No. 5

Lindberg, Chorale

Adams, Shaker Loops

Sunday, June 28, 2009, 4 p.m.

KALW 91.7 FM or

http://www.kalw.org/

Social Networking Redux

Every now and again I pop over to the San Francisco Symphony's newish social networking site just to see what's happening. They're up to 748 members as of today. I see that guest performers are being encouraged to join; Sasha Cook and Alfie Boe, who were in last week's Iolanthe performances, both have memberships.

And Ms. Cook's page shows one of the inevitable issues with social networking sites: A dropped-in come-on from one of the onlookers. It's hard to tell if the fellow is speaking to Ms. Cook or to the woman who posted immediately before him (a member of the Symphony Chorus who has excellent taste in mezzo-sopranos), but it's a bit disconcerting.

Trends

If you want to know what people are interested in, who better to tell you than the modern Oracle? And, luckily, Google provides a page called Google Trends, which tracks what people are search for. You can find Trends at http://www.google.com/trends.

At the top right now is "maria belen shapur photo" - that would be the Other Woman in Mark Sanford's life - trailed by various searches related to Farah Fawcett's death.

Catching up fast, though, are stories related to the reported death of Michael Jackson, one of the very biggest stars of the last 35 or so years. I remember him fronting the Jackson 5 as an adorable adolescent in "The Love You Save" and other '70s hits. I haven't heard much of his music in the last 30 years, though I am aware of huge hits like the Thriller album. And of course I've watched his descent into the grotesque with a mix of fascination and horror, between the drugs, the payoffs to the parents of young boys, and whatever the hell happened to his appearance. I have to admit, that's one autopsy report I'd love to read.

I Just Hope They Don't Have Any Serious Theological Disputes During the Sermon.

Pastor Urges His Flock to Bring Guns to Church, NY Times, June 25, 2009.

Betty Allen

The mezzo-soprano Betty Allen has died, age 82. A contemporary and college classmate of Leontyne Price's, and a member of the same generation of outstanding African American opera singers, she sang at NYCO, the Met, and other companies; she spent 40 years on the faculty at the Manhattan School of Music. Read the Times obituary here.

You Can't Make This Stuff Up, Republican Division

• Governor Mark Sanford of South Carolina goes down, down, down, to Argentina and then in disgrace. "Hiking the Appalachian trail," right.
• Senator John Ensign of Nevada, active in the Promise Keepers earlier in his life, also had an affair, with a former staff member.

I don't actually give a damn who these guys were sleeping with, though I hope neither got blackmailed as a result. In the case of Sanford, it certainly is a problem that he was out of the country without having made the proper arrangements for a transfer of power in case of emergency. I feel for their families. It's hard enough when a spouse breaks whatever agreements a couple has, whether about monogamy or how money gets spent; it's truly awful when you're a public figure and suddenly your name is in the newspapers for all the wrong reasons.

Democrats do the same things, of course; see Edwards, John; Clinton, William Jefferson; Spitzer, Eliot. It's just that Democrats as a group have spent a lot less time in the last 30 years than Republicans claiming to be the pro-family, pro-morality party. Right.

Update: I also care that Sanford apparently used government funds to pay for his little jaunt to Bueno Aires. He's repaying the state, but, a little ethical lapse there, eh?

Bay Area Composers IV: David B. Doty

David B. Doty's Steel Suite, played on harpsichord by Jonathan Salzedo of the Albany Consort. Click the button labeled Recordings. The recordings are intended as demos; the composer tells me he'd love it if someone would learn and perform or record the work.

The First Flute

The NY Times reports on the oldest known musical instrument, a flute estimated to be 35,000 years old. Me, I bet that percussion instruments were in use earlier, because it's just so easy to bang two things together, but this is very neat indeed.

End of an Era, Photographic Edition

Kodak is retiring Kodachrome at the end of the year.

Women (and Men) Who Love Too Much, Operatic Version

Porgy, meet Countess Almaviva; Countess, Porgy.

Gulda and Others

I'm slightly surprised that ACD hasn't run across Friedrich Gulda before. Gulda was among Martha Argerich's teachers, and the one she credits as most influential. I know him through his individual, well-worth-a-listen Beethoven sonata recordings. I'm sure his Bach is also excellent, given his approach to Beethoven.

