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

Friday Photo

View of the Calistoga Pioneer Cemetery

March, 2025

 

San Francisco Symphony 2025-26

Davies Symphony Hall

Photo by Lisa Hirsch

Well, SFS's 2025-26 season dropped last week. I started buying a more or less full subscription when Salonen arrived, despite my status as a member of the press, and today I called the SFS box office and told them I wouldn't be renewing.

I don't know what the hell they were thinking when they put this season together. 

To start with, I have to assume that a bunch of programs originally assigned to Esa-Pekka Salonen were redistributed to other conductors. We know, for example, that the SFS music director typically conducts the gala, the first several weeks of programs, and the last several weeks of programs. That concert in June with Stephane Deneve leading two French works with major organ parts, both played by Olivier Latry? I would bet $100 that it was originally a Salonen concert and that one work on it was his own organ concerto, because Latry has played it with Salonen conducting. That concert in late September with Donald Runnicles, consisting of Mahler 6 and Berg songs? I leave more of this game to you.

To continue, what the actual fuck with the "focus on Beethoven and Mozart"? Four Beethoven symphonies will appear this season, conducted by Jaap van Zweden, James Gaffigan, and John Storgårds. 

And for some reason, they decided that van Zweden will conduct a full cycle of the Beethoven symphonies over three seasons. He is leading a total of four concerts in 2025-26, and....I don't get it. I've seen him conducted live twice, once with the CSO and once with SFS, and thought he did not have any special insights into what he led. I also reviewed his recordings of Das Rheingold and Die Walküre (note that at that time he had never conducted a staged Wagner opera, only in concert) for the Wagner Society journal, and declined to continue with Siegfried and Götterdämmerung. 

It's worth noting that Gaffigan gets three concerts. I know that some of the undoubted scramble to find guest conductors, 23 of them, depended on who was available when. I hesitate to read too much into how this shook out, except maybe for the apparent commitment to van Zweden over three seasons.

It is so much a season of dead white men: do we really need the fourth performance in the last five years of Beethoven's 9th, previously performed by Xian Zhang, MTT, and Daniel Stewart, or the fourth performance of Dvořák's Symphony No. 9, From the New World, previously conducted by Xian Zhang, Joshua Weilerstein, and Dalia Stasevska?

No. We do not. And yet here it is.

Some statistics about the season (you bet I'm glad I hung onto that schedule for 2014-15):

• 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.

Honestly, it feels as though MTT and Esa-Pekka Salonen never set foot in Davies.

Media round-up:

• Lisa Hirsch, S.F. Chronicle news report
• Joshua Kosman, S.F. Chronicle rant analysis. 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’"

I don't disagree with either Janos or Joshua that there are bright spots in the season, from Gabriella Smith's SoundBox to Mahler by Donald! Runnicles! and Herbert Blomsted to the new work by Outi Tarkiainen to the Ibert flute concerto with the fabulous Yubeen Kim. But still. Who planned this thing? And, you know, here's what Matt Spivey, CEO (and former artistic administrator) said about the music director hunt:

“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.” 

Seriously, folks: you had someone who met those criteria and you let him go.
 

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

Picture frame detail

Titan, Portrait of a Man in Armor

Armand Hammer Museum, Los Angeles

December, 2024

 

Friday Photo

Greenhouse

Royal Botanical Gardens, Kew

July, 2024

 

Museum Mondays

Virgin and Child; the Child holds a goldfinch,

symbolizing Christ's Passion

Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, UK

July, 2024

 

Friday Photo Resumed

Magnolias

Oakland, CA

February, 2025

 

Museum Mondays Resumed

Virgin and Child Enthroned with Four Attendant Angels

Luca di Tommè, active 1355-1389, Siena

Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge

July, 2024

 

The First of Many?

Christian Tetzlaff

Photo: Georgia Bertazzi

Christian Tetzlaff has cancelled his upcoming performances in the United States, owing to the Trump administration's policies. That includes seven performances by the Tetzlaff Quartet–one was a San Francisco Performances appearance–and three concerto performances with the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra. He's on the Chicago Symphony schedule for 2025-26. I guess he will be their first program change.

