Goings-on at San Francisco Symphony

Earlier this week, Joshua Kosman wrote about the newly-appointed (if not yet officially announced) principal bassoon of the San Francisco Symphony, Joshua Elmore:

Here’s one thing we can say right out of the gate, though: Elmore’s presence brings the number of Black musicians in the orchestra from zero to one. Depending on your temperament and your mathematical outlook, you could describe that as the smallest possible improvement to a historically lamentable situation, or you could describe it as an infinity-percent increase. Both are accurate. The lack of African American musicians — not only in the SF Symphony but in orchestras nationwide — is a perennial scandal, one of a range of systemic inequities that continue to plague the field while those in power resist change. Every incremental improvement is simultaneously welcome and grossly inadequate to the situation.

I couldn't agree more, and you should read the whole thing.

The dearth of Black musicians in the orchestra isn't the only problem just now at SFS. Another is the lack of music by Black composers on the orchestra's 2024-25 schedule. Tonight, the orchestra played this program:

• Bernstein, Suite from Candide
• Gershwin, Rhapsody in Blue
• Still, Wood Notes
• Gershwin, Porgy and Bess: A Symphonic Picture

Thomas Wilkins conducted and Michelle Cann played piano for the Rhapsody, plus an excellent encore. I have no complaints about Wilkins' conducting and none about Cann's playing. But the evening reeked of tokenism in some very bad ways.

As far as I can tell, Wilkins is the only Black conductor on this season's orchestral series, and Cann is the only Black piano soloist (and maybe the only Black instrumental soloist). I will note that Gale Deadrick who leads the Colors of Christmas concert in December, and Courtney Bryan, who curates a SoundBox concert, are both Black or Black-presenting.

And look at the program Wilkins has: two works by Gershwin, an appropriator of Black musical styles, one of them drawn from the very problematic opera Porgy and Bess; one work by Bernstein, and 50% of the works by Black composers to be heard this season. 

That's right: William Grant Still's Wood Notes is half the works by Black composers. The other is by Xavier Muzik, winner of the Emerging Black Composers Project this season. Where on earth are Florence Price, George Lewis, George Walker, Tania Leon, Errolynn Wallen, Pamela Z, Carlos Simon, Julia Perry, Jessie Montgomery, Adolphus Hailstork, Eleanor Alberga, and so many more? I would like to see less Bernstein and Gershwin, and a lot more music by Black composers.

Now, I have no idea how this program came together or whether it's what Wilkins asked for, or what. But I mentally squirmed an awful lot about the fact that the only Black conductor this season was leading this rather narrow, classical-top-20 program and the only Black pianist this season was playing the Rhapsody. Maybe I am being snobby in some way? But boxing off minoritized musicians in specialized repertory or programs is definitely a thing that happens.

Friday Photo

Battle, East Sussex

Location of the Battle of Hastings, 1066

Happy 958th anniversary of the Battle of Hastings!

Happy birthday to composer David Francis Urrows!

 

Media Round-Up: Tristan und Isolde, San Francisco Opera

Annika Schlicht (Brangäne) and Anja Kampe (Isolde)

Photo: Cory Weaver/San Francisco Opera

• Lisa Hirsch, SFCV and SF Chronicle. SF Opera decided to call this opera Tristan and Isolde, so my review follows that convention, but this is my blog and I'll stick with the one-letter-different German.
• Opera Tattler
• My own tattling: at the October 23 performance, I was in the orchestra section, row H, audience left, just off the center aisle. To my left, in row G or H, someone's phone went off two or three times, mercifully not very loudly, but DURING THE ACT 1 PRELUDE.
• Patrick Vaz, The Reverberate Hills. A beautiful meditation on what it's like to experience Tristan.
• Michael Anthonio, Parterre Box
• Gabe Meline, KQED. "Its effect is to warp time itself."
• Harvey Steiman, Seen and Heard International 
• Joshua Kosman, essay in the digital
  program. You'll have to scroll to get there, but it's about a crucial aspect of the opera, one that a review just can't discuss at any length.

