Pocket Opera: Britten’s Shakespeare

Tytania smitten with Bottom (in spite of his asses’ head, from the event page for this Pocket Opera production)

The last Sunday of this month will see the second of the four productions planned for this year’s Pocket Opera season. The performance will present A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Benjamin Britten’s operatic interpretation of William Shakespeare’s comedy. I know this work primarily because it is included in the Decca anthology of the composer’s complete works. To the best of my knowledge, the closest I have come to seeing it staged was in August of 2010, when the Grand Finale performance of the Merola Opera Program included a performance by soprano Hye Jung Lee, who, in my words for an Examiner.com article, took on “two of the most challenging soprano roles from the twentieth century repertoire.” (I also declared them to be "the mother of all killer coloratura roles.”)

As usual, the performance will take place in the Gunn Theater at the Legion of Honor. It will begin at 1:30 p.m. on Sunday, April 26. As many readers probably know by now, the Legion of Honor is a component of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. It is located at 100 34th Avenue, which is basically right in the center of Lincoln Park. General admission will be $89. Those age 30 and under may purchase tickets for $45. A Web page has been created for online purchases. As of this writing, only five seats remain available for purchase.

Next BARS Concert will be in About 3 Weeks

The next program in the current Bay Area Rainbow Symphony (BARS) season will also be the first concert to be programmed by Music Director Robert Mollicone. Some readers may recall that Mollicone shared the podium with Eun Sun Kim for the Pride Concert performance by the San Francisco Opera Orchestra, which took place at the end of June of last year. The title of Mollicone’s BARS program will be We’ll Always Have Paris.

Not surprisingly, the program will conclude with George Gershwin’s “An American in Paris.” This American “tone poem” will be complemented by a similar offering by Lily Boulanger, whose was born in Paris. The title of her composition will be “D’un matin de printemps” (on a spring morning). Each of these compositions will be preceded by a work with its own “French connection.” The overture for the program will be the one that Gioachino Rossini composed for his opera William Tell, which premiered in Paris. Gershwin, on the other hand, will be coupled with Benjamin Britten. Like Gershwin, Britten is not French; but his song cycle Les Illuminations sets texts by the French poet Arthur Rimbaud.

The performance of this program will take place on Saturday, March 21, at 7:30 p.m. The venue will be the SFCM Concert Hall at 50 Oak Street, a short walk from the Van Ness Muni station. BARS has created its own Web page for processing ticket sales.Ticket prices range between $43.50 and $12. The Web page includes a chart showing which seats are available at what prices.

NCCO: The Coming of the Winter Season

SFGC in 2023 (photograph by Carlin Ma)

This afternoon in St. Mark’s Lutheran Church, the New Century Chamber Orchestra presented its latest program, entitled In Winter’s Glow. Music Director Daniel Hope led as Concertmaster, sharing the program with the San Francisco Girls Chorus (SFGC) prepared by Artistic Director Valérie Sainte-Agathe. In fact, compositions by William Billings, Benjamin Britten, and Ola Gjeilo, along with arrangements of “Deck the Halls” and “Silent Night” in arrangements by John Rutter, were performed only by SFGC.

Hope led performances of two multi-movement compositions. The first of these was a concerto for four violins in B minor, the tenth selection in the twelve concertos that Antonio Vivaldi collected in his Opus 3, given the title L'estro armonico (the harmonic inspiration). The other instrumental selection was Edward Elgar’s three-movement “Serenade for Strings.” The program concluded with a joint presentation of Nico Muhly’s “Whispered and Revealed.” There were also two joint presentations dedicated explicitly to the Christmas holiday. The first of these was two of the movements from Gordon Getty’s Four Christmas Carols followed by “I Wonder as I Wander” and “Christmas Time of Year” from Jake Heggie’s On the Road to Christmas. The encore selection was “Balulalow,” a Scottish cradle song, often associated with the Nativity.

This was an undertaking as diverse as it was generous. Nevertheless, it all fit neatly into a 90-minute program; and, at least from my vantage point, the audience seemed fixated to the performance from start to finish. Ironically, the only problems with diction seemed to arise in Rutter’s arrangements; but all the other SFGC performances were as clear as crystal.

I suspect that one of the reasons why this program was, for the most part, consistently engaging is that Hope and Sainte-Agathe had no trouble in working with each other. Each selection was greeted with sincere applause, but it was the overall journey through an impressive variety of dispositions that sustained attention. Hope and Sainte-Agathe may have alternated in leadership, but it was clear that they shared the vision of that overall journey. Listening to the final round of applause, it was clear that the audience could not have been more satisfied with that vision.

NCCO: A Sacred and Secular December

Artistic Director Valérie Sainte-Agathe conducting the San Francisco Girls Chorus

Next month the New Century Chamber Orchestra (NCCO), with Music Director Daniel Hope as Concertmaster, will join forces with the San Francisco Girls Chorus to present a program entitled In Winter’s Glow. When I wrote about this program in the season announcement, I called it a “holiday program;” but it would be more accurate to say that the selections will balance both the sacred and the secular. The former will consist of a set of traditional carols arranged by John Rutter, followed by William Billings’ choral composition “Bethlehem” and Benjamin Britten’s “A Wealden Trio: Christmas Song of the Women.” There will also be selections from Jake Heggie’s On the Road to Christmas.

