Lede by Johannes Brahms

Davies Symphony Hall

Photo by me

I've got a review published today, in an unusual location: in Joshua Kosman's absence, I reviewed the San Francisco Symphony for the SF Chronicle. It was a fine program, with a terrific Brahms violin concerto that was quite different from the last time I heard it live, a more extroverted account by Christian Tetzlaff under MTT. The more I hear Augustin Hadelich, born in Italy to German parents, now a U.S. citizen, the more I like him.

I'm going to get up on a soapbox now: I was thrilled by the applause after the first movement, I joined in, and I think it's high time for a return to 19th century norms, where such applause was expected. I never want to have to sit on my hands after the first movement of Mahler's mighty Eighth Symphony again! And Salonen and Hadelich accepted the applause, looking pleased by it. More like this, and fellow audience members, no shushing, no finger-wagging, no protests!

O heilige Götter!

Closing scene of Die Walküre

Greer Grimsley (Wotan), Iréne Theorin (Brünnhilde)

Photo: Corey Weaver / San Francisco Opera

My review of San Francisco Opera's Der Ring des Nibelungen is now posted at San Francisco Classical Voice. I haven't re-read it yet; I did some editing this morning around 6 a.m. and, as always, I have doubts.

Covering four operas in one review is tough. I took a tack I usually don't, with some comparisons to the 2011 bring up. I think this is reasonable, especially since, overall, the company fielded a much better cast than in 2011. Still, I had to omit so much detail!

In addition, I have some thoughts that really aren't appropriate for a review, though they're fine for a blog post. For this cycle, I decided to sit in my subscription seats up the in Dress Circle, rather than in the Orchestra with the rest of the press corps. This had the advantage of giving me a great view of the stage and better sound than you get from the usual seats, where you can hear the echo off the audience-left wall and from which it is difficult to judge orchestral balances and orchestra/singer balances.

Those were the gains. The loss was in being pretty far from the action versus sitting in the orchestra. Even with binoculars, I felt somewhat removed from the drama, especially since the last time I saw the Ring, I was in about row 6 of the Festspielhaus in Bayreuth. That was intimate, and, yeah, I missed that.

That said, I'm pretty darned happy with what I saw and heard in the opera house. Donald Runnicles has the orchestra playing fabulously well, and there's a lot of terrific singing. I should really have managed an "Iréne Theorin saves the day" statement someplace in my review. It's amazing to me that she could come into this production on a month's notice, arriving after that, and learn the staging so fast, then give such a wonderful performance. San Francisco Opera is very, very lucky that she was available and willing to step in.

It's not too late to get tickets, although they will probably be expensive tickets; the less-expensive seats undoubtedly sold out a while ago. This is a good production, and it would be hard to assemble a better cast and conductor.

Lawrence Brownlee in Recital

Tenor Lawrence Brownlee gave a recital Saturday night, only his second local appearance, following his San Francisco Opera debut the other year in Don Pasquale. He was delightful in that bonbon -- it's pretty silly even as opera plots go -- and was seriously good the other night. Here are the reviews and some further thoughts that wouldn't fit into my review.

• Joshua Kosman, Chron
• Lisa Hirsch, SFCV

We're pretty much on the same page here; Brownlee is new to Dichterliebe and it'll be very different hearing him a couple of years down the road. 

The thoughts I couldn't get into the review: Brownlee is such a consistent vocalist that I would be willing to bet that he sings for a good long time. His comfort in florid music, standards, and contemporary music somewhat puts me in mind of the late Hugues Cuénod, who died at the remarkable age of 108 and performed until his early 90s. Like Cuénod, Brownlee has a light tenor of the sort that seems like it wouldn't change much even with some age-related wear. He is 46, meaning he's been singing professionally for around 20 years, and there is no audible wear at all. 

Here you've got an opera tenor who has a serious interest in contemporary music. New music groups should be falling all over themselves to hire him and commission more work for him. And the Cuénod comparison suggests to me that early music groups should be trying to hire him too; the late tenor sang pretty much everything. I mean, Brownlee would be fabulous in Bach, Monteverdi, Machaut, the troubadours.

Lastly, I hope a recording of Cycles of My Being will be forthcoming.

Adams Family Affair

The St. Lawrence String Quartet gave a performance on Sunday of music by guys named Adams: John (Coolidge) Adams and Samuel Carl Adams, who happen to be closely related. I reviewed the program for SFCV.

The more recent JCA quartet doesn't seem to me to be a very successful work, especially not when played within an hour or so of the marvelous First Quartet. Perhaps arm-wrestling in public with the ghost of Ludwig van isn't the best way for him to write really great music.

SCA's quartet is a winner! I liked the one piece of his that I heard at SFS a few years ago, and look forward to hearing more from him.