Check back in a few days for more reviews.

Enough Blame to Go Around

Esa-Pekka Salonen

Photo: (c) Minna Hatinen, courtesy of San Francisco Symphony

San Francisco Symphony's program last week, led by music director Esa-Pekka Salonen, was this:

• Beethoven, Symphony No. 6, "Pastoral"
• Salonen, Cello Concerto, Rainer Eudeikis, cello
• Debussy, La Mer

First, I blame Arturo Toscanini, for ruining Beethoven's 6th for me. His recording with the NBC Symphony is way, WAY too driven for the most genial of Beethoven's symphonies. I remember being absolutely shocked when I heard another conductor leading it. Toscanini, right about so much, was completely wrong about this.

Salonen's Beethoven has been first class, and I was hoping for revelations in this one, but alas, no, it was good, not great, and I even dozed off at one point. Okay, it was a longish week, during which I wrote two articles, and that was my fault, but still. Good, not great.

Second, I blame the terrible acoustics of Zellerbach Hall for the fact that the first time I heard Salonen's Cello Concerto, back sometime before the pandemic, I found it puzzling. I listened to it last week (there is a terrific recording of it by Salonen and the LA Phil, with soloist Yo-Yo Ma, for whom it was written) and could not understand why I had been puzzled.

Well, maybe I can, a little? The careful miking of the recording makes it easier to hear everything going on in the concerto, and there is a lot. It is a really beautiful and interesting piece, and it didn't sound as good in Davies as on the recording. STILL. It was beautifully played by SFS principal cellist Rainer Eudeikis, in his first solo outing with the orchestra, and you bet I'm glad that he was given this rather than, say, a Haydn concerto or the Dvořák. 

Something went very slightly wrong, and maybe half- or two-thirds of the way through, he broke a string. And someone promptly stepped forward with the right string, and he changed it right then and there. "I'm to blame for this," he said, to much laughter, and then he and Salonen picked right up where they'd left off. It was a great performance.

Lastly, I blame Salonen for not giving a solo bow to principal English horn Russ de Luna for his beautiful playing in La Mer. He had principal flute Yubeen Kim and principal oboe Eugene Izotov take solo bows -- which they deserved! They played beautifully! And so did de Luna, during a week when it's a great time to be an English horn player around Grove and Van Ness. (If you know, you know.)

Elsewhere:

• Rebecca Wishnia, SFCV and SF Chronicle. Unlike me, she talks specifics about the cello concerto! By "high clarinet" she means the E-flat clarinet, played by associate principal Matthew Griffith and by "low flute" she means the alto flute, played by a guest flutist who was in 2nd flute position.
• Joshua Kosman, On a Pacific Aisle. "You know who else loved it? The audience that packed Davies on Friday night to celebrate Salonen and his nonpareil artistry as both a conductor and a composer. I don’t want to start penning weekly rants about Salonen’s departure, or the short-sightedness that has led to that incomprehensible institutional failure. But there was no way to witness the excitement of this event — the outpouring of love directed from the hall to the stage, the ovation that brought Salonen and Eudeikis back for curtain call after curtain call, the enthusiasm with which this superb but not especially accessible work was received — and not wonder about the choices and priorities that have brought the organization to its current impasse."
• Thomas May interviews Rainer Eudeikis about the cello concerto in The Strad.
• Russ de Luna in Aukland, as long as we're talking about great English horn playing.