The first half of the program will be devoted to three selections for string ensembles. These will be performed in reverse chronological order, beginning with Rutter’s 1973 Suite for Strings. This will be followed by Edward Elgar’s Opus 20, given the title “Serenade for String Orchestra.” Turning back the clock even further will be Antonio Vivaldi’s RV 580 concerto in B minor for four solo violins. Things will then turn back to the present with performance of “Northern Lights” by Norwegian composer Ola Gjeilo. The other secular offerings will be David Conte’s Two Winter Scenes and “Whispered and Revealed” by Nico Muhly.

The San Francisco performance of this program will take place on Saturday, December 13, beginning at 2 p.m. The venue will be St. Mark’s Lutheran Church, which is located on Cathedral Hill at 1111 O’Farrell Street, just west of the intersection with Franklin. Tickets may be purchased through a City Box Office Web page with prices between $35 and $80.

Azica to Release its Second Telegraph 4tet Album

from the Amazon.com Web page for the album being discussed

One week from today, Azica Records will release the second album in a planned three-volume series entitled 20th Century Vantage Points. Those “vantage points” are compositions for string quartet; and the performers are the members of the Telegraph Quartet: violinists Eric Chin and Joseph Maille (who share first chair), violist Pei-Ling Lin, and cellist Jeremiah Shaw. The title of the new album is Edge of the Storm, which is a bit cryptic, since it covers a period between the early years of World War II and those that followed in the Cold War in the early Fifties. One might almost say that the chronology spans the two edges of the first war and the beginning of the second. As usually tends to be the case, Amazon.com has already created a Web page for processing pre-orders.

The album begins in Cold War Poland with the fourth string quartet by Grażyna Bacewicz, composed in 1951. This is definitely a “mature” composition, since her career as both composer and performer was well under way in the mid-Thirties. My awareness of her quartets goes back to my Examiner.com days, when I wrote about the Naxos release of all of those quartets on a pair of CDs released separately. The fourth quartet was one of her more upbeat works, perhaps reflecting the relief from the Nazis, even while behind the Iron Curtain.

This is followed by Benjamin Britten’s Opus 25, his first string quartet in D major. It was composed in the United States, after Britten, who was a conscientious objector, left England in 1939. Some readers may recall that Britten’s 1936 collection of three “divertimenti” was the final selection on Telegraph’s debut album, Into the Light. As is the case with many of his seldom-performed compositions, I only became aware of Britten’s quartets in 2013, when I wrote my articles about the Decca’s 65-CD box set Britten: The Complete Works for Examiner.com in 2013. I am glad that Telegraph has decided to add Britten’s Opus 25 to their repertoire.

The final selection is Mieczysław Weinberg’s Opus 35, his sixth quartet in E minor, composed after the end of World War II. Having lived through the horrors of that war, Weinberg now had to contend with the oppression of Soviet authorities. Those authorities deemed his music “not recommended for publication,” perhaps because it had been inspired primarily by a series of personal losses. As a result, the quartet was not given its first performance until Quatuor Danel added it to their repertoire in 2006.

This repertoire is a far cry from that of Divergent Paths, the first 20th Century Vantage Points release. The “divergence” on that album was between Maurice Ravel and Arnold Schoenberg, each of whom was cultivating his own approach to invention. Edge of the Storm, on the other hand, can be taken as three different perspectives on the dark times that emerged during World War II and persisted into the Cold War. If this is a “vantage point,” then it overlooks a decidedly bleak terrain. Nevertheless, music is not obliged to be “diversion for the sake of entertainment.” Bacewicz, Britten, and Weinberg all sustained a dark period in world history. Expressing their impressions through music made the journey more tolerable.

Benjamin Appl’s Tribute to Fischer-Dieskau

 

Cover of the album being discussed 

Readers may recall that when I announced the San Francisco Performances (SFP) 2025–2026 Art of Song series, the second program would present the return of baritone Benjamin Appl. That program was planned to celebrate the centenary of the birth of baritone Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau; and today saw the release of Appl’s latest album, whose full title is For Dieter: Hommage à Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau. Appl is definitely well-equipped to honor the Fischer-Dieskau legacy. In his own words: “In 2009, I applied for his master class at the Schubertiade in Schwarzenberg which was the start of a long and transformative relationship. I was fortunate to work with him on my entire repertoire over countless hours in his homes in Berlin and Berg.”

It was only about three months ago that I last wrote about Appl. After listening to (and writing about) his SFP recital with pianist James Baillieu in May of 2023, I wrote about the release of his album Forbidden Fruit, on which he was also accompanied by Baillieu. This was followed by the Lines of Life album, an imaginative alternation of songs by Franz Schubert with those of György Kurtág. Now For Dieter has been released to prepare listeners for his next visit to Herbst Theatre this coming October.

Appl has tried to take a “biographical” approach in preparing this new album. Once again, he is accompanied by Baillieu for a generous share of 32 tracks. These are divided into what may best be called fifteen “episodes” with the following titles:

1. Prologue
2. Childhood in Berlin
3. Teenage Years and First Steps as a Singer
4. A Soldier in War 1943–1945
5. A Prisoner of War 1945–1947
6. Returning Home in 1947
7. Birth of Three Songs
8. Song Accompanists and Friends
9. The Bitter Loss of Irmel, his First Wife in 1963
10. Death of his Mother Theodora in 1966
11. Marital Life
12. Commissions and World Premieres
13. Teaching and Personal Experiences
14. Farewell to Stage
15. Epilogue

My only personal attachment to these categories comes with the world premiere recording of Benjamin Britten’s War Requiem. I have to confess that my strongest memory of Fischer-Dieskau involved his wrestling with the English texts of Wilfred Owen. However, if there were shortcomings in the “letter” of his pronunciations, there was no questioning the spirit that he brought to his performance!