Meta-Makropulos

Nadja Michael as Emilia Marty in Janáček's "The Makropulos Case"

©Cory Weaver/San Francisco Opera

My review of Vec Makropulos is up at SFCV now. I turned it in 24 hours late and it was not posted until sometime this afternoon.

I am not completely satisfied by it. It was hell to write, in part because I got tangled up in one of the late Robert Commanday's guidelines for SFCV writers: do not compare.

This put me in an odd position. I wrote SFCV's review of the 2010 premiere of this production, which starred Karita Mattila, and lemme just say, if you've seen her in just about any role, you remember what it was like. EM was an approximately perfect role for her, between her personal glamour, her magnetic stage presence, and that cool soprano. As you'll see, I snuck her into the review but did not go full-bore into comparisons with Nadja Michael.

I now think I should have sent Bob a silent apology and done some comparisons. For one thing, Michael sang well and was an entirely worthy exponent of the role. I was not going to use Mattila as a club to beat her. It's entirely possible that what Bob had in mind was, say, do not compare a couple of Adler Fellows singing Wolfe to the legendary Lotte Lehmann.

For another, the differences between the two sopranos meant that the opera as a whole had a different balance, with more light cast by the ensemble because they were performing with a less completely dominant lead than Mattila.

I've so far only looked at Opera Tattler's brief review on her blog. She gets at something I meant to include and didn't: while I found Mikhail Tatarnikov more lyrical and warmer in Makropulos than the amazing Jiří Bělohlávek, I also found his approach somewhat blunter and less finely detailed. (I know this because an off-the-air recording of the 2010 bring-up is readily available.)

That said, see OT for a round-up of reviews.

Media Roundup: The Lighthouse

I think it'll be fairly slim pickings on The Lighthouse, unless my fellow bloggers weigh in. Briefly, I liked the opera more than Joshua Kosman, but there are some points of congruence in our reviews anyway. Okay, I admit that the comparison to Turn of the Screw was completely obvious.

• Joshua Kosman, Chronicle. To the extent that I caught any laxness, it was earlier in the story.
• Lisa Hirsch, SFCV
• Opera Tattler

Stile Antico

How you can tell that I'm okay following my mom's death: blogging resumed with a vengeance, and I'm back to reviewing for SFCV.

Here's my first of the year - the first in about six months, in fact - a review of Stile Antico. They were great, and I'd love to hear them again. I was entirely serious about the number of concerts they could get from this concept. I hope they'll record some of the lesser-known cantus firmus and parody masses based on secular tunes.

Windy Day

Reviewing a CD by the Berlin Philharmonic Wind Quintet.

Wonderful music played fabulously. AND the Berlin Phil. Wind Quintet is currently on a US tour, unfortunately not getting any closer to the Bay Area than Oregon. Catch them if you can!

Ades, Here and There

Reviewing the Calder Quartet and Thomas Ades, piano.

I also saw last week's SFS program: Mozart's Haffner Symphony (a competently routine perfomance), Ades's Polaris, and Stravinsky's Petruchka.

All thumbs up on Polaris, fifteen minutes of sheer gorgeousness over what sounded like a chaconne's repeated bass line (the program notes say repeated, interlocking canons). I wish they'd played it twice; after all, the first half of the program was about 35 minutes long, not including the necessary stage management. As for the video, by Tal Rosner, sigh. Very pretty, but for me, a distraction from the music rather than an enhancement. (This is my invariable reaction to complicated music paired with video.)

Petruchka was simply grand, a crackling performance of a great, great work. I first heard it conducted live around 1973 or 74 by Pierre Boulez; earlier this year I saw the ballet for the first time, which explained a whole lot about the music. Stravinsky: genius, but you knew that. All the musicians in SFS played their hearts out last week; great contributions by Tim Day, Robert Ward, and others.

And can I say this loudly enough, even though he's a modest guy? TRUMPET GOD MARK INOUYE. Yeah, I hope to have something to say about the previous week's Mahler 3, in which Inouye was absolutely incredible.

• Georgia Rowe reviews SFS
• Joshua Kosman reviews SFS
• (I believe John Marcher has a review coming, but it's not up yet.)

Winds of Something

Reviewing the Quinteto Latino.

It don't mean a thing if it ain't got that swing: listening to their Piazzolla was like listening to the Pacifica Quartet trying to get the Czech rhythms right in the Smetena String Quartet No.1, but the Pacifica came a lot closer to nailing the style.

By the Sea

Reviewing Simon Boccanegra, San Francisco Opera, September 5, 2008.

How Do You Solve a Problem Like Simone?

That's what Joshua Kosman asks in his review of last Friday's San Francisco Opera opening. My review is posted at San Francisco Classical Voice. (I'll post the final URL tomorrow afternoon.) We're mostly in agreement, though I am meaner than he is about a few things. Civic Center has opening-night photos and opinions as well.