San Francisco Opera Centennial Concert

War Memorial Oper House

Photo by Lisa Hirsch 

Here's most of the press release announcing the program for the June 16, 2023 Centennial Concert. Looks nice! At past gala concerts, there have occasionally been surprise guests. I seem to recall Dame Joan Sutherland and Leonie Rysanek making brief speeches at a 1990s gala.

San Francisco Opera’s Centennial Season culminates with a celebration of the Company’s first 100 years. A host of treasured San Francisco Opera artists will be featured with the San Francisco Opera Orchestra and Chorus in a program that honors the Company’s history through musical milestones and landmark productions.

 

Conductors: Eun Sun Kim, Sir Donald Runnicles, Patrick Summers

Sopranos: Karita Mattila, Ailyn Pérez, Patricia Racette, Nina Stemme, Heidi Stober, Adela Zaharia

Mezzo-sopranos: Susan Graham, Daniela Mack

Tenors: Lawrence Brownlee, Michael Fabiano, Brandon Jovanovich, Russell Thomas

Baritones: Lucas Meachem, Brian Mulligan

Bass-Baritone: Christian Van Horn

 

San Francisco Opera Orchestra

San Francisco Opera Chorus; Chorus Director John Keene

Shawna Lucey, Stage Director

 

PROGRAM TO INCLUDE

(Subject to change)

 

Prelude from Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg (Richard Wagner)

San Francisco Opera Orchestra

Eun Sun Kim, conductor

 

“Amour viens rendre à mon âme” from Orphée et Eurydice (Christoph Willibald Gluck)

Daniela Mack

Donald Runnicles, conductor

 

“Pur ti miro” from L’Incoronazione di Poppea (Claudio Monteverdi)

Heidi Stober and Susan Graham

Patrick Summers, conductor

 

“Odi il voto” from Ernani (Giuseppe Verdi)

Russell Thomas

San Francisco Opera Chorus

Eun Sun Kim, conductor

 

Pierrot’s Tanzlied from Die tote Stadt (Erich Wolfgang Korngold)

Lucas Meachem

Donald Runnicles, conductor

 

Embroidery Aria from Peter Grimes (Benjamin Britten)

Heidi Stober

Donald Runnicles, conductor

 

“Vicino a te” from Andrea Chénier (Umberto Giordano)

Michael Fabiano and Ailyn Pérez

Eun Sun Kim, conductor

 

“Va, pensiero” from Nabucco (Giuseppe Verdi)

San Francisco Opera Chorus

Patrick Summers, conductor

 

“Ch’ella mi creda” from La Fanciulla del West (Giacomo Puccini)

Brandon Jovanovich

Eun Sun Kim, conductor

 

Act I finale from Tosca (Giacomo Puccini)

Christian Van Horn

San Francisco Opera Chorus

Eun Sun Kim, conductor

 

Entrance of the Guests from Tannhäuser (Richard Wagner)

San Francisco Opera Chorus

Donald Runnicles, conductor

 

“Batter my heart” from Doctor Atomic (John Adams)

Brian Mulligan

Eun Sun Kim, conductor

 

“Co chvila” from Jenůfa (Leoš Janáček)

Karita Mattila

Donald Runnicles, conductor

 

“Losing my mind” from Follies (Stephen Sondheim)

Patricia Racette

Patrick Summers, conductor

 

“Ah, je veux vivre” from Roméo et Juliette (Charles Gounod)

Adela Zaharia

Eun Sun Kim, conductor

 

“Ombra mai fu” from Xerxes (George Frideric Handel)

Susan Graham

Patrick Summers, conductor

 

“Prosti, nebesnoye sozdanye” from Pique Dame (Piotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky)

Brandon Jovanovich

Donald Runnicles, conductor

 

“Là ci darem la mano” from Don Giovanni (Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart)

Heidi Stober and Christian Van Horn

Eun Sun Kim, conductor

 

“Cessa di più resistere” from Il Barbiere di Siviglia (Gioachino Rossini)

Lawrence Brownlee

San Francisco Opera Chorus

Patrick Summers, conductor

 

Liebestod from Tristan und Isolde (Richard Wagner)

Nina Stemme

Donald Runnicles, conductor

 

“Ave Signor” from Mefistofele (Arrigo Boito)

San Francisco Opera Chorus

Eun Sun Kim, Chorus

 

The concert is approximately three hours, including one intermission.

