JIVE to Celebrate First Anniversary for Passover

JIVE performers Aryeh Nussbaum Cohen, Simon Barrad, Elizabeth Castro Greenberg, and Ronny Michael Greenberg (courtesy of JIVE)

Almost exactly a year ago, JIVE - Jewish Innovative Voices & Experiences was launched as a concert series. The founders were pianist Ronny Michael Greenberg, countertenor Aryeh Nussbaum Cohen, and baritone Simon Barrad. As was the case last year, the season will begin with the celebration of Passover. Once again, the founders will be joined in their performance by violinist Elizabeth Castro Greenberg.

The Passover story will be presented through a multi-genre program of Yiddish songs, traditional Ladino music, jazz, operetta, and music from the films Prince of Egypt and Frozen (“Let Us Go”). The program will also include arrangements and compositions by Flory Jagoda, Ernest Bloch, Leslie Adams, Erwin Schulhoff, Joseph Beer, Simon & Garfunkel, and Bonnie Tyler. As might be expected, the music will be enhanced with wine and traditional foods, as well as cocktails appropriate for the holiday.

Once again, the performance will take place at The Century Club of California, which is located at 1355 Franklin Street, between Post Street and Sutter Street. It will begin at 7:30 p.m. on Wednesday, April 9. General admission will be $100. However, for parties of four or more, admission will be $75 per person. Those aged 30 and under may purchase tickets for $65. Tickets may be purchased through an Eventbrite event page.

Steven Isserlis’ “Anniversaries” Cello Recital

Yesterday afternoon in Herbst Theatre, cellist Steven Isserlis presented a recital program for Chamber Music San Francisco entitled 2024 Anniversaries. This year marks the centennial of the deaths in 1924 of two major composers that “transitioned” from the nineteenth to the twentieth century. The first of these was Ferruccio Busoni, whose “Kultaselle,” a set of ten variations on a Finnish folk song, began the program. The second was Gabriel Fauré, represented by his Opus 109 (first) cello sonata, composed in the key of D minor. (Fauré was also the “encore composer,” with the selection of his Opus 78 “Sicilienne,” which was later incorporated into his Opus 80 incidental music for Maurice Maeterlinck’s play Pelléas et Mélisande.)

An arpeggione built in 1968 (not performed by Isserlis yesterday afternoon) with its guitar-like frets (from Wikimedia Commons, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license)

The program also acknowledged works composed in 1824 by Franz Schubert and in 1924 by Ernest Bloch. The nineteenth-century offering was Schubert’s D. 821 sonata in A minor, originally composed for the arpeggione (a “hybrid” instrument, which was basically a bowed guitar). Bloch was represented by his three-movement suite Pieces from Jewish Life. The remaining work on the program was the final selection, Francis Poulenc’s only cello sonata.

As usual, Isserlis’ performance was as informed as it was spirited. His energetic expressiveness never fails to draw the attentive listener into the “engine room” of every work he selects for performance. The result is a perfectly balanced account of not only the “big picture” but also the many subtle “brush strokes” that bring the picture into being. That capacity to express detail was, as in the past, enhanced through the long-term chemistry that has emerged between him and his accompanist at the piano, Connie Shih.

Isserlis also deserves credit for his chemistry with his audience. The good news is that he does not try to account for each selection with an introductory mini-lecture. Rather, he homes in on a few specific items, which he feels are worth sharing. These inevitably provide useful orientation for a listener encountering a composition for the first time. My guess is that those familiar with the cello repertoire were in a minority yesterday, but they seemed consistently as attentive to everything that Isserlis presented as the more “seasoned” listeners were. Such chemistry is ultimately in the hands of the performer, and Isserlis could not have handled it better.