 

Museum Mondays

Cart

Palermo, Sicily, Italy

Museum of International Folk Art, Santa Fe, NM

August, 2024

 

Tristan und Isolde, San Francisco Opera

 

Anja Kampe as Isolde and Simon O'Neill as Tristan

Photo by Cory Weaver, courtesy of San Francisco Opera

I feel like it's been all-Tristan and all-Eun Sun Kim for the last two weeks, in good ways. Here's what I have written plus further commentary:

• Review of the film "Eun Sun Kim: A Journey into Lohengrin." Stream the film (no charge) at the SF Opera web site.
• Eun Sun Kim renews her contract with SF Opera through 2030-31.
• Preview of Tristan und Isolde. SF Chronicle and SFCV. I loved talking to Matthew Piatt (prompter and member of SFO music staff), Rufus Olivier (principal bassoon), Gabriel Young (associate principal oboe, playing principal in Tristan), and Shinji Eshima (bass) about playing in this amazing opera. Deepest thanks to all of you for making time in your schedules to chat with me during a period of intense rehearsals for Tristan.
• Review, Tristan und Isolde, SF Chronicle and SFCV. Verdict: Kim, singers, orchestra, direction all magnificent. Go see this while you can; four performances remain. One way or the other, I will see three of those. The November 5 performance has the best availability (I KNOW I KNOW).

Well, what a night the 19th was. I have extensive notes on the performance, and there's so much I had to omit. A few notes - 

• If you've got eyes like mine or you're far from the stage, bring binoculars so you can see the specificity of the singers' responses to the text, especially soprano Anja Kampe. 
• Keep an eye on Annika Schlicht's dealings with that chest of potions. 
• There really was no appropriate place to note how the staging makes sure that the singers are able to stay hydrated. In Act 2, Tristan brings a bag on stage with him, and....part way through the love duet, he pulls out a flask and pours water into a goblet, which he then shares with Isolde. It's the reverse of what happens in Act 1, where she shares the cup of atonement with him. In Act 3, there's a flask of water on stage that Kurwenal uses to give Tristan water.
• The production was designed for La Fenice (The Phoenix) in Venice, an opera house that seats about 1100 people to the War Memorial Opera House's approximately 3200. Bayreuth seats 1900. Yes, I would love to see Tristan in a very small theater.
• A friend once said that you had to sit through all of Act 3 to deserve Isolde's transfiguration (aka "Liebestod"). Hearing the Tristan finale in context is, to say the least, nothing like hearing it in isolation.
• This was my 7th live production of Tristan: Seattle, 1998, Armin Jordan; SFO, 1998, Donald Runnicles; Met, 1999, James Levine; SFO, 2006, Donald Runnicles; Bayreuth, 2015, Christian Thielemann; Paris Opera (Bastille), 2018, Philippe Jordan; SFO, 2024, Eun Sun Kim. I also saw the Met HD broadcast with Simon Rattle conducting, whatever year that was, with Nina Stemme, Stuart Skelton, Ekaterina Gubanova, Rene Pape. 
• I don't know how I managed to go nine years between live productions. Tristan is my drug of choice.

Friday Photo

View of a building in Westminster, London

This sculpture could be seen as a 4 only from certain angles.

It was a reminder to vote on July 4.

London, July, 2024

London polling place

July 4, 2024

 

Good News, Bad News

Eun Sun Kim

Music Director of San Francisco Opera

Good news is something we can all use: today, San Francisco Opera announced that Eun Sun Kim's contract has been renewed for another five years, extending her tenure here to the end of the 2030-31 season. She'll continue the Verdi-Wagner pattern, she'll lead a Ring des Nibelungen in a few years, and, in welcome news, Parsifal returns next season. The press release describes this as "brand new" but does not say whether it's an SFO-only production or a co-production with another company.

• Lisa Hirsch, SF Chronicle
• Janos Gereben, SFCV (TK)
• SF Opera press release

But then there's the bad news, coming from the SF Opera Orchestra. The link is to a Facebook post that reads as follows:

It was announced today that Music Director Eun Sun Kim’s contract has been extended through 2031 and the Orchestra is very pleased that she will continue in her role for the foreseeable future. However, we remain deeply concerned that the Opera appears unwilling to invest in the musicians who bring Maestro Kim’s vision to life.