Cast Change Announcement, San Francisco Symphony Edition

Davies Symphony Hall, SF

Photo by Lisa Hirsch

Hilary Hahn is unwell and has withdrawn from this week's programs with Rafael Payare at San Francisco Symphony. She was to play the Brahms violin concerto.

Replacing her on the program is pianist Bruce Liu, who will be playing Beethoven's Third Piano Concerto. Toi toi toi to Liu, and best wishes for a swift recovery to Hahn.

Don't Be This Small Non-Profit 3

In 2018 and 202, I posted about issues I had with trying to renew my membership in a small nonprofit organization (SNP) and then about what I saw as some issues in that organization.

Today I received this from SNP, and JFC. This organization hasn't followed basic principles of record keeping, considering that they are missing legally required documentation. I really have to wonder what will happen when they've been audited. I'll note, in passing, that Pro Publica's Nonprofit Explorer's last 990 for this organization is from 2011. It's possible that the IRS is behind in processing whatever they've submitted, but I wonder whether anyone on the board knows what a 990 is.

When we, your 2023 Board, took the reins this year, 3 of the 6 of us noticed an alarming amount of past mismanagement and financial discrepancies. The other 3 Board members have since resigned. The three of us remaining have been working hard to investigate and clean up our compliance and financial issues and had hoped it was all a case of innocent naivete on the part of past boards and not the intentional Theft by Transfer that our organization has been threatened with in recent months.

Unfortunately, this is not or at least not entirely the case. SNP has been the target of an intentional, attempted takeover event from inside the organization. We are not at liberty to say who at this point in the criminal investigation, but we can tell you that the core breach happened in the last half of April this year and the only people with access to our accounts were 2023 and 2022 board members. We are frustrated, angered, disappointed that someone(s) in our community who we elected to protect this organization has broken the trust we all put in them.

We know that member names were taken, along with email addresses, and any other contact information you supplied to SNP; phone, physical address, etc. Due to how our web host works, we do not have reason to believe that individual credit card numbers have been stolen, but our thief(s) have, since the breach, had the ability to charge/refund charges if you had payment on file with us. So if anything suspicious shows up, please let us know.

Separate from this breach, SNP is also missing a great deal of legally required documentation from the past 5-7 years. If anyone, past board member or otherwise, has any copies of old board meeting minutes and especially financial records, please send them to either [email address1] or [email address2].

While this breach of trust from some of our own is very serious, we and our legal counsel know SNP has the law on our side and we are working hard to bring about accountability and ensure the security of this organization and your information going forward. 

Coming Attractions: Volti and Opera Parallel

This week, I watched or listened to discussions about upcoming performances at Volti and Opera Parallèle; both are available on demand, and I found each helpful in getting familiar with the works that will be performed.

Volti

Volti will be premiering composer Mark Winges's Words Cast Shadows, his setting of several poems by Jane Hirshfield. Bass Sidney Chen has a new podcast, Sounds from Silence, and the first episode is an interview with Winges, discussing how the composer chose the poems, his approach to writing choral music, and more. 

Here's information about Volti's upcoming performances:

Saturday, May 13, 2023
7:00 PM Pacific Time
St. Paul's Episcopal
1924 Trinity Ave, Walnut Creek

Attend in person or watch the live stream!
Tickets available through the St. Paul's concert series.

Sunday, May 14, 2023
4:00 PM Pacific Time
Kanbar Performing Arts Center
44 Page St, San Francisco

Tickets for May 14

Opera Parallèle

In early June, Opera Parallèle performs The Shining, by Paul Moravec (composer) and Mark Campbell (librettist). The opera is based on Stephen King's famous novel; this is a new production, co-produced with Hawai'i Opera Theatre and Portland Opera. Opera Parallèle's Daniel Harvey spoke with Moravec and Campbell by Zoom about the opera, which is closer to the novel than the equally famous Kubrick film and which sounds like it'll be great. You can watch the interview recording at OP's web site.

Performance information:

• June 2, 2023 @ 7:30pm

• June 3, 2023 @ 7:30pm

• June 4, 2023 @ 2pm

Blue Shield of California Theater at YBCA – 700 Howard St, San Francisco

Running Time: 2 hours 20 mins with intermission – performed in English with supertitles.