JIVE Off to a Good Start

Last night at The Century Club of California, JIVE, the new quartet whose name is the acronym for “Jewish Innovative Voices and Experiences,” presented its debut recital. The title of the program was Dayenu: Celebrating Passover; and plans are already in place for further holiday-based programs for Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, and for Hanukkah. Pianist Ronny Michael Greenberg is the de facto leader, since he was the only member on stage for the entire evening. He accompanied two vocalists, baritone Simon Barrad and countertenor Aryeh Nussbaum Cohen, and his wife, violinist Elizabeth Castro Greenberg.

The repertoire was impressively diverse. Composers included Samuel Barber, Ernest Bloch, and Lise Weber (one of the Theresienstadt prisoners in the early Forties). The program also included Sephardic folk music, arrangements of traditional songs (one by Barrad), and both pop and show tunes. There was also an encore that amounted to a klezmer tango.

Taken as a whole, the program progressed at a smooth clip, with each selection bringing its own fresh take on the overall repertoire. One does not associate a countertenor with Jewish music, but Cohen’s deliveries were consistently solid and expressive. Barrad’s style was more traditional and familiar but just as consistently engaging. Violinist Greenberg provided an instrumental reflection on all of these vocal works by performing the “Nigun” movement from Bloch’s three-movement Baal Shem suite.

From my vantage point, it appeared that JIVE played to a full house; and the audience was certainly appreciative. I also got the impression that this performance drew more than just members of the Jewish community, since the performers were known to many that follow recital events. The ensemble definitely got off to a good start, and I am looking forward to seeing how they will maintain their momentum!

SFCM: Chamber Music for the California Festival

As anticipated, last night’s video stream from the Barbro Osher Recital Hall of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music (SFCM) was a vast improvement over Monday night’s ineptitude. This was no great surprise, since the monthly streaming of Chamber Music Tuesday has been consistently satisfying since I first started viewing the series. Nevertheless, last night was a Chamber Music Tuesday different from other Chamber Music Tuesdays for at least two reasons.

Maria van der Sloot, Jungeun Kim, and Christine Lee performing Vivian Fung’s “Ominous Machine” (screen shot from the live video stream)

Most importantly, this was SFCM’s contribution to this month’s California Festival: A Celebration of New Music. Furthermore, this particular celebratory event also involved a homecoming. As usual, last night’s program included visitors to perform side-by-side with SFCM students. However, last night’s visitors were three SFCM alumni that formed L’Arc Trio, the piano trio consisting of Maria van der Sloot on violin, cellist Christine Lee, and Jungeun Kim on piano. As the hucksters like to say, “And that’s not all,” since L’Arc gave the world premiere performance of a piano trio by Vivian Fung entitled “Ominous Machine.”

Fung completed this trio in 2021. However, due to pandemic conditions, the plans for its world premiere had to be postponed. Last night saw the conclusion of the waiting time, and the occasion could not have been more satisfying. Fung displayed an ingenious capacity for intricacy, allowing the dynamic lines for each of the three instruments to fit together like a jigsaw puzzle. This was music that could easily have sustained a second performance had it not been for the other works on the program.

One of those was another recent composition, a string quartet by Jonathan Bingham entitled “Pareidolia,” composed in 2022 for the San Francisco Chamber Orchestra. The quartet players were violinists Daniel Dastoor and Shintaro Taneda, and the violist was Isabel Tannenbaum. Lee returned to perform the cello part. Like “Ominous Machine,” this was music that would have benefitted from a second performance.

The entire program was framed by significantly older compositions. The second half of the program was devoted entirely to Ernest Bloch’s first piano quintet, performed by violinists Yip Wai Chow and Mathea Goh, Tannenbaum again on viola, cellist Ayoun Alexandra Kim, and Julio Elizalde on piano. Bloch is frequently known for his rhetorical capacity for vigor. His ability to modulate energy levels extended across all three movements of his composition, even in the second movement given the tempo “Andante mistico.” Bloch composed this work in 1923 during his tenure as the first Musical Director of the Cleveland Institute of Music; but, about two years later, he moved to San Francisco to lead SFCM.