In that context I can say with more than a little confidence that, where both music and texts are concerned, Appl delivers a solid command of both letter and spirit. My only real quibble is that Appl sang the War Requiem except in German, rather than in the original English. Given that his English command of the three songs by Samuel Barber that followed this track, I was more than a little puzzled by his approach to Britten!

Mind you, the entire album lasts for 79 minutes. I suspect that, if Appl will bring this entire program to SFP, then I hope he will find a suitable episode in the journey that will allow for an intermission! I also assume that, as has usually been the case for Art of Song programs, SFP will provide a text booklet for the audience, however, generous that document may be. In any case, I was quite satisfied with Appl’s approach to recital-as-biography; and I anticipate that SFP audiences will be equally impressed.

SFO Orchestra: Final Community Concert

Richard Wagner (1868 photograph of Richard Wagner by Jules Bonnet, public domain, from Wikimedia Commons)

Yesterday afternoon the San Francisco Opera (SFO) Orchestra presented the second of the two community concerts to be performed in San Francisco. In contrast to the Music and Flowers program of chamber music, presented at the Minnesota Street Project, today’s program involved the entire ensemble led by its Music Director Eun Sun Kim. The program began with one of the few chamber music compositions by Richard Wagner, expanded to the resources of the string section, and concluded with an instrument-by-instrument account of the full ensemble.

The Wagner offering was “Siegfried Idyll,” scored for an ensemble of thirteen instruments: flute, oboe, two clarinets, bassoon, two horns, trumpet, two violins, viola, cello, and bass. He composed it as a birthday present for his wife, leading a performance of it on the stairs of their Tribschen villa on Christmas morning of 1870. (This was one of the more engaging episodes in Tony Palmer’s Wagner film, much of which was far less memorable!) Kim’s conducting could not have been more sensitive; and, while the venue at Saint Joseph’s Arts Society was a large one, the attentive listener could still appreciate what may have been Wagner’s most intimate undertaking.

The remainder of the program could be described as “cause and effect.” The “effect” was Benjamin Britten’s Opus 34, “The Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra.” This was composed for a documentary film entitled “Instruments of the Orchestra,” which introduced the viewer to both the individual instruments and also the ways those instruments were grouped into wind, brass, strings, and percussion sections. These were all presented as variations on a single theme, a Rondeau that Henry Purcell included in the incidental music he composed for the play Abdelazer by Aphra Behn. I was particularly impressed that Kim deployed the two violin sections to face each other for their interplay in Britten’s score. I was even more delighted to listen to her account of Purcell’s “source” music to prepare her audience for Britten’s theme-and-variations approach.

The program was prepared to last for only about an hour, performed without an intermission; and the finale of the Britten selection was so invigorating that I had no doubt that my time had been well spent!

“What a Swell Party This is!”

Photograph of Michael Tilson Thomas made during the filming of Keeping Score on September 1, 2008 (photograph by Jbitman, public domain, from Wikimedia Commons)

Tickets for last night’s San Francisco Symphony (SFS) performance in Davies Symphony Hall were sold out before I could write my monthly preview article on the April schedule at the end of last month. Many readers probably know by now that the program was a celebration of the 80th birthday of Music Director Laureate Michael Tilson Thomas (MTT). Those familiar with him will probably not be surprised that he appeared on the program as conductor, composer, and arranger. Nevertheless, he spent most of the evening sitting in a chair set up at the front of the stage, just to the right of the podium with Joshua Robison at his side.

His appearances as conductor served as “bookends” for the entire program. Both involved the full forces of the SFS ensemble. The program began with Benjamin Britten’s Opus 34 “The Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra,” given the more formal subtitle “Variations and Fugue on a Theme of Purcell.” I have had a long-standing love affair with this music ever since I took a semester in Orchestration at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. (The professor had known Britten before he moved to the United States.) The final selection was Ottorino Respighi’s “Feste Romane” (Roman festivals), the last of his three Roman symphonic poems, preceded by “Fontane de Roma” (fountains of Rome) and  “Pini di Roma” (pines of Rome).

Soloists included two mezzos with many past experiences with MTT. Sasha Cooke sang “Immer wieder” from his Meditations on Rilke, which she had previously performed for its world premiere. She was also joined at the piano by John Wilson for a performance of his song “Grace.” She sang his duet “Not Everyone Thinks That I’m Beautiful” with Frederica von Stade in an orchestration of MTT’s score provided by Bruce Coughlin. Wilson also accompanied von Stade in a performance of “La flûte de Pan” from Claude Debussy’s Chansons de Bilitis. Tenor Ben Jones sang two MTT songs, “Drift Off to Sleep” and “Answered Prayers,” in orchestrations by MTT working with Bruce Coughlin. Finally, on the more “pops” side, there were two performances by vocalist Jessica Vosk. She sang MTT’s “Sentimental Again,” which he orchestrated in partnership with Larry Moore. This was preceded by one of the funnier songs Frank Loesser wrote for Guys and Dolls, “Take Back Your Mink,” for which she was joined by members of the SFS Chorus prepared by Director Jenny Wong. The Chorus also performed the Finale from Leonard Bernstein’s Chichester Psalms.

MTT shared the podium with Teddy Abrams and Edwin Outwater, who, in turn, divided the selections on the program roughly equally. Abrams led the one remaining work that did not involve vocal performance. This was the overture to Khantshe in Amerike, a Yiddish musical by Joseph Rumshinsky. MTT originally arranged that overture for The Thomashefskys: Music and Memories of a Life in the Yiddish Theater, which he first performed in Carnegie Hall in 2005.