Our negotiations with Opera Management have continued over recent weeks, but their proposals to date are unacceptable. Not only does management’s lone offer for a contract beyond this season cut the Orchestra’s working conditions, benefits, and pay relative to inflation, it also drastically reduces the number of musicians in our complement. This comes at a time when our Orchestra already has over a dozen vacant positions that Management has held open since the pandemic. At the same time, the Opera’s administrative spending continues to rise. 

This should concern everyone who loves the Opera and wants it to succeed. If management is unwilling to invest in the music and provide a fair contract to the Orchestra, the Company will be unable to attract and retain top talent and to grow ticket sales and revenue. Most importantly, management’s unacceptable proposal reflects their lack of vision and inability to chart a sustainable path forward for the Opera.

The Opera must agree to a fair contract for the Orchestra, not only for the security of its musicians, but to remain competitive and retain the talent required to produce Maestro Kim’s world-class performances for our beloved audiences to enjoy. 

That is what we are fighting for, and we appreciate your ongoing support!

Sincerely,
San Francisco Opera Orchestra

Interesting phrasing, because "sustainability" is a word you hear from time to time from Matthew Shilvock, general director of SFO, and, across the street, Matthew Spivey, the CEO of SFS. The two orchestra-management face-offs feel weirdly similar, with management claiming they just can't pay, while 1) both of the management heads have gotten raises 2) both organizations have endowments worth more than $300 million (how that money is handled is somewhat opaque to me) 3) both have donor bases that have (mostly) been able to make up deficits. I will, in fairness, note that during the centennial season, SFO sustained a $13 million loss, as reflected on its most recent 990.

 

Eun Sun Kim: A Journey into Lohengrin

Music Director Eun Sun Kim conducting the San Francisco Opera Orchestra

Photo: Stefan Cohen, courtesy of San Francisco Opera

Last week, San Francisco Opera released a one-hour documentary about music director Eun Sun Kim. Called Eun Sun Kim: A Journey into Lohengrin, it focuses on Kim, but also gives you a great look at what it takes to get an opera on stage. I reviewed it for the Chronicle, Janos Gereben wrote about it for SFCV, and my backstage article is a great complement to the film.

• Lisa Hirsch, SF Chronicle
• Janos Gereben, SFCV
• Lisa Hirsch, SFCV, "Backstage at the Opera"

 

Museum Mondays

"Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose", detail

Click to enlarge.

John Singer Sargent and Fashion

Tate Britain, London

July, 2024

You can see Sargent's amazing brushwork in this detail.

The painting is gloriously beautiful, translucent and full of atmosphere.

 

Friday Photo

 

Water Lilies

Kew Gardens, Richmond (near London)

July, 2024

Shostakovich and Brahms at San Francisco Symphony

Louise M. Davies Symphony Hall

Photo by Lisa Hirsch

Last week, music director Esa-Pekka Salonen led the San Francisco Symphony in Shostakovich's Violin Concerto No. 1, with soloist Sayaka Shoji, and Brahms's Symphony No. 4. I attended the Saturday night program because on Friday, I was reviewing Nicholas Phan and Jake Heggie's lovely SF Performances recital.

I had never heard the Shostakovich before. Salonen was fine; I liked the music well enough. (Unlike friends who never liked or who have gotten over Shostakovich, I came late to him and haven't sworn him off yet. Perhaps that day will come.) The concerto has the Shostakovich cheekiness (my partner asked whether this should be "cheesiness" and I said that lots of people think so) and also a big passacaglia as its third movement. That was the thread connecting the two works on the program, because the Brahms ends with a stupendous passacaglia of its own.

While Salonen and the orchestra were at their usual best, the soloist was Not Good. I'm sure that the notes were all there, but there was little music. This is stuff that needs to be played with verve and commitment to be convincing, and she just didn't do that. Her encore - Bach? - was deadly, played with dull and disjointed phrasing.