The program began with one of the least known works by Gustav Mahler. His single-movement piano quartet in A minor was composed in 1876, and it would be fair to say that the composer was just beginning to find his own voice. Nevertheless, those familiar with the later Mahler repertoire will probably find at least a few intriguing “omens” of his works to come. Violinist van der Sloot and pianist Kim participated in the performance, joined by Tannenbaum on viola and Constantine Janello on cello.

Taken as a whole, last night’s performance provided a decidedly engaging contribution to the California Festival.

Joshua Bell’s Sonatas++ Recital Program

Violinist Joshua Bell (from his San Francisco Symphony Calendar page)

Last night in Davies Symphony Hall the San Francisco Symphony continued its 2022–23 Great Performers Series with a violin recital by Joshua Bell. According to the program book, Bell had prepared a program of three sonatas for violin and piano to be performed with Peter Dugan as his accompanying pianist. However, the “fine print” on that program page included the following sentence: “Additional works will be announced from the stage.”

The first half of the program was devoted to sonatas from two consecutive centuries. It began with the second of Ludwig van Beethoven’s Opus 12 sonatas, composed in the key of A major, which was completed in 1798. This was followed by Robert Schumann’s Opus 121 (second) violin sonata in D minor, composed in 1851.

The second half of the program presented the third sonata, written during the next consecutive century, Claude Debussy’s G minor sonata, composed near the end of his life in 1917. This was preceded by the first of the “additional works,” the second (“Nigun”) of the three movements of Ernest Bloch’s Baal Shem suite, composed in 1923. The Debussy quartet was followed by Béla Bartók’s first violin rhapsody, composed in 1928. Bell and Dugan then returned for two encore selections. The first of these was the first of the three “Romances” that Clara Schumann composed for her Opus 22. This was followed by Henryk Wieniawski’s Opus 16, “Scherzo-Tarantella.”

This made for a fully engaging evening with no shortage of either technical inventiveness or intense expressiveness. I have to confess that I have a particular preference for the Beethoven Opus 12 sonatas. I tend to find these to be the most intimate of the composer’s chamber music compositions. I also enjoy the amusement of discovering that the title pages of all of the violin sonatas identified the works as “Sonata for Piano and Violin.” Beethoven clearly saw himself as the pianist when these sonatas were first performed, and last night I was delighted to experience a reading in which pianist and violinist (to use Beethoven’s priority ordering) were on equal terms! In that respect it is worth noting that Debussy played the piano part for the premiere of his sonata, joined by Gaston Poulet on violin; and this work was also very much an “equal terms” composition.

Schumann did not pay much attention to chamber music until 1842, which is often called his “chamber music year,” since he focused almost entirely on composing chamber music. He then returned to chamber music in 1851, composing both his first violin sonata in A minor (Opus 105) and Opus 121. His final sonata was composed in the key of A minor in 1853. It was not published during his lifetime and is cataloged as WoO 27.

None of these sonatas have received very much attention, and I am pretty sure that this was my first encounter with Opus 121 in a recital setting. Both Bell and Dugan made a clear case that this was a composition that did not deserve such neglect. (I also appreciated the “symmetry” of the overall program, with Robert before the intermission and Clara for an encore selection.)

I feel it is also fair to observe that Bell was as much in his comfort zone in introducing the works that were not listed in the program book as he was in performing all of his selections. His verbal introductions to the unlisted compositions provided just the right amount of dispositional context. I found his account of his own past teacher and that teacher’s teacher to be delightfully engaging. That was the road that led to the Wieniawski encore, whose performance made it clear that Bell was saving his most dazzling fireworks for his final offering.