As might be expected, there was an encore. All four of the vocal soloists were joined by the chorus and orchestra in another Bernstein selection. This one was “Some other time” from the musical On the Town with lyrics by Betty Comden and Adolph Green. After Respighi’s roaring thunder, this provided just the right calming influence for leaving Davies in a good mood.

SFB to Honor Hans van Manen with Four Ballets

I first became aware of choreographer Hans van Manen during my graduate student days. Choreographer James Waring would make weekly visits to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT); and I was a regular attendee. Waring died not long after I left MIT with my doctoral degree; but, at the age of 92, van Manen is still alive and kicking (if not creating new dances). The next production for the 2025 Repertory season of the San Francisco Ballet (SFB) will honor his legacy with a program of four works that he created between 1971 and 2012. Sadly, I do not think I have seen any of them.

Dores André performing van Manen’s “5 Tango’s” (courtesy of SFB)

The final work on the program will be the one San Francisco premiere. “5 Tango’s” (yes, the apostrophe is on the Wikipedia page, even if I have no reason why) was created in 1977. As many might guess, each of the movements is a setting of a composition by Astor Piazzolla. The most ambitious undertaking will probably be the opening selection, “Grosse Fuge,” a setting of Ludwig van Beethoven’s single-movement composition of the same title, his Opus 133 scored for string quartet. The other two selections involve music by Johann Sebastian Bach, whose specifics have not been announced. Since the casting information identifies three members of the corps de ballet for “Solo,” I assume that the music will be from the composer’s set of sonatas and partitas for solo violin. The remaining work on the program will be “Variations for Two Couples.” The music is a compilation of works by four composers. The contribution by Stevan Kovacs Tickmayer takes Bach as a point of departure. The other three composers are Benjamin Britten, Einojuhani Rautavaara, and Piazzolla.

The full list of performances dates and times is as follows:

• Saturday, April 5, 8 p.m.
• Sunday, April 6, 2 p.m.
• Wednesday, April 9, 7:30 p.m.
• Friday, April 11, 8 p.m.
• Tuesday, April 15, 7:30 p.m.
• Thursday, April 16, 7:30 p.m.
• Saturday, April 19, 2 p.m.

All performances will take place in the War Memorial Opera House, which is on the northwest corner of Van Ness Avenue and Grove Street (across Grove from Davies Symphony Hall). A single Web page has been created for purchasing tickets for all of the above dates and times. Tickets may also be purchased at the Box Office in the outer lobby of the Opera House or by calling 415-865-2000. The Box Office is open for ticket sales Monday through Friday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.

California Bach Society to Survey British Music

1973 design by David Lance Goins used for the California Bach Society poster

Following up on this past October’s survey of Italian Baroque choral music, the full title of the next program to be presented by the California Bach Society will be From Tallis to Tavener: Five Centuries of British Choral Music. The composers to be presented will include Thomas Tallis, Henry Purcell, Benjamin Britten, Imogen Holst, Ralph Vaughan Williams, Herbert Howells, and John Tavener. For those interested in further details, a Web page has been created with background notes for the entire program.

As in the past, the San Francisco performance of this program will take place at St. Mark’s Lutheran Church. The program will begin at 7:30 p.m. on Friday, February 28. A Web page has been created for all information about ticketing. The basic price for a single ticket is $35; but, as can be expected, there are several alternatives for discounts. Doors will open at 7 p.m.

SFS: Chamber Music Framed by Two Quintets

Yesterday afternoon Davies Symphony Hall hosted the latest performance of chamber music by San Francisco Symphony (SFS) musicians. The program was framed by two quintets separated by about 30 years. It began with the quintet for oboe and strings, composed by Arnold Bax in 1922, and concluded with Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s Opus 10, his F-sharp minor clarinet quintet. These selections served as a framework for a duet and a trio. The duet was Camille Saint-Saëns’ Opus 124, his “Fantasie” in the key of A minor scored for flute and harp. The trio players were violinist Dan Carlson, Leonid Plashinov-Johnson on viola, and pianist Marc Shaprio, performing “Two Pieces” by Benjamin Britten. These were “juvenilia” compositions written in the composer’s teens in 1929, which were not performed until 2003. Nevertheless, they did not “make the cut” for the Complete Works release by Decca in 2013; and yesterday afternoon’s performance suggested that Decca seems to have fumbled the ball in overlooking this music.

Still, the “primary substance” for yesterday afternoon was found in the quintets that began and concluded the program. Russ de Luna was the oboist for the Bax quintet, joined by violinists Carlson and Florin Parvulescu with Davis You on cello and Plashinov-Johnson again on viola. The music began with what seemed like evocations of Claude Debussy; but, by the time it progressed to the final movements, there was no mistaking the English influences! Bax is one of those composers that never seems to get the attention he deserves. In Davies he seems to be limited to chamber music, having made his last appearance a little over two years ago.

Coleridge-Taylor’s fate has not been much better. Nevertheless, I have encountered a fair amount of his music through recordings; and, as some readers may recall, clarinetist Anthony McGill performed his clarinet quintet when he made his debut with San Francisco Performances in November of 2021. Yesterday afternoon reminded me that this music definitely deserves more attention, and clarinetist Yuhsin Galaxy Su knew how to command that attention. Strings were provided by violinists Polina Sedukh and Olivia Chen, Katarzyna Bryla on viola, and cellist Sébastien Gingras.

