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, April 02, 2025
Belated Museum Mondays
Leif Ove Andsnes at Cal Performances
- Joshua Kosman, On a Pacific Aisle. "Tuesday night's potent recital...was the first time I'd hear
him perform in a number of years, and it was both a thrill and a reproach." - [SFCV review to come]
Friday, March 28, 2025
Israel Philharmonic in California
The Israel Philharmonic visited California last week. I saw them in 2022 on their previous swing through the U.S., and I was not thrilled with what I heard. I didn't much care for Lahav Shani's conducting and thought the orchestra too loud and undisciplined. There were a few protesters outside.
I was out of town when they played at Davies and wouldn't have gone anyway, but I pass on the reports of their performances here and in Orange County. The protests, unsurprisingly, were much, much bigger, in light of Israel's ongoing assaults on Gaza, which have results in 50,000 deaths and entire cities pulverized. I don't care if you call it genocide or war crimes; it shouldn't be happening. (Neither should Hamas's October 7, 2023 murders, of course. Israel's response has been disproportionate, same as the U.S.'s destruction of Iraq over the crime of 9/11.)
- Rebecca Wishnia, SFCV, reviews the concert and reports on the protests
- Joshua Kosman, On a Pacific Aisle, discusses the protests and why he protested instead of attending the concert
- Timothy Mangan, Culture OC, reviews the concert and reports on the protests
Thursday, March 27, 2025
San Francisco Symphony 2025-26
- 49 composers whose works are performed, of whom....
- 37 are dead white men, 12 aren't
- 1 is a dead black man (Duke Ellington)
- 1 is a dead white women (Barbara Strozzi)
- 2 are living Black men
- 1 is a living Iranian-Canadian man
- 1 is a living Hispanic man
- 4 are living white men
- 2 are living white women
- In terms of number of works by a single composer:
- Mozart: 8 (this includes a big all-Mozart program conducted by Harry Bicket, featuring the wonderful soprano Golda Schultz)
- Beethoven: 5
- J.S. Bach: 4
- Dvořák: 4
- Tchaikovsky: 4
- Prokofiev: 3
- Saint-Saëns: 3
- Gershwin, Mahler, Ravel, Shostakovich: 2 each
- 26 weeks of orchestra series concerts, down from 28 last season and a staggering 39 in 2014-15. I have to note that 2014-15 included the big MTT Beethoven festival, which included several one-off programs, Fidelio, the staged Missa Solemnis, and other great stuff.
- Women conducting in the orchestral series next season: 4 (Canellakis, Young, Glover, Lu)
- 10 chamber music concerts, same as last year.
- 8 Great Performers concerts, down from 10 last year and 15 in 2014-15
- Two chamber orchestras are visiting, but no full-sized orchestras
- 8 special events, including the June program with Yo-Yo Ma, the opening gala and more.
- Prices are eye-watering for Ma, going up to $420, and gosh, $89 for a single ticket in the second tier to see a film with live orchestra.
- Lisa Hirsch, S.F. Chronicle news report
- Joshua Kosman, S.F. Chronicle
rantanalysis. You'll be shocked, shocked, to hear that I agree with every word and punctuation mark. - Janos Gereben, SFCV
- Gabe Meline, KQED. His headline says it all: "San Francisco Symphony Announces 2025–26 Season of ‘Just Play the Hits’"
“Most importantly, we’re looking for someone with exceptional talent and a strong artistic vision who will inspire our musicians, audiences and community,” Symphony CEO Matt Spivey told KQED on Wednesday. “We can’t share more specifics while the search is underway, but we’re looking forward to sharing more when we’re ready to make an official announcement.”
21V present Promise & Peril
![]() |
21V, a chorus of only adult treble voices, has a concert coming up. It's called Promise and Peril, and it will include several world premieres.
WHEN & WHERE:
Friday, April 4, 2025 at 8:00 p.m.
Old First Presbyterian Church
1751 Sacramento St, San Francisco
Saturday, April 5, 2025 at 4:00 pm (panel discussion at 3:00 pm)
Berkeley Hillside Club
2286 Cedar St, Berkeley
TICKETS: $30 or Choose Your Own Price (in person); $20 Livestream (online, 4/4 only)
MORE INFO:Promise & Peril
The world premieres are:
- "I Speak of Blood" by Eric Tuan (commissioned by 21V): A poignant reflection on Silicon Valley's labor disparities, setting the powerful poetry of Foxconn worker Xu Lizhi, who died by suicide in 2014.