Joseph Szigeti’s Columbia Recordings

1950 photograph of violinist Joseph Szigeti (from the Cushing Memorial Library of Texas A&M University, from Wikimedia Commons, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license)

After several delays, all of which were probably due to the impact of COVID-19 on “business as usual,” Sony Classical finally released its anthology Joseph Szigeti: The Complete Columbia Album Collection about a month ago. Szigeti, a Hungarian violinist, was a leading figure during the twentieth century. He was a notable colleague of Ferruccio Busoni, Béla Bartok, Ernest Bloch, and Eugène Ysaÿe, the last of whom dedicated his first solo violin sonata to him. (Ysaÿe’s Opus 27 is a collection of six solo sonatas, each of which is dedicated to a different virtuoso violinist reflecting the respective composer’s style.)

The very first CD in the Sony collection is probably the best reflection of these connections. It begins with the first of Bartók’s two virtuoso rhapsodies, originally composed for violin and piano and subsequently arranged for violin and orchestra. Bartók wrote this piece for Szigeti, and Columbia recorded the two of them performing the composition on May 2, 1940. The following May 13 they returned to the World Broadcasting Studios in New York, this time joined by clarinetist Benny Goodman, to perform what is probably the most authoritative account of Bartók’s three-movement “Contrasts.”

While the collection does not include the concerto that Bloch wrote for Szigeti, that first CD also includes his 1923 Baal Shem suite, composed when Bloch was teaching at the Cleveland Institute of Music and given the subtitle “3 Pictures of Chassidic Life.” After these three pieces, however, there is a disappointing lapse in adventurous content. This is particularly disconcerting where the concerto is involved, since Discogs has a Web page for a Columbia vinyl that coupled the Baal Shem performance with one of the Bloch violin concerto played by Szigeti under the baton of Charles Munch conducting the Orchestra De La Société Des Concerts Du Conservatoire in Paris.

On the more positive side, there is a complete account of Szigeti’s performances at the Prades Festival. Based in the Pyrénées-Orientales department in the Occitanie region of Southern France, this festival was launched by cellist Pablo Casals in 1950 to commemorate the bicentenary of the death of Johann Sebastian Bach, and Columbia provided recordings of the performances at those annual festivals. Of particular interest is the recording from the 1953 festival of Johannes Brahms’ Opus 87 (second) piano trio in C major, with Szigeti joined by Casals on cello and Myra Hess on piano. Hess also accompanied Szigeti in a performance of Franz Schubert’s D. 574 sonata in A major. There are also three recordings of Casals conducting Bach, which are definitely valuable historical documents but are not likely to go down very well with “Bach purists.”

In general, there is much to be said for the company that Szigeti keeps. For my part the deepest impressions come from the recordings he made of the piano and violin sonatas of Ludwig van Beethoven (as the composer himself described them) with the piano part taken by Mieczysław Horszowski. I was also pleasantly surprised to discover that Horszowski also accompanied Szigeti in a recording of Busoni’s Opus 36a second violin sonata in E minor. This can be found on the penultimate CD in the collection, coupled with Szigeti’s performance of Busoni’s Opus 35a concerto in D major with The Little Orchestra Society conducted by Thomas Scherman.

In other words whatever liabilities there may be in this collection, they are more than sufficiently balanced by a wealth of assets.

Violins of Hope: The Album

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

Readers may recall that, this past February, this site reported on two performances presented as part of the Violins of Hope project. That name refers to a priceless collection of recovered and meticulously restored instruments from the Holocaust era. The restorations were realized through the efforts of Amnon Weinstein and his son Avshalom, both Israeli luthiers. The restored instruments have been exhibited in the Middle East, Europe, and the United States. Many of the instruments were played by prisoner-musicians in the ghettos and labor/death camps. Of the 86 instruments that have been restored to date, 50 were brought to the Bay Area, many of which were featured in a well-organized exhibit on the ground floor of the Veterans Building. The exhibit was often open at times when Herbst Theatre audiences were waiting to enter.

The first of the two performances that I covered was entitled Along the Trade Route and was presented without charge in the Koret Auditorium of the Main Branch of the San Francisco Public Library. It was hosted by klezmer expert Cookie Segelstein, joined by three other violinists specializing in different cultures. I seem to recall Segelstein observing that the instruments in the collection were better in display cases than in the hands of skilled violinists; but none of the players on the program (including Segelstein herself) seemed to be wrestling with his/her respective instrument.