The Brahms was an entirely different story. I think that the only Brahms Salonen has played here was the so-called Variations on a Theme of Haydn (the theme isn't by Haydn), and I thought that was unmemorable. Last week's symphony, though, was a wow, for sure. He conducted it expansively and with almost Wagnerian grandeur: I heard a touch of Brünnhilde's awakening in the first movement, and detected Rheinmaidens in the last. He used every string available and the orchestra's sound was round and rich, very European, versus the lean and focused sound he often aims for. It was really something.

The third movement was brisker than I'm used to hearing and it worked extremely well; the fourth overwhelming in its power. Special kudos to principal flute Yubeen Kim for his gorgeous solo in the last movement.  

Elsewhere:

• 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.

Museum Mondays

Miss Elsie Palmer, detail, by John Singer Sargent

John Singer Sargent and Fashion

Tate Britain, London

July, 2024

Read about this portrait and see the full painting.

 

The Daughter of the Regiment, LVOpera

Eugene Brancoveanu (Sulpice), Lisa Chavez (Marquise of Berkenfield), and Véronique Filloux (Marie)

Photo: Barb Mallon, courtesy of LVOpera

I saw the last performance of LVOpera's The Daughter of the Regiment, which, as I and many have commented in the past, has one of the silliest plots in opera: Marie has been raised by a regiment of French soldiers. She has fallen in love with the young Tyrolian Tonio, who joins the regiment to be near her just as the Marquise of Berkenfeld shows up and drags her off to be married to a man she didn't choose and doesn't love. The regiment comes to her rescue, the Marquise's secret sort of comes out (Marie is her daughter), and love conquers all.

Yes, it's silly, but after the amount of time I spent with The Handmaid's Tale recently, literarily and operatically, I'll take an opera where her family rescues a young woman from a marriage she doesn't want. 

The plot may be silly, but the music is lovely; there are many great tunes and opportunities for vocal display for Tonio ("Ah mes amis...Pour mon ame", with its nine high Cs) and Marie (don't ask me the names of her arias, I don't know and I'm not looking them up right now :). There's also a great comic role in Sulpice and a good role for a mezzo, the Marquise.  Maybe, just maybe, it's time for me to consider getting over my Donizetti allergy, which I share with so many.

I really wish I had been able to get to an earlier performance to tell you all that you should see this production, which was a complete delight! It had wonderful singing from all of the leads. Chris Mosz, singing Tonio, had the high notes, including a D (!) in a tiny cadenza and was a charming country boy. Baritone Eugene Brancoveanu has been a mainstay of Bay Area opera for many years, and his bright baritone and exquisite comic timing were perfect for Sulpice. Lisa Chavez's dark mezzo and diva mannerisms made her Marquise quite the character.

And Véronique Filloux, singing Marie, was a real find: she has a lovely, sweet voice, she's a great comic actor, and her arias were stupendously sung. She has range, she has volume, she has a gorgeous legato, she has a terrific trill. How I would love to see her again!

The sets and costumes were good; the direction, by Marc Jacobs, was extremely funny. The sight gags worked; everyone had great timing; he managed the stage very well. Alexander Katsman conducted deftly and sympathetically. The small chorus, directed by Bruce Olstad, was excellent. Special kudos to Aura Veruni, best known to readers of this blog for her soprano roles at Ars Minerva and West Edge Opera, for her French language coaching: everyone's French was excellent: clear and understandable in the spoken dialog and when sung, the sounds of the language properly forward. This is a difficult feat to pull off and most opera companies miss by a mile.

P. S. If you're in a position to donate a few bucks to this company, a generous donor will match your gifts up to 50% of $50,000. That is, if LVOpera can raise $50,000 by the end of October, the donor will donate $25,000. That is a lot of money for a small company. You can donate at this link.

 

Friday Photo

Mammillaria geminispina

Kew Gardens, Richmond (near London)

July, 2024

 

21V: Reclaiming Radical 2.0

The 21V chorus, under director Martin Benvenuto, is performing an updated version of Reclaiming Radical, the program it presented this past April. Here are all of the details:

Sunday, November 3, 2024 at 1:30 p.m.