Tickets: $40-$180, students $20.

Dylan Mattingly at the LA Phil

This looks extremely cool: Dylan Mattingly's six-hour opera Stranger Love will be presented at Walt Disney Concert Hall. LA Phil commission, world premiere, etc. I wish that I could be there!

Press release from the LA Phil:

LOS ANGELES (April 11, 2023) – The Los Angeles Philharmonic Association presents the world premiere of LA Phil commission Stranger Love at Walt Disney Concert Hall on Saturday, May 20. Stranger Love is a six-hour multimedia opera with music composed by Dylan Mattingly and text by Thomas Bartscherer. The opera takes place over the course of three acts, including a dinner intermission.
Scored for a 28-piece orchestra, singers and dancers, Stranger Love unfolds on an expansive timescale and presents a grand celebration of being alive. Both a love story and the story of love, the opera broadens in scope over the course of three acts, moving from the experience of individual lives, through an archetypal expression of the possibilities of human love, and at last to a vision of the divine – a love supreme. In Act I, music and words tell the story of two lovers whose romance follows the rhythm of the seasons. The action shifts in Act II to six dancers in three pairs, each encountering a different fate. In Act III, the human dimension disappears entirely and the opera ends in ecstasy and pitch black. Deliberately countercultural in scale and tone, Stranger Love offers a rare opportunity to dwell in slow time and invites the audience to experience communal joy. 

This project started eleven years ago with a vision, composer Dylan Mattingly said: “I dreamed of this piece, an ecstatic, impossible celebration of being alive that lasts forever and ends in the stars – an imagination that was beyond impractical, six hours of music complete with three retuned pianos, a technicolor experience that transforms from opera to ballet to light show, with taco trucks waiting outside for dinner halfway through!”

The inspirations and sources for Stranger Love are many and diverse. Among them, Thomas Bartscherer noted is Octavio Paz’s book, The Double Flame. “Paz writes that ‘love is a wager against time and its accidents’ through which ‘we catch a glimpse, in this life, of the other life. Not of eternal life, but… of pure vitality.’ Something like that intuition or delusion or hope has inspired the making of this work. Through the interplay of particular and abstract, dialogue and narrative, dance and music, Stranger Loveendeavors to tell a new kind of story that is also deeply familiar and that invites the audience to dwell within it and, in the end, to complete it with us,” he said. 

Performed by the ensemble Contemporaneous and conductor David Bloom, the creative team also includes director Lileana Blain-Cruz and choreographer Chris Emile, scenic designer Matt Saunders, costume designer Kaye Voyce, projection designer Hannah Wasileski and lighting designer Yi Zhao.
Tickets are available for purchase online at laphil.com or by phone at 323 850 2000. Programs, artists, dates, prices and availability are subject to change. 
 
This performance is generously supported by the 
Bernice and Wendell Jeffrey Fund.
# # # 
 
 

Saturday, May 20, 2023, 4:00PM
Walt Disney Concert Hall
Dylan MATTINGLY/Thomas BARTSCHERER Stranger Love (world premiere, LA Phil commission)
 
 
Act I
Part 1:
Spring
Summer
Intermission
Part 2:
Autumn
Winter
Second Spring
Dinner Intermission
Act II
Spring
Summer
Winter
Second Spring
Act III
 
Creative team and Cast:
Contemporaneous 
David Bloom, conductor 
Lileana Blain-Cruz, director
Chris Emile, choreographer 
Matt Saunders, scenic designer
Kaye Voyce, costume designer 
Hannah Wasileski, projection designer 
Yi Zhao, lighting designer
Molly Netter, Tasha
Isaiah Robinson, Andre
Jane Sheldon, Threat from Without
Luc Kleiner, Threat from Within
Holly Sedillos, Chorus 1
Catherine Brookman, Chorus 2
Eliza Bagg, Chorus 3
Julyana Soelistyo, Uriel
Marirosa Crawford, Sabrina Johnson, Caleigh Knapp, Jobel Medina, Micah Moch, Alejandro Perez, dancers 

Blank Out at Cal Performances

Miah Persson (Woman) and Roderick Williams (Man) in

Michel van der Aa's Blank Out

Photo: Marco Borgrevve, courtesy of Cal Performances

 I saw Michel van der Aa's Blank Out at Cal Performances over the weekend, and wow. A very beautiful and moving work. I was reminded of Kaija Saariaho's remarks about her string quartet Terra Memoria:

The piece is dedicated "for those departed". Some thoughts about this: we continue remembering the people who are no longer with us; the material - their life - is "complete", nothing will be added to it. Those of us who are left behind are constantly reminded of our experiences together: our feelings continue to change about different aspects of their personality, certain memories keep on haunting us in our dreams. Even after many years, some of these memories change, some remain clear flashes which we can relive.