Back in 2005, ACD and I went around a few times about Sergei Schepkin's Goldberg Variations. To my way of thinking, if you're going to take the big anachronistic step of playing Bach on the piano, you might as well go all the way with it. Schepkin is insanely and wonderfully flamboyant, uses the pedal freely, and dresses up every variations with wild embellishments; I love every note. That improvisatory feel does seem very 19th century to me, in the sense that 19th century piano virtuosos were expected to be able to do this kind of thing; listening to some early Chopin on record, you find embellishments there. And, hmm, there are how many 18th c. manuals on embellishments?

Back to Gulda. For anyone looking for off-the-beaten-track Beethoven sonata recordings, take a look at the French pianist Eric Heidsieck, whose EMI complete set used to be available cheap from FNAC (cheap even with shipping to California), Andrew Rangell (on Bridge, and he has a new release out this month), and Ernst Levy (on Marston, if they're not completely sold out). For that matter, I'm in the market for Frederic Lamond. Who he, you ask? A Scottish pianist considered the greatest exponent of the Beethoven piano sonatas in the generation before Schnabel. You can sample him on YouTube, in fact.

Tweeting During Concerts

PDQ Bach got there first:

Read what Matthew Guerrieri has to say about tweeting and Twitter.

Memo to San Francisco Opera Copy-Editors

The name of the opera is Il Trovatore for a reason, and no one goes to see this opera primarily because of the baritone singing the Count:

Verdi's audience favorite Il Trovatore features intense action and an all-star cast led by Dmitri Hvorostovsky.

Bay Area Composers III: Clark Suprynowicz

Composer Clark Suprynowicz's videos are hosted on his personal web site, so the videos can't be embedded here. But you should definitely check out a few clips of his opera Chrysalis, which Berkeley Opera performed a few years ago:

• Buffy Baggott and Marnie Breckenridge, Scene 2
• Buffy Baggot and the chorus, Scene 4
• John Minagro, Marnie Breckenridge, and the chorus, Scene 12

I missed this and I am so sorry! Happily, Suprynowicz has a number of major works in development, with hoped-for premieres over the next two years:

• Caliban Dreams, an opera with libretto by Amanda Moody. The composer and librettist are in discussions with Berkeley Opera and the 6th St. Playhouse in Santa Rosa for a 2011 premiere. Caliban Dreams will feature tenor John Duykers.
• The Machine, an opera with libretto by Mark Streshinsky, planned as a January, 2011 premiere at The Crucible in Oakland, and featuring bass Kenneth Kellog, whom you may have seen at San Francisco Opera in the last couple of years.
• A musical in development with playwright Tanya Barfield, about the black revolutionary movement of the 1960s.

Watch his web site for more information on those works!

L'Oiseau de Feu

Here's birthday boy Igor Stravinsky conducting the end of The Firebird, London, 1965, in a lovely and soft-grained performance:

Today's Google logo should eventually be on permanent display here.

Bonus clip: Stravinsky conducting sometime in the 1920s. Silent footage with the orchestra in cramped quarters. The composer made some records in the 20s and 30s with the Walter Straram Orchestra; could this footage be from one of those sessions? Do you have any idea what the work might be?

Online Music Journalism Roundup

Alex Ross had a few wry comments the other day about the state of journalism in general and class music criticism in particular. San Francisco Classical Voice may have been the first site of its kind - we're ten years old now - but we're not going to be the last. Here are the nonblog online music journalism sites I know about:

• San Francisco Classical Voice, covering the Bay Area
• Boston Musical Intelligencer, under the leadership of Robert Levin
• Chicago Classical Review, looking at the Chicago music scene
• artscriticATL, in Atlanta
• South Florida Classical Review, in S. Florida
• NewMusicBox, covering the new music scene
• Sequenza21, which is so huge it seems like more than an umbrella for composer blogs.

More?

Garden of Memory 2009

It's that time of year again: the summer solstice is approaching, and at the Chapel of the Chimes in Oakland, diverse Bay Area musicians perform new and recent music. As usual, there's a fantastic lineup.

June 21, 2009

Chapel of the Chimes
4499 Piedmont Avenue
Oakland, Ca

5 p.m. to 9 p.m.

Admission is $15 general, $10 students and seniors, $5 kids under 12 (kids under 5 are free). Tickets available from www.brownpapertickets.com.

For information, contact New Music Bay Area at listings@newmusicbayarea.org or call Allison at (510) 228-3207.

Read all about it here.

Twas the Eighteenth of April...