First Unitarian Universalist Society of San Francisco

1187 Franklin St, San Francisco, CA 94109

Tickets: FREE; donation requested. 

For more information, see the 21V web site.

This is a lovely church, though I can't recall whether I've ever heard a concert there. Congregation Sha'ar Zahav has used it for High Holy Days services in the past and might still be doing so. Please donate whatever you're able; all arts organizations have significant costs to pay.

21V has an unusual mix of singers: they're all singing in the soprano and alto ranges. And this concert brings in the Cantabile Youth Singers of Silicon Valley for part of the concert. More about the chorus:

21V is a professional ensemble of soprano & alto voices of all gender identities based in the SF Bay Area, founded in 2021 by Dr. Martín Benvenuto. 21V explores a broad identity of contemporary American music by focusing on 21st century music of the 3 Americas, and challenges existing boundaries & assumptions – both artistically & socially.

Seeking to effect change in the traditionally non-inclusive classical music industry, 21V embraces  inclusivity as its core value. Freeing the concept of treble choir from gender and gender identity, our multi-racial and multi-identity ensemble includes cis and transgender women, and cis, nonbinary, and intersex countertenors.

 

News, Tips, and the Like

Just a note that I am always open to hearing news, tips, and the like about what's going on in the Bay Area opera and classical music scene. I keep confidences, as you would expect.

My email is findable on this page, in pretty small type. I'm also reachable on Blue Sky Social (@lisairontongue.bsky.social) and Facebook. Happy to talk on the phone or set up a Zoom, also.

Harawi, AMOC at Cal Performances

 

Julia Bullock, Bobbi Jene Smith, Or Schraiber, and Connor Hanick

Messiaen's Harawi 

Photo by Brittany Hosea-Small, courtesy of 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

Backstage at San Francisco Opera

 

The stage crew taking a bow at the end of Kaija Saariaho's Innocence.

Photo: Matthew Shilvock, courtesy of San Francisco Opera

June, 2024

Here's an article I've been working on for a while––perhaps since Matthew Shilvock inadvertently handed me the lede back in June. It's about everything that happens during an opera––or any theatrical performance––that you don't see, but which is vital to whatever you do see.

The photo above didn't make it into the article, but I have such admiration for what the stage crew did during Innocence.

Enormous thanks to everyone at SF Opera who helped me: Jeff McMillan and Teresa Concepcion, SFO communications; John Keene, chorus director; Andrew King, prompter/music staff; Darin Burnett, stage manager; Jeanna Parham, wig, hair, & makeup; Lori Harrison, properties head; Matthew Shilvock, general director. I also spoke with John Fulljames, who directed The Handmaid's Tale, and Poul Ruders, who composed it. I wish I had been able to speak with the late Kaija Saariaho about Innocence.

Huge respect to Chloe Lamford, who designed the sets for both Innocence and The Handmaid's Tale. The Innocence set is particularly amazing. Watching the opera from backstage––only half-hearing it, seeing the reverse of what the audience saw––was a great experience.

I want to also thank Matthew Shilvock and SFO for bringing both of these operas to the War Memorial Opera House. They are complex works on difficult subjects, but so necessary in these times.

Happy Birthday, Jimmy Carter!

Jimmy Carter, 2014

Photo courtesy of The Carter Center

Jimmy Carter, 39th president of the United States, turns 100 today. He is surely among the most decent people to ever occupy the big chair. His post-presidency life has been, with his late wife Rosalynn, one of great humanitarian achievement. Happy birthday, best wishes, and may you live to cast a vote for Kamala Harris for president.

 

SFS/Salonen: Hindemith, Muhly, Bach/Elgar

 

Davies Symphony Hall in Blue

Photo by Lisa Hirsch

Taken the week of MTT's last SFS subscription concerts

I saw the second of two performances of what turned out to be the first subscription concert of Esa-Pekka Salonen's last year as music director of the San Francisco Symphony. He got a giant round of applause at the beginning and another at the end. However disposable the Board of Governors and management think he is, the audience does not agree. We'd really prefer to keep him, though why he would even consider sticking around when he's been treated so shabbily by the board and management, I don't know.