- "The Future of Intelligence" by Karen Siegel: an exploration of AI's ethical implications, with text co-created with ChatGPT.
- "Amor, Cuidado, Futuro" by Juan Stafforini: an evocative piece addressing global childhood inequalities in Native-American languages.
Belated Museum Monday
Friday, March 21, 2025
Monday, March 17, 2025
Museum Mondays
Friday, March 14, 2025
Monday, March 10, 2025
Museum Mondays Resumed
Sunday, March 09, 2025
The First of Many?
The Pigeon Keeper at Opera Parallèle
The consortium is working together to commission new American operatic works that are flexible in scope and scale, with the potential to be performed in smaller venues and off the main stage while striving for rich storytelling and artistic integrity. The first new work, composed by Augusta Read Thomas with a libretto by Jason Kim, will receive its premiere in 2019 at Santa Fe Opera. The second commission, by composer Laura Kaminsky and librettist Kimberly Reed, is slated to premiere at San Francisco Opera in 2020. Complete information including cast, creative team and performance schedule will be announced at a later date. Additional commissions will be chosen through an open invitational and in partnership with a panel of esteemed jurists.
The 2019-20 and 2020-21 seasons were curtailed by the pandemic, obviously. Ruth Nott, who headed SF Opera's Department of Education in 2017, left the company at the end of 2019. She's now managing director of Opera Parallèle.
SF Opera never performed the Kaminsky. I'm sorry about that, because I liked the music for Kaminsky's As One, with librettist Kimberly Reed and Mark Campbell, despite the issues in the libretto.
OFAV has as part of its remit creating operas for all audiences (of all ages) and diverse subjects, with each opera on a small scale, making them financially accessible. They are also supposed to be short.
These constraints are certainly a challenge to the librettists and composers. They have to write operas that eschew the musical impact that you can have with a big orchestra–think about the scale difference and emotional impacts of two great operas, Dido and Aeneas and Les Troyens–and the dramatic impact of, well, traditional tragic operas that include such subjects as murder, rape, kidnapping, etc. They're still supposed to be serious operas on significant subjects.
I think that Hanlon and Fleischmann did an excellent job, particularly within those constraints. As I noted in my review, I felt as though the opera could have an alternative, bigger orchestration that would give it even more impact. I'd be very interested in hearing the first opera they wrote together, After the Storm.
Review round-up (to be updated later this week):
- Lisa Hirsch, SFCV and SF Chronicle
- Joshua Kosman, On a Pacific Aisle. See below for some commentary.
- Charlise Tiee, Opera Tattler
- Michael Antonio, Parterre Box
Why won’t Dad take him in? you may ask. It’s a good question, which the libretto doesn’t really answer. Nor does it persuasively address several other questions: Why are the residents of the village so nasty, including the schoolchildren? Why is the Pigeon Keeper who lives in the village such a pariah — aside from the fact that he doesn’t speak the language, hangs out with birds, and makes weird goo-goo eyes at everyone? (OK, that one’s actually pretty easy.) And most bewilderingly, why does the fisherman suddenly change his mind? For such a climactic plot point, this turnabout needed more justification.
The child is one of the hated refugee-outsiders is why. That's why everyone is nasty to the child; it's why everyone, including Orsia, is nasty to the Pigeon Keeper. I believe that when the child spontaneously sings the lullaby that the mother used to sing, the father's heart is unlocked. This is the closest thing to magical realism in the plot: the mystery of the child's origins and how he knows the song. Maybe it's a common folk song, but how does he pull it out at the moment when he sings it?
UPDATED: March 12, 2025
Saturday, March 08, 2025
International Women's Day
On International Women's Day, I can't do any better than point to composer Pauline Oliveros's 1970 NY Times essay on women composers. I am driven slightly mad by it, because what she said 55 years ago is still so true today. Take this, for example:
At last, the dying symphony and opera organizations may have to wake up to the fact that music of our time is necessary to draw audiences from the people under 30. The mass media, radio, TV and the press, could have greater influence in encouraging American music by ending the competition between music of the past and music of the present.
JFC, some things never change. Audience members who were under 30 in 1970 are now 55 and up. Then there's this:
The second trend is, of course, dependent on the first because of the cultural deprivation of women in the past. Critics do a great deal of damage by wishing to discover “greatness.” It does not matter that not all composers are great composers; it matters that this activity be encouraged among all the population, that we communicate with each other in non-destructive ways. Women composers are very often dismissed as minor or light weight talents on the basis of one work by critics who have never examined their scores or waited for later developments.