Blank Out is very much about the relationships between the living and the dead, about memory and grief.

I have to note that I have missed several local appearances, with Philharmonia Baroque, by baritone Roderick Williams. I had previously seen him in person in the last SFS War Requiem and in London in Birtwistle's Yan Tan Tethera. He is a great singer and I am so very sorry to have missed those local appearances.

• Joshua Kosman, SF Chronicle
• Lisa Hirsch, SFCV

Prospero's Island

I reviewed Allen Shearer (composer) and Claudia Stevens's Propsero's Island (link to opera web site), which is based on Shakespeare's The Tempest, last month, and so did Jeff Dunn.

• Lisa Hirsch, SFCV
• Jeff Dunn, Aisle Seat Reviews

Dalia Stasevska at San Francisco Symphony

 

Davies Symphony Hall

Photo by Lisa Hirsch

Ukranian-Finnish conductor Dalia Stasevska made her debut at SFS this week, in a program of Sibelius standards with an opener of Anna Meredith's brief Nautilus. Davies had a big crowd last night, and it took me some time to realize that the reason was not the Sibelius or Stasevska herself, but the presence of violinist Joshua Bell on the program.

I was not particularly enthused about the perpetually boyish Bell myself; at 55, throwing his head back, closing his eyes, and communing with his bow and violin are wearing thin. Of course, I could close my eyes myself, or focus on Stasevska and the orchestra during the Sibelius violin concerto, a great work and among my favorites.

And mostly I did that! But here I have to make a confession: I imprinted strongly and early on the Ormandy/Oistrakh/Philly LP of the piece, which was issued with a magnificent Swan of Tuonela as well. It's a fairly wild ride, and honestly I can't attest to how rhythmically accurate Oistrakh is, but his passion and technical brilliance are dead on. And also his clean articulation and rich tone.

Bell's trademark sound is smooooooooth, smooth like butter, and alas not really what I want to hear in the piece. I want to hear the violinist's bowing, dammit. Bell's style tends to homogenize the phrases and that sound....it's beautiful but...for me, not in this piece.  I confess that I spent some time with my eyes closed....wondering what Alina Ibragimova or Leila Josefowicz would sound like in this concerto.

As well, I thought I heard a few bobbles from Bell here and there, with a couple someplace in the first movement and another coming out of the passage in harmonics in the last. I own that I also thought I heard more portamento than you usually get from the soloist in this work. I approve of portamento, so good for him.

Deep breath. It wasn't the only thing on the program. Nautilus is for a biggish orchestra with a lot of percussion, bouncy and minimalist and really a lot of fun. For it, Stasevska and several of the percussionists -- and maybe some other players -- had earpieces, I assume for a click track. The work was originally written for electronics, but was then orchestrated later.

The big revelation of the evening was Stasevska herself, who led a fabulous performance of Sibelius's Symphony No. 2. She's a conductor of big, sweeping gestures, and her conception of the work was big and sweeping, which, of course, it is. Her tempo for the first movement was brisker than I've heard previous and it worked marvelously well. Throughout, the orchestra sounded fantastic, with an especially rich sound from the strings, and stunning playing from the entire brass section. The flutes sounded especially good in the last movement; Linda Lukas was in the second chair, and while I recognized the player in the first chair, I can't dig up his name from my memory. They were great together.

Lastly, and this is comparatively trivial, Stasevska conducted in loose black pants and an extremely beautiful and colorful jacket over a black shell, breaking the conductors-all-wear-black model. You can see it in the photos in Joshua Kosman's review, link below.

Updates: Yes, there was a click track in Nautilus and that's the reason for the earpieces that Stasevska and some of the musicians wore. And I forgot to say that seeing associate principal timpani Bryce Leafman playing a timpano barehanded in the work was extremely cool.