No, wait, it's not. But this ride - er, run - will get the BSO some amusing attention, and maybe a few bucks, assuming nothing unfortunate takes place:

On June 29 and 30, fourteen Boston Symphony Orchestra musicians, several of their family members, and six staff members will run the 150 miles between Symphony Hall in Boston and the Main Gate of Tanglewood in Lenox, to mark the beginning of the 2009 Tanglewood season, which opens with an all-Tchaikovsky program led by BSO Music Director James Levine on Friday, July 3. BSO bassist Todd Seeber and BSO violinist James Cooke, both longtime runners, conceived of the Run to Tanglewood.

At 2 p.m. on June 29, Todd Seeber, introduced by a brass fanfare and starter pistol, will lead several runners from the Symphony Hall Stage Door on the first leg of the run. The run will continue over 32 legs, each between 3.5 and 6 miles, and will arrive at the Tanglewood Main Gate at approximately 1:15 p.m. on June 30, in anticipation of the first BSO rehearsal at Tanglewood on July 1 and the opening night program on July 3. Each leg will be run by one to four participants. The average run pace will be 6 miles an hour or 10-minute miles.

The Lenox community will be invited to Tanglewood to cheer the runners on the final leg of the run from the Tanglewood Main Gate to the Tappan House on the Tanglewood grounds. “Being avid runners ourselves and knowing several other orchestra musicians who love running as much as we do, Todd Seeber and I thought it would be incredibly fun to organize a relay run from Symphony Hall to Tanglewood as a unique way to bring attention to the opening of the 2009 season,” said James Cooke, BSO violinist. “We’re thrilled that the staff agreed and that a few of them will be joining us for the race. With friends and family sponsoring us, we also hope to raise a few funds for the BSO.”

For further information about the run or to sponsor a runner, visit tanglewood.org/relay.

Postscript to Pastreich

The following was posted in the comments to an earlier posting, and I thought it should be more prominently displayed:

As musician representatives who worked closely with Peter Pastreich during his consultancy for the Honolulu Symphony in 2004-05 (one as orchestra committee chair, another as symphony board representative, the third as union business agent), we feel an obligation to respond to and correct the misinformation that has been put forward about his time here.

Mr. Pastreich spent most of a season investigating, then searching for and helping implement solutions to some of the deep dysfunction undermining the HSO. The Musicians already had a high opinion of his skills from his previous work here; during his 2004-05 consultancy, our respect for his honesty, commitment and ability only grew. His recommendations - which did not include his being offered any position with the organization - seemed to us exactly what was needed, at long last, to improve the HSO’s situation. So, when the Symphony's executive director left suddenly (not at Mr. Pastreich's instigation) and the board's executive committee unanimously asked him to step in as interim, we wholeheartedly concurred.

Unfortunately, key board leadership had an unexplained change of heart and withdrew their support for what the executive committee had decided, so Mr. Pastreich felt he could no longer accept the position and ended his consultancy. It was as a result of his leaving (and not the other way around, as mis-reported by the SF Classical View) that several key board members (including the State's former First Lady, the head of one of the largest banks in the State, and the publisher of the major newspaper) then resigned. These board members (some of the most important community leaders the Symphony has ever had on its board) had wanted to help the HSO meet its challenges and appeared to welcome Mr. Pastreich's experience, vision, and insight. Once support for Mr. Pastreich was withdrawn, however, we musicians could easily see why they would want nothing more to do with a board that would refuse a great opportunity when it was offered.

It's sad to us that such a well-documented and, for us, quite painful story about a pivotal time in the Honolulu Symphony's history could be so twisted around and portrayed as fact. The truth is that Mr. Pastreich's involvement led to one of the most hopeful moments in the HSO's recent history, and we continue to have the greatest respect, affection and gratitude for Mr. Pastreich and what he tried to achieve here.

-Ken Hafner (trumpet), Steve Flanter (viola), Steve Dinion (percussion)

I guess the newspapers articles I cited got things very wrong, and I'd love to see other reporting on the subject.

Post-Script to Auf wiedersehn, Donald

There could not possibly have been enough time and money for it, but I wish you'd done Gurrelieder instead.

Compare and Contrast 17

Sharp disagreement over the new San Francisco Opera production of La Traviata and over the merits of the singers:

• Janos Gereben loves it.
• So does Richard Scheinin.
• Joshua Kosman is not feeling the love, not one bit.

My tickets are for the second cast (Futral/Lomeli/Powell), but it looks like I will have to see Netrebko, et. al., as well.