Harpist Katherine Siochi (from her Meet the Musicians Web page on the SFS Web site)

For the most part, these performances were consistently engaging from beginning to end. I must confess that I found the Saint-Saëns selection to be a bit long-winded. Nevertheless, the interplay of Yubeen Kim on flute and harpist Katherine Siochi was so engaging that I never really felt that they overstayed their welcome! Once again, the SFS musicians provided an engaging journey of discovery for a Sunday afternoon!

California Bach Society: The Holiday Program

“The Nativity and the Adoration of the Magi,” painted by Pseudo-Jacopino di Francesco, probably between 1325 and 1330

A little over a week ago the California Bach Society announced the plans for its holiday concert. Derek Tam will serve as guest conductor for this performance. The program will be framed by two settings of the “Ave Maria” prayer. It will begin with a monodic medieval chant setting and conclude with a much richer arrangement by twentieth-century composer Franz Biebl. These “extremes” will be bridged by a chronological unfolding of composers: Michael Praetorius, Tomás Luis de Victoria, Heinrich Schütz, Benjamin Britten, and Francis Poulenc. A Web page has been created with notes for the entire program.

The San Francisco performance of this program will take place at 7:30 p.m. on Friday, December 13. The venue will be the St. Gregory of Nyssa Episcopal Church, which is located near Potrero Hill at 500 De Haro Street. Individual tickets are available for general admission at $40 with discounted rates for seniors and students. A Web page has been created for such tickets, as well as for three-concert subscriptions, which will also include From Tallis to Tavener and Brilliant Bach.  Doors will open at 7 p.m.

E4TT at Old First Concerts

Poster design for last night’s E4TT performance (from the Old First Concerts event page)

Last night Ensemble for These Times (E4TT) pianist Margaret Halbig presented a program entitled In Motion at Old First Concerts. She performed with three guest artists: Laura Reynolds, alternating between oboe and English horn, violinist Lylia Guion, and Megan Chartier on cello. Each half of the program began with a selection from the twentieth century. Chartier and Halbig got things started with the “Moto perpetuo” movement from Benjamin Britten’s Opus 65, his only cello sonata. Halbig opened the second half with a solo performance, the “Moto perpetuo” movement from York Bowen’s Opus 39 Suite mignonne. All remaining works were composed between 2008 and the “immediate present,” including with the world premiere performance of “And I Made My Way, Deciphering That Fire” by Ursula Kwong-Brown.

While this was, at least on the surface, a promising program, the event itself left much to be desired. There was too much of a sense of one you-know-what thing after another. When I reviewed the notes I jotted on my program sheet last night, I was confronted with “too long,” “repetitive forms too hypnotic,” and “plodding.” In other words there was very little by way of effort from composers and/or performers to seize attention and then sustain it. Under such circumstances, it is hard to determine whether this was a problem of the contributing composers (other than Britten and Bowen), all living and active, or of the performers not “getting” what those composers had in mind.

E4TT was just not up to the standards it had established in past performances.

JIVE Musicians to Celebrate Rosh Hashanah

Readers may recall the debut of the JIVE (Jewish Innovative Voices and Experiences) quartet at the Century Club of California this past April. Pianist Ronny Michael Greenberg is the de facto leader, joined by two vocalists, baritone Simon Barrad and countertenor Aryeh Nussbaum Cohen, and his wife, violinist Elizabeth Castro Greenberg. The title of their first program was Dayenu: Celebrating Passover with plans to follow up for Rosh Hashanah, the celebration of the new year.

Poster design for the Golden New Year concert, showing Elizabeth Castro Greenberg, Ronny Michael Greenberg, Aryeh Nussbaum Cohen, and Simon Barrad (from the Eventbrite Web page)

They will return to the Century Club later this month with a new name, Taste of Talent. The title of their second program will be A Golden New Year. Once again, the program will present a diversity of genres. On the classical side, Cohen and Barrad will join pianist Greenberg for a performance of Benjamin Britten’s second canticle, his Opus 51 entitled “Abraham and Isaac.” Barrad will contribute a new work to the program entitled “Shofar,” an evocation of the blowing of the shofar during the Rosh Hashanah service, which will include guest trumpeter Aaron Kahn. There will also be show tunes composed by George M. Cohan and Stephen Sondheim, as well as arrangements of traditional Yiddish songs. The performance will be followed by a dessert reception with traditional food provided by Saul’s Delicatessen, wine, spiced apple sangria, and honey cocktails.

The celebration of Rosh Hashanah will begin this year on the evening of October 2, but the performance of A Golden New Year will begin at 7:30 p.m. on Thursday, September 26. For those that do not yet know, The Century Club of California is located at 1355 Franklin Street, between Post Street and Sutter Street. General admission will be $100. Those aged 30 and under may purchase tickets for $65. Tickets may be purchased through an Eventbrite Web page.

Simon Rattle in Berlin: 20th Century Britain

Simon Rattle conducting the Berlin Philharmonic (photograph by Monika Rittershaus, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license, from Wikimedia Commons)

Given that Simon Rattle was born in Liverpool, one might have expected that, even during his tenure with the Berlin Philharmonic, he would have given more attention to “England's green and pleasant land” than is evident in the anthology of his recordings with that ensemble. The only British composer to be allocated an entire CD is Benjamin Britten. Nevertheless, where my own interests are concerned, that CD is definitely a good one. It accounts for the three major song cycles with instrumental accompaniment, the Opus 18 Les Illuminations, the Opus 31 Serenade, and the Opus 60 Nocturne. All of these are sung by tenor Ian Bostridge, and only horn player Radek Baborák is given credit on the CD sleeve for his contribution to Opus 31. At least some readers probably know that I am already familiar with the recordings that Britten himself made of all three of these composition; but I could still appreciate the “contemporary take” on this music while listening to Bostridge performing with Rattle.