The second performance took place in Davies Symphony Hall as part of the series of chamber music recitals presented by members of the San Francisco Symphony. Cellist Barbara Bogatin served as host, and all of the selections were string trios. The other performers were violinist Raushan Akhmedyarova and violist Adam Smyla, and all three of the instruments had been restored under the auspices of Violins of Hope.

Both of these offerings had much to offer the attentive listener, not only Segelstein’s historically-informed approach to klezmer but also the Davies offerings of two of the composers held in the Theresienstadt transfer camp, Gideon Klein and Hans Krása. I offer this as context, because, only weeks after I had covered these events, Albany Records released a Violins of Hope album featuring violinist Niv Ashkenazi. This happened to be when the exhibit had moved from San Francisco to Los Angeles, where most of the performance events have been postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

In the context of the performances I had experienced, I found myself for the most part disappointed with this recording. The selections of both composers and compositions amounted to what my Yiddish-speaking ancestors would have called a mish-mosh (the “authorized spelling” according to Leo Rosten’s The Joys of Yiddish). Ernest Bloch’s “Nigun” was there, pulled out of context as it usually is when selected for an encore; and it was followed immediately by John Williams’ theme for the movie Schindler’s List. The two Holocaust victims on the album are Robert Dauber (Theresienstadt-Dachau) and Szymon Laks (Auschwitz). Paul Ben-Haim got out of Europe before being captured by the Nazis and subsequently went on to become the grand old man of contemporary music in the newly-formed State of Israel. The inclusion of Lucien Garban’s arrangement of Maurice Ravel’s “Kaddish” song probably serves as the ironic gesture of the album, while the arrangement of music from Sharon Farber’s “Bestemming” cello concerto (including narration by Tony Campisi) ran the gamut from insipid to tedious.

Symphony Parnassus to Open 30th Season

Cellist Alexander Hersh (courtesy of Symphony Parnassus)

In the Better-Late-Than-Never Department I just received word that the 30th anniversary season of Symphony Parnassus will get under way this coming Sunday afternoon. Continuing to organize programs around emerging talents, the program will feature the 26-year-old cellist Alexander Hersh, who is connected to San Francisco through his grandfather, Paul Hersh, who teaches both viola and piano at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. Cellist Hersh will perform Ernest Bloch’s “Schelomo,” which the composer described as a “Hebraic rhapsody.” The name is the Hebrew form of “Solomon;” and the music was inspired by the pessimism of Ecclesiastes in the Old Testament.

“Schelomo” will be the “concerto” offering in the conventional overture-concerto-symphony concert program. The overture will be taken from Ludwig van Beethoven’s Opus 113, the incidental music he composed for a performance of the play The Ruins of Athens by August von Kotzebue. The symphony will be Carl Nielsen’s Opus 29 (fourth), which the composer named “The Inextinguishable.” This symphony was composed in 1916 during World War I; and it includes a “battle” between two sets of timpani. Symphony Parnassus will be conducted by Music Director Stephen Paulson.

The performance of this program will begin at 2 p.m. this Sunday, November 17, in the Concert Hall of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, which is located at 50 Oak Street, between Van Ness Avenue and Franklin Street and a short walk from the Van Ness Muni Station. Ticket prices will be $25 for general admission, $20 for seniors, and $10 for students and those under the age of 26 (with proof of identification). Online purchases are being handled by a Brown Paper Tickets event page.