It's infinitely harder to get anywhere in classical music if you're a woman than if you're a man, from getting your music performed if you're a composer to getting into an orchestra or getting a principal position if you're an instrumentalist to getting a highly visible job if you're a conductor. Just think about how many top level orchestras in the U.S. have or about about to have women as their music directors: three (3).
Those are the Atlanta Symphony, where Nathalie Stutzmann is music director; the Buffalo Philharmonic, an orchestra that seriously punches about its budget, where JoAnn Falletta has been music director for many years, following in the footsteps of Lukas Foss, MTT, and other fine conductors, and the New Jersey Philharmonic, where Xian Zhang is shortly moving to the Seattle Symphony. Do you think a woman will replace her? I suppose we can hope that one or more of the LA Phil, SFS, and Cleveland might hire women, not that I'm holding my breath over this.
And of course, you are way more likely to be harassed or raped than a man when you're in school or in a male-dominated organization like an orchestra.
Updated, March 9, because I forgot Stutzmann at Atlanta.
Wednesday, March 05, 2025
Don Giovanni at Livermore Valley Opera
I reviewed Livermore Valley Opera / LVOpera's production of Don Giovanni over the weekend, and liked it a lot.
This was my fourth Don Giovanni since the SF Opera production in 2022. I might give the opera a break for a while, but it certainly has been interesting. I avoided Don Giovanni for a number of years because it is too easy to present it as a parade of great arias, without enough drama. The SFO production in June, 2017 was like that; an awful set and terrible direction left the cast adrift, and that production was a "reboot" of an earlier production that I gather was even worse.
- Lisa Hirsch, SFCV
- Joshua Kosman, On a Pacific Aisle
- Charlise Tiee, Opera Tattler
Josh Marshall on the Current Situation
I’ve said this a number of times. We’re embarked on a vast battle over the future of the American Republic, in which the executive and much of the judiciary is acting outside the constitutional order. That battle is fundamentally over public opinion. We’re in a constitutional interregnum and we are trying to restore constitutional government. The courts are a tool. Federalism is a big, big tool, the significance and importance of which is getting too little discussion. But it’s really about public opinion. And that means it’s about politics. The American people will decide this. That’s what this is all about. Waiting on the courts is just a basic misunderstanding of the whole situation.
Tuesday, March 04, 2025
San Francisco Symphony: Added Concerts
- Saturday, March 8, 2025, 7:30 p.m. $50-$200. SF Musicians for LA: A Benefit for Fire Relief. Edwin Outwater conducts music of Copland, Rachmaninoff, Dvořák, with the Symphony Chorus and Garrick Ohlsson, piano. Net proceeds from all ticket sales will be split evenly and donated to two vital organizations providing essential relief services:
- Friday, June 20, 7:30 p.m. and Sunday, June 22, 2 p.m. $29-$79. Verdi Requiem and choral works of Gordon Getty. James Gaffigan conducts. Soloists Rachel Willis-Sørensen, Jamie Barton, Mario Change, and Morris Robinson. Esa-Pekka Salonen is conducting in Germany that weekend. (The prices for this program are so low that I am guessing Getty is subsidizing the performances.)
Saturday, March 01, 2025
Turn It Up or Turn It Down.
Usually, when you hear a performance that's substantially different from what you're used to hearing, you think one of two things:
- Wow, that was great, I've never heard it done that way before and it really made sense!
- WTF that was just wrong-headed.
- Joshua Kosman, SF Chronicle. "It was Ticciati’s slack leadership that made Widmann’s concerto sound so gray and meandering, when the music is actually anything but." That is...what I heard last night.
- Lisa Hirsch, SFCV.
Tuesday, February 25, 2025
Bluebeard's Castle at Opera San José
- Lisa Hirsch, SFCV and San Francisco Chronicle
- Joshua Kosman, On a Pacific Aisle
- Lisa Hirsch, Opera; profile of Shawna Lucey and the company (Paywalled; check with me if you'd like to read this story.)
- Michael Anthonio, Parterre Box
- Maria Natale talks with Operawire about singing Judith
Monday, February 24, 2025
"It's a Wrap"
Sad news: Michael Tilson Thomas's brain tumor has returned and he is retiring from performing. His 80th birthday concert on April 26, 2025, at San Francisco Symphony, will be his last appearance as a conductor.