The only other major work to be recorded was Gustav Holst’s Opus 32 suite, The Planets. I tend to blow hot and cold when I encounter this music in performance, but Rattle certainly gives the overall flow of the suite a creditable account. However, the recording is given a “++” treatment, which, as far as I am concerned, lives up to the old joke about filling a well-needed gap.

The first track to follow The Planets adds the “questionable one” beyond Neptune. “Pluto, the Renewer” was composed by Colin Mathews and dedicated to the memory of Imogen Holst. This is followed by Kaija Saariaho’s “Asteroid 4179: Toutatis,” Matthias Pintscher’s “towards Osiris,” and Mark-Anthony Turnage’s “Ceres.” (Yes, I know that Pintscher is German; but, since he seems to be big on astronomy, I can understand why he was included on the album! Also, since I have been interested in Saariaho’s music for pretty much as long as I have been at this writing gig, I cannot complain about her presence, even if she is not British!) “Ceres” is followed by the darker “Komarov’s Fall,” composed by Brett Dean and named after Vladimir Komarov, the Soviet cosmonaut, who was the first human to die in a space flight. All but the first of these “post-Planets” compositions were commissioned by the Berlin Philharmonic.

That leaves only one remaining track, Thomas Adès’ “Tevot,” which is about twenty minutes in duration. Early in his tenure with the San Francisco Symphony, Michael Tilson Thomas seemed to show an interest in Adès’ music. His performances never really persuaded me to share that interest, nor did the television broadcast of The Exterminating Angel from the Metropolitan Opera. So it did not surprise me that “Tevot” left me (in the immortal words of Dorothy Fields for Jerome Kern’s “A Fine Romance” song) “as cold as yesterday’s mashed potatoes!”

Merola Revisits Britten’s Intense Chamber Opera

My first (and most recent) encounter with Benjamin Britten’s Opus 37 two-act opera The Rape of Lucretia took place in July of 2013. This was a fully-staged performance presented by the Merola Opera Program under the director of Peter Kazaras. In the Britten chronology, this opera is situated between his Opus 33 Peter Grimes and his Opus 39 Albert Herring. Like Opus 39, the instrumental resources for Opus 37 are on a chamber scale with one-to-a-part performances for concertmaster, second violin, viola, cello, bass, flute (doubling piccolo and alto flute), oboe (doubling cor anglais), clarinet (doubling bass clarinet), bassoon, horn, timpani, percussion, and harp. Last night’s conductor was Judith Yan, who delivered a solid command of the interplay of the instrumentalists with the vocalists.

However, from a dramatic point of view, the intensity of Opus 37 contrasts sharply, if not violently, with Opus 39. While Opus 39 lets the narrative unfold of its own accord, Opus 37 is structured around two narrators, identified as Male Chorus (tenor Chance Jonas-O’Toole) and Female Chorus (soprano Caroline Corrales). They guide the flow of the narrative by establishing context; and, in last night’s staging by Jan Eßinger, they intermingle with the action of the characters they are describing. I was particularly struck by Eßinger’s decision to have them reading from a book, since that book, most likely, would have been Livy’s History of Rome.

Nevertheless, the Scenic Design by Sonja Füsti was as contemporary as the costumes designed by Christine Crook. Nevertheless, there was a context of class consciousness in Ronald Duncan’s libretto that was not reflected in the appearance of the three soldiers. Two of them, Collatinus (bass James McCarthy) and Junius (baritone Cameron Rolling) are generals. The third, Tarquinius (baritone Samuel Kidd), is a prince; but, ironically, his uniform is not different from that of the generals. Also, the appearances of these three male characters never suggest that Collatinus and Junius are Romans, while Tarquinius is Etruscan, the “invading authority” of the narrative.

Class also emerges in the household, over which Lucretia (contralto Natalie Lewis) presides, that is run by her husband Collatinus. The only other roles in that household are servants, Lucretia’s old nurse Bianca (mezzo Simona Genga) and the maid Lucia (soprano Olivia Prendergast). The contemporary furnishings suggest that this is a well-to-do Roman household that has done well for itself under Etruscan authority. Nevertheless, that authority legitimizes Tarquinius entering the house will little resistance.

Tarquinius (Samuel Kidd) prepares to assault Lucretia (Natalie Lewis) while Male Chorus (Chance Jonas-O’Toole) and Female Chorus (Caroline Corrales) observe (photograph by Kristen Loken, courtesy of the Merola Opera Program)

The rape itself is the core of the narrative of the second act. Metaphorically, it is a reminder that Roman authority is always trumped by Etruscan authority (at least at this time in Livy’s historical account). In that context Lucretia’s suicide is the only alternative she can take as a noble Roman. At this point, however, the Chorus characters throw an unexpected twist into the narrative, reflecting on how the coming of Jesus will overthrow the value systems whose corruption is so evident among Romans under Etruscan rule. The implication seems to be that such corruption belongs only in the distant past, but those of us that follow the daily news are likely to think that such a distance no longer exists.

SFO Announces 100th Anniversary Concert

1940s photograph of SFO founder Gaetano Merola conducting the SFO Orchestra (from the SFO Archives)

In addition to the three operas that San Francisco Opera (SFO) will present over the course of next month, there will be one final event to celebrate the Centennial Season. The Centennial Celebration concert, which launched the season this past September, will be complemented by a 100th Anniversary Concert, a musical account of SFO’s first century. The program will feature fifteen vocal soloists, the SFO Orchestra and Chorus, and three conductors.