Related:

• Victoria Looseleaf, SFCV: Dalia Stasevska Has the Heart of a Lion
• Joshua Kosman, SF Chron. Yes, I would be one of those listeners.
• Steven Winn, SFCV
• DB, Kalimac's corner

Meet Julius

 

Our dear Japanese Bobtail cat Sunny died last September at almost 18; she had been diagnosed with an inoperable and untreatable cancer in February. She was her charming self until almost the end; when she started having intermittent breathing problems, we elected home euthanasia and she left us very peacefully. We were then catless, but earlier this month, I spotted a handsome ginger cat at Oakland Animal Services, and brought him home on April 20. He hid under the couch overnight, but since then has been master of all he surveys.

His name is Julius (yes -- orange Julius), and he is a big guy at 13 lbs. He lives up to ginger cats' reputation for sweetness. He likes being near us, purrs a lot, is very talkative, and just lay there purring as I clipped his nails yesterday. He's around 7; he was brought to the shelter as a stay, but he had a chip. The shelter workers called and his people surrendered him. More photos here.

Friday Photo

Ennis House Detail

Los Angeles, April, 2023

 

Museum Mondays

Facade of the Broad Museum, Los Angeles

April, 2023

 

Playlists

On my way to Los Angeles:

• Sibelius 3rd symphony, Sir Colin Davis
• Hesperion XXI, Vallancicos y danzas criollas
• Four recordings of Le Sacre du Printemps
• Esa-Pekka Salonen, LA Phil
• Zubin Mehta, LA Phil
• Michael Tilson Thomas, Boston Symphony
• Myung-Whun Chung, Orchestre de Paris

On my way home:

• Two recordings of Le Sacre du Printemps
• Riccardo Chailly, Cleveland Orchestra
• Pierre Boulez, Cleveland Orchestra
• Csokolom, Ludo, Luda
• Les Troyens, John Nelson, Act I
• There must have been more, but what was it?

Osmo Vänskä at the LA Phil

Walt Disney Concert Hall
Photo by Lisa Hirsch
March, 2017

I was in LA last week and took in the LA Phil with Osmo Vänskä, formerly the music director of the Lahti Symphony, Minnesota Orchestra, and Seoul Philharmonic. He was tremendous in his two most recent SFS appearances and was tremendous in the second half of this program, which featured a new work by the South Korean composer Donghoon Shin and Sibelius's Third. I hadn't heard the latter live in many years, not since Esa-Pekka Salonen conducted it at the Sibelius Unbound festival. The Brahms piano concerto no. 1 was less impressive but had its moments. I reviewed for SFCV; I would have sworn that was Mark Swed a few rows ahead of me, but I haven't been able to find a review in the LA Times yet. I'll update this post if I find a review.

My plus-one for the evening thought the Shin sounded like Danny Elfman or the first two Pink Floyd albums. I am woefully ignorant of certain genres and need to check out the Pink Floyd, but the Shin didn't sound at all like the Elfman cello concerto that I reviewed this past fall.

• Lisa Hirsch, SFCV
• Lisa Hirsch, Sibelius Unbound, 2007, SFCV
• Mark Swed reviews Vänskä in 2012

UPDATE, April 17, 2027: A final note. I'd inquired as to whether the commission to Donghoon Shin resulted from Vänskä's tenure at the Seoul Philharmonic. No: Upon His Ghostly Solitude was a commission for the LA Phil's Seoul Festival, which was cancelled because of COVID.

LA Opera Pelleas et Melisande: Run, Do Not Walk

 I saw LA Opera's Pelleas et Melisande yesterday, and it is magnificent. A David McVicar production, but McVicar at his best (Leah Hausmann directs the revival). James Conlon conducts this beautiful score magnificently; the cast is superb. Will Liverman's Pelleas, Sydney Mansacola's Melisande, Kyle Ketelsen's Golaud, Feruccio Furlanetto's Arkel - they will all haunt you. All are gorgeously sung and intensely acted.

Arkel seems like the perfect role for Furlanetto (as did Don Alfonso in the SFO Cosi); his sheer authority is exactly right. Ketelsen was a revelation to me: I cannot believe that SFO has had him only as Escamillo in the last two Carmen runs. He was fine, but his Golaud is a roiling mass of conflicting emotions.

Boy soprano Kai Edgar is marvelous as Yniold and Susan Graham her customary excellent self as  Genevieve.

I'll be going back to see it again while I'm here.