- Announcement on his web site, a tender and very sweet note from MTT
- Tony Bravo, S.F. Chronicle
- Javier C. Hernández, NY Times
Saturday, February 22, 2025
This Week at San Francisco Symphony.
- S.F. Symphony appoints first Black principal in decades
- S.F. Symphony’s newly appointed principal Joshua Elmore solos in a thrilling performance
- Daniil Trifonov's encores were Samuel Barber, Mvt II from Piano Sonata, Op. 26, and Prokofiev, Gavotte from Cinderella, Op. 95 No. 2
- Xavier Muzik used a mirrorless Fujifilm X-Pro3 digital camera and a vintage Yashica Electro 35 film camera, mostly with Kodak Gold film, for the photos in the slideshow accompanying Strange Beasts.
- There was a brief pause between Parts I and II of The Rite of Spring, planned by Esa-Pekka Salonen. The pause was also for principal trombone Timothy Higgins and guest associate principal trombone Gracie Potter to change places so that Higgins could play bass trumpet
trombone.
- Michael Strickland, SF Civic Center
- Joshua Kosman on Salonen's first Rite of Spring performance with SFS. I completely agreed with him about the weirdly soft-focus Stravinsky on the program, which I didn't find effective.
- Joshua Kosman on timpanist Elayne Jones. As it happens, SFS had a Black player before Jones, bassist Charles Burrell. Subsequently, these Black musicians were members of the orchestra:
- Violist Basil Vendrys, now principal viola of the Colorado Symphony
- Bassoonist Rufus Olivier, now principal bassoon of the SF Opera and SF Ballet Orchestras
- Nicole Cash, former associate principal horn
Monday, February 17, 2025
Friday, February 14, 2025
Thursday, February 13, 2025
Bard Summerscape and Bard Music Festival 2025: MARTINŮ AND HIS WORLD
Fisher Center LAB Commission/World Premiere
Choreography by Pam Tanowitz
Décor by Sarah Crowner
Music by Caroline Shaw
Featuring Pam Tanowitz Dance
Inspired by Beethoven’s Symphony No. 6, “Pastoral”
Friday, June 27 at 7 pm
Saturday, June 28 at 7 pm
Sunday, June 29 at 3 pm
Sosnoff Theater
Dalibor
by Bedřich Smetana
SummerScape Opera/New Production
Libretto by Josef Wenzig, Czech translation by Ervín Špindler
Directed by Jean-Romain Vesperini
American Symphony Orchestra conducted by Leon Botstein
Sung in Czech with English supertitles
Friday, July 25 at 6:30 pm
Sunday, July 27 at 2 pm
Wednesday, July 30 at 2 pm
Friday, August 1 at 4 pm
Sunday, August 3 at 2 pm
Sosnoff Theater
The 35th Bard Music Festival
Martinů and His World
Weekend One: A Musical Mirror of the 20th Century
August 8–10
Weekend Two: Against Uncertainty, Uniformity, Mechanization: Music in the Mid-20th Century
August 14–17
Weekend One: A Musical Mirror of the 20th Century
Program One: The Peripatetic Career
Friday, August 8
Sosnoff Theater
7 PM Performance with Commentary
Bohuslav Martinů (1890–1959)
Double Concerto, H271 (1938)
Piano Quartet No. 1, H287 (1942)
Symphony No. 2, H295 (1943)
Fantasia, H301 (1944)
Petrklíč / Primrose, H348 (1954)
Panel One
Why Martinů: Understanding Classical Music, Past and Future
Saturday, August 9
Olin Hall
10 AM – 12 noon
Free and open to the public.