Beginning with the conductors, Caroline H. Hume Music Director Eun Sun Kim will share the podium with former Music Director Donald Runnicles, and former Principal Guest Conductor Patrick Summers. The vocal soloists will be sopranos Karita Mattila, Ailyn Pérez, Patricia Racette, Nina Stemme, Heidi Stober, and Adela Zaharia, mezzo-sopranos Susan Graham and Daniela Mack, tenors Lawrence Brownlee, Michael Fabiano, Brandon Jovanovich, and Russell Thomas, baritones Lucas Meachem and Brian Mulligan, and bass-baritone Christian Van Horn. The current plan for the program (which is subject to change) is as follows:

• 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 Serse (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, conductor

The entire program should last approximately three hours with one intermission.

This concert will be given only one performance, beginning at 6 p.m. on Friday, June 16. Ticket prices range from $30 to $350; and, depending on location, there is a facility fee of either $2 or $3 per ticket. All tickets may be purchased in the outer lobby of the War Memorial Opera House at 301 Van Ness Avenue or by calling the Box Office at 415-864-3330. Box Office hours are 10 a.m.–5 p.m. on Monday and 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Tuesday through Saturday. In addition, there will be a livestream (no on-demand access) on the entire program; the charge will be $27.50. Web pages are available both for tickets to the Opera House and for the livestream. Finally, those going to the Opera House will have the option of purchasing dinner packages (which will be sold separately from the tickets for the performance). A single Web page has been created with hyperlinks for the different dinner options. Tickets may also again be purchased through the Box Office.

Britten’s “War” Requiem Setting Returns to SFS

Ruins of Coventry Cathedral created by German bombing during WWII (photograph by Andrew Walker, from Wikimedia Commons, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license)

Last night in Davies Symphony Hall I experienced my second encounter with a performance by the San Francisco Symphony (SFS) of Benjamin Britten’s Opus 66 War Requiem. Composed in 1961, the music had been commissioned for the consecration of the rebuilt Coventry Cathedral, which had been destroyed by German bombing in 1940. That consecration took place in Coventry on May 30, 1962; and the “original cast” recorded the work in a Decca Records studio in January of 1963.

As was the case for most of his other recordings, Britten conducted the recording sessions. The soloists were (as they had been at Coventry) soprano Galina Vishnevskaya, tenor Peter Pears, and baritone Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau. The choral resources combined the Bach Choir with the London Symphony Chorus. David Willcocks serves as chorus master. The passages for boy choir were sung by the Highgate School Choir under the direction of Edward Chapman. They were accompanied by organist Simon Preston. The instrumental resources combined a one-to-a-part chamber orchestra, performed by the Melos Ensemble, with the London Symphony Orchestra.

The libretto combined the Latin text for the Requiem with selected poems by Wilfred Owen. Owen was a poet that fought in the First World War. The cover page of Britten’s score included the following passage by Owen:

My subject is War, and the pity of War.

The Poetry is in the Pity…

All a poet can do today is warn.

He was killed in action at the age of 25 on November 4, 1918, a week before the Armistice of 11 November 1918.

The Requiem text served as the “spinal cord” of Britten’s composition. The settings of the Latin text were for performance by the full orchestra, soprano soloist, and boy choir. Interleaved among the movements were settings of Owen’s poems performed by the two male soloists along with the chamber orchestra. I suspect that it was not coincidence that one of those soloists was British and the other was German.

For quite some time, the original recording was the only available account of a performance of Britten’s Opus 66. While it had the virtue of being a premiere, there were noticeable flaws in the “casting.” Fischer-Dieskau was not always comfortable with the English language; and some of his deliveries are peculiar (to say the least). Even more problematic, however, was that Vishnevskaya had absolutely no command of Latin; and her mispronunciations became a joke among those familiar with the recording.

Fortunately, there have been several “post-Britten” recordings on which the vocal work is more faithful to the delivery of the text. Furthermore, Opus 66 was added to the SFS repertoire in April of 1969. Prior to this week’s performances, the work was last presented in November 2013 with visiting conductor Semyon Bychkov. The conductor for this week’s performances is Philippe Jordan; and the vocal soloists are soprano Jennifer Holloway, tenor Ian Bostridge, and baritone Brian Mulligan. Joshua Habermann served as guest director of the SFS Chorus, and the Ragazzi Boys Chorus was led by Artistic and Executive Director Kent Jue.

To the extent that the entire score has been etched into my memory ever since I played the original vinyl release to death, I have to say that Jordan’s leadership provided the most satisfying account of Britten’s score that I have ever encountered. The chamber orchestra was situated where the cellos were usually located, giving just about everyone in the audience an excellent view of their performance. The Chorus was up in the Terrace with Holloway sitting front-and-center. The Boys Chorus sounded as if it was coming from the 2nd Tier, remote but consistently clear. The interplay between the male vocalists and the chamber musicians was consistently razor-sharp; and the limited resources underscored the poignancy of Owen’s texts (which seldom required viewing of the projected titles).

Only two performances remain, both at 7:30 p.m. tonight and tomorrow; and this is a performance that definitely should not be missed.

