- Lisa Hirsch, SF Chronicle
- Janos Gereben, SFCV
- Lisa Hirsch, SFCV, "Backstage at the Opera"
Iron Tongue of Midnight
Lisa Hirsch's Classical Music Blog.
The iron tongue of midnight hath told twelve. Lovers, to bed; 'tis almost fairy time.
Berce mollement sur ton sein sublime
Ô puissante mer, l’enfant de Dindyme!
Wednesday, October 16, 2024
Eun Sun Kim: A Journey into Lohengrin
Monday, October 14, 2024
Museum Mondays
Friday, October 11, 2024
Wednesday, October 09, 2024
Shostakovich and Brahms at San Francisco Symphony
- Steven Winn, SFCV and SF Chronicle. He is way more positive about the soloist than Michael and me. Maybe she was better on Friday.
- Michael Strickland, SF Civic Center. How I wish I'd seen Christian Tetzlaff in this! Do check out Michael's recommended recordings by David Oistrakh. As a violinist friend once said to me, you can't go wrong with Oistrakh.
- DB at Kalimac's Corner. I believe the reports from DB and Steven, so I conclude that I saw the wrong night.
- Joshua Kosman, On a Pacific Aisle. He was there Saturday, so he got the lesser performance, and is kinda scathing about the Brahms.
Monday, October 07, 2024
Museum Mondays
Sunday, October 06, 2024
The Daughter of the Regiment, LVOpera
Friday, October 04, 2024
Thursday, October 03, 2024
21V: Reclaiming Radical 2.0
News, Tips, and the Like
Wednesday, October 02, 2024
Harawi, AMOC at Cal Performances
I reviewed the American Modern Opera Company's remarkable staging of Messiaen's Harawi, performed last week at Cal Performances, by the remarkable quartet of soprano Julia Bullock, dancer/choreographers Bobbi Jene Smith and Or Schraiber, and pianist Conor Hanick, directed by Zack Winokur.
The performance was preceded by a panel discussion with Winokur and several American academics, all currently active in California. A major focus of the discussion was Messiaen's use of Andean harawi, a poetic/musical practice, when he did not have much understanding of it and at a time when it was poorly documented by non-Andean anthropologists and other academics. That is, the discussion was largely about appropriation. For some context, this type of appropriate extends to many modernists; Boulez was mentioned, though I can't recall the tradition(s) he relied on. One of the academics, Tamara Levitz, quoted an indigenous writer on the subject of appropriation, but there were no indigenous musicians or poets on the panel. I feel that the panel––which was otherwise excellent––would have been enhanced by the participation of indigenous practitioners.
I'll note that I have more notes on the panel than I have on the performance itself, in part because the lights were very, very low in Zellerbach and I couldn't see what I was writing. I should have brought my white-ink pens and the notebook with black pages; at least my terrible handwriting would have sprawled less.
I'd also like to take note of the difficulty of addressing dance in a musical context when your expertise is in music. I reviewed two programs this year that featured dance, and I wish my dance technical vocabulary were bigger. I hope that in both I managed to at least suggest what I saw on stage and how it related to the music.
- Joshua Kosman, On a Pacific Aisle, is marvelously eloquent about this performance (and note that there are two puns in the titles).
- Lisa Hirsch, SFCV
Tuesday, October 01, 2024
Backstage at San Francisco Opera
Happy Birthday, Jimmy Carter!
Monday, September 30, 2024
SFS/Salonen: Hindemith, Muhly, Bach/Elgar
- Joshua Kosman, On a Pacific Aisle, liked the Muhly a lot more than I did, so now I'd like to hear it again.
- Rebecca Wishnia, SFCV (and the SF Chronicle). I'll note that while a passacaglia can often be a lament (see "When I am laid in earth"), they're often instrumental (see the last movement of the Brahms 4th symphony). The usual definition is something like "a work with variations over a repeating bass line."
- Michael Strickland, SF Civic Center
Daughter of the Regiment, LVO
I won't be seeing LVO's The Daughter of the Regiment until next weekend, but it opened yesterday and the photos look like it's a charming production. Their Otello a couple of years ago was terrific and I'm looking forward to seeing this one. Yes, it's one of the silliest plots in a genre that's full of them, but the music is late Donizetti and more sophisticated than you might anticipate.
Remaining performances:
- October 5th, 2024 @ 2:00pm
- October 6th, 2024 @ 2:00pm
Museum Mondays
Friday, September 27, 2024
Monday, September 23, 2024
Richard Dyer
Richard Dyer, music critic of the Boston Globe from 1976 to 2006, died on September 20 at 82, following a series of strokes. He had an enormous influence on Boston's musical life and I think commanded a lot of respect.
- Tim Page, Washington Post
- David Moran, Boston Musical Intelligencer
- Ellen Pfeifer, Boston Musical Intelligencer
More Ives
Kathryn King Media send out the following press release, which contains news of many events celebrating the 150th birthday of Charles Ives:
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