I expect there will be more of these. News coverage:

• New York Times (gift link)
• The Violin Channel
• S.F. Chronicle
• Alex Ross

If you have a ticket to the cancelled SFP concert, you have the following options:

·         Apply the value of the tickets toward another performance

·         Convert the value of the ticket purchase into a tax-deductible donation to San Francisco Performances

·         Request a full refund for the ticket purchase 

  Patrons may contact SFP regarding their chosen option:

·         By email: tickets@sfperformances.org (preferred)

·         By phone: 415.677.0325 (Mon-Fri, 11am - 5pm)

The Pigeon Keeper at Opera Parallèle

Craig Irvin (Thalasso), Shayla Sauvie (Kosmo), Angela Yam (Orsia), Bernard Holcomb (Pigeon Keeper / Teacher / Widow Grocer) in David Hanlon and Stephanie Fleischmann's The Pigeon Keeper

Photo: copyright 2025 Stefan Cohen, courtesy of Opera Parallèle

Opera Parallèle's The Pigeon Keeper, by composer David Hanlon and librettist Stephanie Fleischmann, is the first work I've heard from the Opera for All Voices project. San Francisco Opera was originally one of the lead companies, along with Santa Fe Opera. The other participating companies were Lyric Opera of Kansas City, Minnesota Opera, Opera Theatre of Saint Louis, Sarasota Opera and Seattle Opera. 

Here's crucial paragraph from SF Opera's 2017 press release about OFAV:

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

Joshua Kosman writes:

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

 

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.

Don Giovanni at Livermore Valley Opera

Titus Muzi III as Don Giovanni and Meryl Dominguez as Donna Anna

Photo: Barbara Mallon

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

Joshua Kosman takes note of the boldness of David Walton's Don Ottavio. That he had only "Il mio tesoro" surely had something to do with this. The opera is tighter when Ottavio has just one; in last year's excellent Merola Opera production, the tenor sang "Dalla sua pace," also to excellent effect. (I will note that both of these singers were better than the tenor I saw last year in Santa Fe!)

Two performances remain, March 8 and 9, both at 2 p.m.

 

Josh Marshall on the Current Situation

Words of wisdom:

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. 

San Francisco Symphony: Added Concerts

 

Davies Symphony Hall

Photo by Lisa Hirsch

SF Symphony has added some 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: 
• Entertainment Community Fund
• Habitat for Humanity of Greater Los Angeles: ReBUILD LA

• 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.)

Turn It Up or Turn It Down.

Davies Symphony Hall

Photo by Lisa Hirsch

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.

This week's San Francisco Symphony program, conducted by Robin Ticciati and heard on Friday, February 28, fell into the second bullet, at least to my ear. 

I was apparently the only person in the room who disliked what Ticciati and debuting pianist Francesco Piemontesi did with Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 4. Let's start with a couple of decisions that Ticciati made: he used a smallish orchestra, and had the strings play with minimal vibrato.

It just did not work. It dulled the orchestral sound considerably; the orchestra didn't come close to filling Davies; the piano, a standard 9-foot Steinway was louder than the orchestra a lot of the time. 

I don't want the orchestra overpowering the piano and I don't want the piano overpowering the orchestra. This was just wrong. If you're going to perform this concerto with the orchestra playing in a HIP-ish style, use a fortepiano, not a Steinway, and find a smaller venue, too. Herbst is right down the block.

Moreover, I thought the orchestral ensemble was not good at their first entry; I thought that Piemontesi's phrasing was eccentric; I thought that he smudged the decorations at the beginning of the third movement and elsewhere; I thought he lacked wit. It's a great piece and didn't come over as one.

What to say about Rachmaninoff's Second Symphony? It is a big, wooly piece with - again, to my ear - a loosey-goosey structure, which Ticciati did not succeed in tightening up. The whole thing felt loose around the edges, without a lot of forward momentum and pulse except in the second and fourth movements. And it is long. By the end I certainly understood why conductors have trimmed it in various ways over the years, not that I think they should.

Updated, March 5: Elsewhere, Joshua Kosman heard what I heard. The S.F. Chron and SFCV apparently decided that Joshua Bell conducting the Orchestra of St. Martin-in-the-Fields and working with SFCM students was more important to cover.

Previously:

• 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.