California Symphony: Zemlinsky, A. Mahler, Rott

I told a friend I saw at today's California Symphony concert that I wasn't going to blog about it, but I have changed my mind.

It was the kind of program that I love to see: music I've never heard before, by three interesting composers. As it turns out, one of them, occupying well over half the concert time, wasn't nearly as interesting as I expected.

Conductor Donato Cabrera opened with a Zemlinsky overture,  Lustspiel, and it was fine; it could have used a bit more sparkle. Then we got what turned out to be the highlight of the program, contralto Sara Couden singing five songs by Alma Mahler. They are luscious, with considerable charm; Alma was talented and we can hate on Gus for pressuring her to quit composing. Couden has a gorgeous voice of a rare type and brought a beautiful line to these. I would have liked more consonants, it's true.

Then the Big Piece, Hans Rott's Symphony No. 1 in E Major, his only mature, complete symphony. Well, by "mature," what I mean is "he wrote it between the ages of 20 and 22." Now, a few composers have written masterpieces at that age - I'm looking at you, Franz Schubert and Felix Mendelssohn - but most have not.

I'm not going to put this thing on any list of great symphonies, ever. I'm....sort of glad to have heard it once. The performance itself had some weaknesses, in the brass and in some transitional moments in the scherzo, and maybe the Lesher Center isn't the ideal venue for a work that comes with a large brass section. I scratched my head at one point where if he'd been Mahler, there would have been some nice offstage brass, but, well, he wasn't. 

This symphony is second-rate Bruckner at best: prolix, repetitive, incompetently written at times, overly long, and kinda dull! It's extremely blocky and....it keeps starting, reaching what should be the end of a movement and restarting. You think that he has finished the last movement - people who didn't notice Cabrera's body language started to applaud - and then you get to sit through a five-minute fugue AND A CODA. The fugue was academic but competent, which did not make up for the extra ten minutes tacked on to the movement. The scherzo....I couldn't quite track all the themes and changes of tempo.

I don't even like first-rate Bruckner, with odd exceptions: Boulez's recorded 8th with the Vienna Philharmonic, the magnificent 7th that MTT conducted the week after William Bennett's tragic death. Overall, though, this music isn't for me. It must be said that I can imagine a more polished performance of the Rott; this was announced as the California premiere of the work, so most or all of the players have probably not seen it before. And I can imagine a performance where the phrasing is more natural and the work holds together better. There are recordings by Segrestrom, Hrůša, P. Järvi and others, but I am likely to give them a pass.

San Francisco Symphony Season Announcement Date: March 28

San Francisco Symphony has announced the date of its season announcement: it's a week from today, on Tuesday, March 28, at 10 a.m. I have a page of predictions of works that might appear at SFS, because they're composed by Esa-Pekka Salonen or a collaborative partner or because Salonen has conducted them elsewhere. 

Cast Change Announcement: NY Philharmonic, Philadelphia Orchestra

Conductor Karina Canellakis has withdrawn from some of her upcoming programs because she's expecting a child in May. Here are notes about the conductors who will leading those programs.

• Jonathon Heyward, New York Philharmonic, April 27-29. The program is as originally scheduled:  Brahms’s Violin Concerto, with Christian Tetzlaff, Zosha Di Castri’s Lineage, and Lutosławski’s Concerto for Orchestra

• Osmo Vänskä, Philadelphia Orchestra, April 20-22. Perry Study for Orchestra, Mozart Piano Concerto No. 24 with Inon Barnatan, Beethoven Symphony No. 3 (“Eroica”)  

Best wishes to Canellakis for the easiest possible childbirth.

VFO Beats the VPO

On Saturday night I went to Vallejo to hear the new-ish Vallejo Festival Orchestra, conducted by Thomas Conlin. I'd never heard the orchestra or the conductor before, and I'm ever so happy to report that the concert was exemplary in every way: a well-played, well-conducted, stylistically-appropriate all-Sibelius concert with a really wonderful singer. It was all deeply satisfying. This is why it's good to see whatever you can; you never know when you'll hear a better concert by a regional orchestra than you heard days earlier with a world-famous ensemble.

I did not manage to get one point into my review: this was one of the few programs I've seen where the conductor's and soloist's comments from the stage truly added to the program, owing to the ability of both to connect sincerely and openly with the audience. That is very hard to do, so even more hats off to Thomas Conlin and soprano Katherine Whyte. I'm looking forward to the next Vallejo Festival Orchestra concert, you bet.