Anyway, it was a kind of wild program, built around sorta-Baroque and Baroque-adjacent music. The theoretical big work on the program was Nico Muhly's new piano concerto, a Symphony commission, played by pianist Alexandre Tharaud. Apparently Muhly had something of an obsession with the pianist and his recordings, and this concerto seems to be the result. It's Baroque-adjacent because Muhly used Baroque forms and melodies as his inspiration, with references to Rameau scattered around.

I found it lightweight, though with some charms, sort of Philip Glass crossed with Music From the Hearts of Space. Muhly's concerto has some nice touches in the orchestration; the piano is discreet, actually too discreet for my taste. I like the piano in a new concerto to be more present than this piano part is. And I have to admit: my initial reaction to the opening two minutes was to wonder why we were hearing outtakes from a Harry Potter movie.

The sorta-Baroque works were Edward Elgar's orchestration of J.S. Bach's Fantasia and Fugue in C minor and Hindemith's Ragtime (Well-Tempered). The Elgar orchestration is something, setting a full late-romantic orchestra loose on the Bach, with Elgar claiming in a letter that surely this is the kind of thing Bach would have wanted had an early 20th c. orchestra been available to him and you know, I think that's nonsense (we cannot read the minds of people who've been dead since 1750, or even 1950), but I love transcriptions for their imagination and sometimes sheer cheekiness. I mean, if Bach had written for trombones and the tambourine, it probably wouldn't have sounded anything like the way that Elgar incorporates them into his transcription. BUT it was a ton of fun to hear how Elgar imagines updated Bach, and the different instrumental timbres made it easy to hear the counterpoint in the fugue. Salonen and the orchestra played it with dignity and noble sound, and it was good to hear.

The four-minute Ragtime (should it be played on a program with Stravinsky's Ragtime some time? Of course it should.) was a firecracker of an opener that left me wanting more, and at the end of the program, I got it in the form of Hindemith's Mathis der Maler (Mathis the Painter) Symphony. It's three episodes drawn from Hindemith's opera Mathis der Mahler, which is about the German painter Matthias Grünewald and his struggles in the early 16th century.

I will never understand why, exactly, more Hindemith isn't performed in the United States. I have at least half-concluded that early 20th c. German music isn't of interest here unless it was written by Richard Strauss, Arnold Schoenberg, Alban Berg, or Anton Webern. You don't hear much Schmidt, Schmitt, Hindemith (unless you have played one of his multitudinous works for solo orchestra instrument), Shrecker, Zemlinsky, etc. Hindemith was an enormously skilled composer who seemingly wrote for every instrument and every combination of instrument. Probably what he needs is a champion.

Esa-Pekka Salonen led a great performance of the Mathis der Mahler Symphony. I wasn't taking notes and don't have a lot to say other than that it's a big, serious work and it got a suitably grand and serious performance. I have to wonder whether the Muhly felt lightweight in part because of what followed it. 

Elsewhere (check back to see whether Joshua Kosman weighs in on this program)(he did):

• 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

 

Eugene Brancoveanu and Véronique Filloux

The Daughter of the Regiment

Photo by Barbara Mallon, courtesy of Livermore Valley Opera

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.

Starring: Véronique Filloux, Marie; Chris Mosz, Tonio; Lisa Chavez, Marquise of Berkenfield; Eugene Brancoveanu, Sulpice; Deborah Lambert, Duchess of Krakenthorp; Gilead Wurman, Hortensius.

Remaining performances:

• October 5th, 2024 @ 2:00pm
• October 6th, 2024 @ 2:00pm

Museum Mondays

Imperial War Museum with a pair of 15" naval guns

London, July, 2024

Taken the day after I arrived. I was too tired to do much more than wander around a bit. The exhibits are fascinating, so....next London visit.

 

Friday Photo

Westminster Abbey, London

July, 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