Program Two: The Emigree in Paris
Saturday, August 9
Olin Hall
1 PM Preconcert Talk
1:30 PM Performance
Bohuslav Martinů (1890–1959)
String Trio No. 1, H136 (1923)
Flute Sonata, H306 (1945)
Duo No. 1 for Violin and Cello, H157 (1927)
Josef Suk (1874–1935)
Piano Quartet No. 1 in A Minor, Op. 1 (1891)
Maurice Ravel (1875–1937)
Violin Sonata No. 2 in G Major (1927)
Works by Jaroslav Řídký (1897–1956) and Alexandre Tansman (1897–1986)
Program Three: Music and Freedom
Saturday, August 9
Sosnoff Theater
6 PM Preconcert Talk
7 PM Orchestral Performance
Bohuslav Martinů (1890–1959)
Memorial to Lidice, H296 (1943)
Symphony No. 6 (Fantaisies symphoniques), H343 (1951–53)
Piano Concerto No. 4, “Incantation,” H358 (1956)
Erwin Schulhoff (1894–1942)
Symphony No. 2 (1932)
Rudolf Firkušný (1912–94)
Piano Concertino (1929)
Program Four: The Search for a Distinctive Voice
Sunday, August 10
Olin Hall
11 AM Performance with Commentary
Bohuslav Martinů (1890–1959)
Les Rondes, H200 (1930)
String Quartet No. 7, “Concerto da camera,” H314 (1947)
The Fifth Day of the Fifth Moon, for piano, H318 (1948)
Variations on a Slovak Theme, H378 (1959)
Vítězslava Kaprálová (1915–40)
String Quartet No. 1, Op. 8 (1935)
Program Five: New Shores: Influences and Contexts
Sunday, August 10
Sosnoff Theater
2 PM Preconcert Talk
3 PM Performance
Bohuslav Martinů (1890–1959)
La revue de cuisine, H161 (1927)
Harpsichord Concerto, H246 (1935)
Tre ricercari, H267 (1938)
Piano Sonata No. 1, H350 (1954)
Arthur Honegger (1892–1955)
Concerto da Camera, H196 (1948)
Aaron Copland (1900–90)
Sextet (1937)
Weekend Two: Against Uncertainty, Uniformity, Mechanization: Music in the Mid-20th Century
Program Six: The Spiritual Quest
Thursday, August 14, at 7 PM
Friday, August 15 at 3 PM
Church of the Messiah, Rhinebeck
Bohuslav Martinů (1890–1959)
The Mount of Three Lights, H349 (1954)
Vigilie, H382 (1959)
Antonín Dvořák (1841–1904)
From Mass in D Major, Op. 86 (1887)
Leoš Janáček (1854–1928)
Veni Sancte Spiritus (ca. 1903)
Constitues eos principes (1903)
Ave Maria (1904)
Postludium, from Glagolitic Mass (1926)
Petr Eben (1929–2007)
Finale, from Musica dominicalis (Sunday Music) (1958)
Program Seven: Myth, Faith, and Folklore
Friday, August 15
Sosnoff Theater
6 PM Preconcert Talk
7 PM Performance
Bohuslav Martinů (1890–1959)
Mariken de Nimègue, H236/2 I (1933–34)
Field Mass, H279 (1946)
Brigand Songs, H361 (1957)
Panel Two: Music and Politics: From the Habsburg Empire to Contemporary Populism and Autocracy
Saturday, August 16
Olin Hall
10 AM – 12 noon
Free and open to the public.
Program Eight: Martinů and the Craft of Composition
Saturday, August 16
Olin Hall
1 PM Preconcert Talk
1:30 PM Performance
Bohuslav Martinů (1890–1959)
Duo No. 1, “Three Madrigals,” H313 (1947)
Cello Sonata No. 3, H340 (1952)
Nonet No. 2, H374 (1959)
David Diamond (1915–2005)
Quintet (1937)
Karel Husa (1921–2016)
Evocations de Slovaquie (1951)
Program Nine: Renewing the Public Power of Tradition
Saturday, August 16
Sosnoff Theater
6 PM Preconcert Talk
7 PM Orchestral Performance
Bohuslav Martinů (1890–1959)
Violin Concerto No. 2, H293 (1943)
The Epic of Gilgamesh, H351 (1955)
Jan Novák (1921–84)
Ignis pro Ioanne Palach (1969)
Program Ten: Martinů’s Legacy
Sunday, August 17
Olin Hall
11 AM Preconcert Talk
11:30 AM Performance
Bohuslav Martinů (1890–1959)
Three Czech Dances, H154 (1926)
Songs on One Page, H294 (1943)
Songs on Two Pages, H302 (1944)
Joan Tower (b. 1938)
Petroushskates (1980)
Kryštof Mařatka (b. 1972)
Báchorky, fables pastorales (2016)
Works by Jaroslav Ježek (1906–42), Frank Zappa (1940–93), and Iva Bittová (b. 1958)
Program Eleven: The Opera of Dreams: Martinů’s Julietta
Sunday, August 17
Sosnoff Theater
2 PM Preconcert Talk
3 PM Semi-Staged Opera Performance
Bohuslav Martinů (1890–1959)
Julietta, H253 (1937) (Martinů, after Georges Neveux)