A Head-Scratcher

The last time that I attended a program conducted by Christian Thielemann was the 2015 Bayreuth Tristan und Isolde. It was transcendentally beautiful, so stunning that I came out of Act II raving about how gorgeous it had been. I believe I used the phrase "HOLY MOTHER OF GOD" to describe it.

So when Cal Performances announced a three-day series with Thielemann and the Vienna Philharmonic, I looked over the programs and decided to come to tonight's Mendelssohn and Brahms concert. And hoo boy, it was the worst money I have ever spent. 

The first half of the program was the Hebrides Overture and "Scottish" Symphony. Let me sum this up briefly: Mendelssohn with no charm is no good.

The second half of the program was Brahms's Symphony No. 2, and....it was just bad, fussy and overly controlled, with little sense of the big picture in any of the movements. (That was true of the Mendelssohn as well.) This is the most genial and sunny of the Brahms symphonies, and those qualities were also lacking. Thielemann's conducting was that of a blunt instrument, with little delicacy or grace or subtlety. 

I wonder whether I would have responded to that Tristan as I did if I had been able to see Thielemann, who was, of course, conducting from the mystic abyss, the invisible Bayreuth orchestra pit. I try not to be too influenced by what I am seeing, but Thielemann was really unpleasant to watch, in part because he looked sour and unhappy the entire time, and partly because of his particular vocabulary of movements. As I said to a friend afterward, we've had decades of visual goodness with SFS's music directors, from Blomstedt's attentive courtliness to MTT's energetic precision to Salonen's sheer grace. 

As for the VPO, let me say first that I am wary of getting too specific about the sound of any orchestra playing in Zellerbach. It's a concrete nightmare made half-decent by a Meyer Constellation system, but there's almost always something a little artificial about the sound there. The orchestra sounded...pretty good, but I would not have guessed them to be a legendarily great orchestra. The principal horn played a couple of solos very beautifully and I'd love hear more of him. The flutists were playing regular silver flutes, not the wooden instruments that you can see in some photos of the orchestra. 

The timpanist was oddly retiring or the placement of the timpani made him difficult to hear, or something. I own that I have gotten very used to the playing of SFS's principal timpanist, Edward Stephan, who is assertive and a great presence; it's possible that ten years ago I wouldn't even have noticed that the VPO timpanist wasn't very noticeable.

Thielemann and the VPO elsewhere:

• Zachary Woolfe, NY Times. Loved the Strauss and is a bit circumspect about the other works.
• Joshua Kosman, SF Chronicle. Loved the Strauss, thought the Schoenberg awful. "Yet there wasn’t much to savor [in the Schoenberg], as Thielemann drove the orchestra’s string players into a bare-knuckled series of confrontations. Melodies burst across the stage like missile blasts; it was as if any infusion of tenderness or lyricism would be taken as a sign of weakness." That last phrase predicted what last night was like.
• David Bratman, SFCV. This is very even-handed and the concert didn't deserve even-handed treatment. When you're allegedly one of the greatest orchestras in the world, you should be held to the highest possible standards. See the above: I would have been a lot meaner if I'd been reviewing this program, obviously. I eventually concluded that Thielemann conducted as though he hated the music, the orchestra, the audience, and maybe himself.

Friday Photo

Vegetables

December, 2022

 

Oldie But Goodie, 2018 Edition

I drafted this blog post in January, 2019, so, four years ago. I have no idea why I never published it. So, for your amusement, my look back at 2018:

People are publishing their 2018) best-of lists. As usual, I haven't heard enough new CDs to have opinions, and I attended way fewer concerts than I usually do, owing to a combination of overwork, failure to buy tickets, disinterest in most of the SFS season, and more jujitsu than I'd done in the last few years. Still, I have a few highlights and opinions on important news stories.

Local news story of the year: In an amazing coup, Esa-Pekka Salonen will be the next music director of San Francisco Symphony.

Second biggest local surprise of the year (after E-PS): Nic McGegan to retire after 30-odd years as music director of Philharmonia Baroque.

Local non-story of the year: Two and a half years after the announcement of Nicola Luisotti's departure from San Francisco Opera, there's no new music director in sight.