Newly Released Recordings of Jessye Norman

Cover of the album being discussed (courtesy of Crossover Media)

Towards the end of this past March, Decca Classics released a three-CD album entitled Jessye Norman: The Unreleased Masters. Unless I am mistaken, I first became aware of Norman in the late Seventies through a PBS program of a concert by the Boston Symphony Orchestra. However, I did not see her on the stage until she sang the role of Jocasta In a Metropolitan Opera staged production of Igor Stravinsky’s oratorio “Oedipus rex.” Several years later I happened to be in Aix-en-Provence when I was able to see her sing the role of Phedra in Jean-Philippe Rameau’s opera Hippolyte et Aricie. (I also encountered her the following morning when my wife and I were wandering around the city, and I could not have been more of a gushing fanboy during our encounter!)

The recordings in this new collection were all made on much later dates. The earliest is a performance of Richard Strauss’ posthumously published Four Last Songs, which she sang with her Metropolitan Opera colleague James Levine conducting the Berlin Philharmonic. That partnership would resume in 1992, when they recorded Felix Mottl’s orchestration of Richard Wagner’s Wesendonck Lieder. Those two recordings account for the second CD in the new release.

The next round of recordings all took place in Boston’s Symphony Hall in February of 1994. The Boston Symphony Orchestra was led by Seiji Ozawa conducting three compositions, each from a different century. The earliest of these was Joseph Haydn’s Hoboken XXIVa/10 four-movement cantata Berenice, che fai? This was followed by Hector Berlioz’ “Cléopâtre,” which he had submitted for the 1829 Prix de Rome competition (which he did not win). The set concludes in the twentieth century with Benjamin Britten’s Opus 93, his Phaedra cantata, using Robert Lowell’s English translation of text taken from Jean Racine’s Phédre play. That set fills the third CD in the collection.

The first CD is also the recording of the latest session, which took place in Leipzig through much of March, concluding on April 1, 1998. The entire CD consists of selected excerpts from Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde opera. Singing the role of Isolde, Norman is joined by tenor Thomas Moser (Tristan), mezzo Hanna Schwarz (Brangäne), and tenor Ian Bostridge (the young sailor heard at the beginning of the first act). The conductor is Kurt Masur, leading the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra. (It may be worth noting, as an aside, that Wagner never appears in the Warner Classics 70-CD box set of recordings made Masur!)

Personally, I find the Tristan recording a feast unto itself, even though I almost always prefer complete opera recordings to excerpts. On the other hand, I rather like the idea of coupling this CD with the Wesendonck Lieder. Those who know their Wagner well probably know that Wagner described two of those songs, “Im Treibhaus” and “Träume,” as “studies” for the opera, which was “work in progress” when he composed the four songs. That said, I was  impressed that the entire collection should include repertoire from the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries; and I was more than delighted to encounter the breadth of Norman’s repertoire.

Pocket Opera Takes on Benjamin Britten’s Comedy

It has been a long time since I have attended a Pocket Opera performance. Indeed, my experience dates back to when Donald Pippin presented abbreviated English-language performances of the operatic repertoire with minimal instrumentation and commentary to substitute for omitted content. Yesterday’s performance of Benjamin Britten’s Albert Herring made it clear to me how much things had changed.

Since this was composed as a chamber opera, instrumentation was transparently (one-to-a-part) modest:

• flute/piccolo/alto flute
• oboe
• clarinet (B-flat and A)/bass clarinet (two players)
• bassoon
• horn
• percussion
• harp
• first violin
• second violin
• viola
• cello
• bass

As a result, this is a production that involves more roles for the vocalists than parts for the musicians. Nevertheless, the transparency of the instrumentation provides just the right setting for a coming-of-age narrative based on a novella by Guy de Maupassant.

We tend to associate Britten with his penetrating examinations of the dark side of human nature. In this case, however, the aspect of human nature involves excessive attention to morality; and Britten clearly knew how to give that theme comic treatment. The plot concerns naming a May Queen for an annual spring celebration. Unfortunately, none of a young maidens of the village live up to the high moral standards of the festival’s patroness, Lady Billows (soprano Caroline Altman). Indeed, the most virtuous villager seems to be the title character (tenor Sam Faustine), who is timid unto an extreme and is severely dominated by his mother (mezzo Mary Ruth).

As a result, he is chosen to serve as King of the May, celebrated by a May Day banquet. Fortunately, his friend Sid (baritone Julio Ferrari) decides that Albert needs to sow some wild oats. To further that goal, he spikes Albert’s glass of punch with rum (giving the music a chance to make fun of Richard Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde). The rum does its thing, and Albert’s transformation is so radical that no one can find him the next morning. As expected, he eventually turns up leaving his past timidity in the dust.

The plot develops at a well-paced clip, and that pace was skillfully managed by both conductor David Drummond and stage director Nicolas A. Garcia. Between them they made it clear that Pocket Opera had come a long way from its founding traditions. The only disappointment came from the performance taking place in the Gunn Theatre at the Legion of Honor Museum.

Indeed, the venue put both performers and audience at a disadvantage. Most critical was the absence of an orchestra pit. This resulted to placing the musicians behind the staged action, meaning that the audience had a better view of the conductor than the vocalists did! Also, like most of the venues in the Presidio, the venue was not particularly convenient (if not hostile) to those that prefer to get around on foot. At least the producers were kind enough to present the performance in the afternoon. Once the sun has set, I prefer to leave the Presidio to its indigenous wildlife!

Pocket Opera definitely deserves settings more conducive to staged productions. Both the War Memorial and the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts provide first-rate venues of different sizes and flexibility. If Pocket Opera has outgrown “Pippin’s pocket,” they deserve sites suitable for their ambitious undertakings.