Favorite local cast changes: Irene Theorin stepping in for Evelyn Herlitzius in the SFO Ring, on almost no notice, and singing the heck out of Brünnhilde; Music Director Designate Salonen stepping into the concerts vacated by MGT, and being Salonen, MDD, improving the program.

Big news (mostly) elsewhere: Abusive behavior resulted in the firings, resignations, or suspensions of James Levine (Met), Daniele Gatti (Royal Concertgebouw....but the Rome Opera hired him not long after, astonishingly), Charles Dutoit (after more than 20 years of stories! was fired from or withdrew from engagements with eight different orchestras, as well as being fired ("stepped down") from the Royal Philharmonic, where he was music director, but....he now has a job in Russia), David Daniels (famed countertenor), William Preucil (teacher; longtime concertmaster of the Cleveland Orchestra), D. Kern Holman (musicologist), Massimo La Rosa (principal trombone of the Cleveland Orchestra), Stephen Shipps (chair of the string dept. at UMich), organist James David Christie, maybe principal oboist Lian Wang and associate principal trumpet player Matthew Muckey of the NY Philharmonic (the Phil was vague about why they were fired).

Two points about the above list:

1. That's a long list of prominent men.
2. There are more predators out there.

Better big news elsewhere, although....: Lots of conductor turnover, but somehow women still aren't being appointed to many highly visible positions, while some conductors have multiple prestigious appointments. Yes, I'm looking at you, Andris Nelsons, and you, Yannick Nezet-Seguin. There's so much talent out there that double appointments are not necessary or a good idea. I don't believe that even the youngish and energetic can adequately manage a big-budget orchestra and the Metropolitan Opera.

Belated Museum Mondays

Guo Pei Exhibit

Palace of the Legion of Honor, San Francisco

September, 2022

 

Friday Photo

Flowering plants

Battle, near Hastings, England

May, 2014

 

Sibelius in Vallejo

Here's a program of interest to Sibelius fans:

Music From The Land of Midnight Sun
Performed by the Vallejo Festival Orchestra, Soprano Katherine Whyte
Conducted by Maestro Thomas Conlin

Sibelius songs: “Spring is Flying,” “Was it a dream?,” “The Tryst,” “Autumn Night,” “Sigh, Rushes, Sigh,” and “Black Roses”, all for soprano and orchestra

Sibelius, Finlandia

Sibelius, Second Symphony

Saturday, March 11, 2023, 7:30 p.m.
The Empress Theatre, Vallejo Center for the Arts
330 Virginia St, Vallejo, California 94590
Tickets $29 - $97 — Call (707) 552-2400 or Visit EmpressTheatre.org

This is the enterprising conductor and orchestra that performed a Wagner program last year with soprano Othalie Graham. Looking forward to this program!

Stuff I Expect to See in SF

Walt Disney Concert Hall Garden

March, 2017

Photo by Lisa Hirsch

Between this year's and next year's goings-on at the LA Phil, I would bet a few bucks that we will be seeing works or programs like these in San Francisco sooner or later:

• Felipe Lara, Double Concerto for Flute and Bass, because Susanna Mälkki is conducting it with SFS Collaborative Partners Claire Chase and esperanza spaulding.
• Bryce Dessner, Double Concert for Two Pianos, because the composer is a Collaborative Partner
• Esa-Pekka Salonen, Fanfare, which apparently features Collaborative Partner Pekka Kuuisisto
• Nico Muhly, Shrink by another Collaborative Partner
• Esa-Pekka Salonen, Karawane
• Herbert Blomstedt conducts Schubert 6 and Beethoven 7
• Esa-Pekka Salonen conducts the Sibelius violin concerto (Lisa Batiashvili) and John Adams Naive and Sentimental Music....with the San Francisco Symphony, on a weird one-day runout to Los Angeles.
• MTT conducts Tchaikowski 5 and Stravinsky Petroushka

Also guessing that there's a Ring revival coming at the Paris Opera because Gustavo Dudamel is conducting a well-cast semi-staged Das Rheingold in January, 2024. It's part of the orchestra's celebration of Frank Gehry, architect of Walt Disney Concert Hall, and he's the scenic designer.

And the SFS program feature about Gabriella Smith discloses that "The Symphony will present Breathing Forests [Smith's organ concerto] next season as part of the California Festival: A Celebration of New Music."