Archival Recordings of Violinist Ivry Gitlis

2018 photograph of pianist Martha Argerich and violinist Ivry Gitlis (aged 96 at that time) (photograph by Shani Evenstein, from Wikimedia Commons, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license)

At the beginning of this month, Taiwan-based RHINE CLASSICS launched a series of recordings entitled Ivry Gitlis Edition, planned as a collection of recordings of the Israeli violinist Ivry Gitlis. Because this name may not be familiar to many readers, I would like to begin with an anecdote. When I was working on my doctoral thesis at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, one of my colleagues was the late Gilbert Voyat, a Swiss psychologist with the gift of being able to explain the work of Jean Piaget to those of us with limited knowledge of French. (Voyat died of cancer at the early age of 43, at which time he had been a Professor of Psychology at City College of New York.) Voyat once began a conversation by referring to his friend Ivry Gitlis; and I piped up, “I know who that is!” Voyat scowled, “No one in the United States knows who Gitlis is!” I replied, “Anyone who likes Alban Berg’s violin concerto knows that he is one of the few violinists to have recorded it;” and, in fact, I first came to know that concerto through a Vox recording made with William Strickland conducting the Vienna Symphony.

That conversation took place half a century ago; and, over that intervening period, I have never encountered another recording of Gitlis until this month. The first Ivry Gitlis Edition release is a two-CD collection entitled The Early Years, Birth of a Legend. The recordings remastered on this album were made between 1949 and 1963. All of the selections are either solos or works with piano accompaniment. Thus, while the Berg violin concerto fits into this time frame (the album received a “Grand Prix du Disque” award in 1954), it is not part of the collection. However, even if there is no representation of any of the Second Viennese School composers, there is a wide variety of twentieth-century approaches to composition, represented (in order of appearance in the collection) by Paul Hindemith, Karol Szymanowski, Ernest Bloch, Béla Bartók, and Joseph Achron. All other selections are from the nineteenth century with the exceptions of the Chaconne movement that concludes Johann Sebastian Bach’s BWV 1004 solo violin partita in D minor and Giuseppe Tartini’s “Devil’s Trill” sonata.

With regard to technology, RHINE CLASSICS has done an excellent remastering job for all of the tracks on these two CDs. The performances themselves are more variable in quality. Each CD includes with its own recording of Bartók’s solo violin sonata. The earlier recording comes from a studio session in Paris in December of 1951. The later recording was recorded live at the 1963 Festival dei Due Mondi (festival of two worlds) in Spoleto, Italy. Without trying to make undue excuses, I have found that even the best of performers are not “at the top of their game” in what I like to call “high-bandwidth” festivals; so I was not surprised to find a better account of Bartók coming out of the studio!

Thus, in spite of “Spoleto conditions,” the greatest satisfaction comes from the attention that Gitlis gives to the twentieth-century composers included in this collection. By way of comparison, only two of the twentieth-century pieces can be found in the discography for Jascha Heifetz, Achron’s 1911 Opus 33 (“Hebrew Melody”) and the “Nigun” movement from Bloch’s 1923 Baal Shem suite. Particularly representative is the fact that the very first composition on the first CD is the third (1935) sonata (in E major) of the four that Hindemith composed for violin and piano. Taking Bloch, Hindemith, and Bartók all into account, this collection is definitely worth “the price of admission.”

Dance Accompanied by Live Music at Fort Mason

Four of the dancers in the Mark Foehringer Dance Project (from the Media Web page on the Mark Foehringer Dance Project Web site)

At the end of November in 2017, the audience in Herbst Theatre enjoyed a performance by choreographer Brian Brooks dancing with Wendy Whelan to present his one-hour composition Some of a Thousand Words. Unlike most dance concerts, this one involved music performed by the Brooklyn Rider string quartet, consisting of violinists Johnny Gandelsman and Colin Jacobsen, violist Nicholas Cords, and cellist Michael Nicolas. They were situated at the rear of the stage on which Brooks and Whelan performed, making for a rare opportunity for the dancers to engage with the in-the-moment performance of the musicians.

Such “real-time” engagement between dance in music is, sadly, encountered all too rarely, at least once one progresses beyond the performances by the San Francisco Ballet in the War Memorial Opera House. Fortunately, an opportunity will arise next weekend in a program of four contemporary ballets created by Mark Foehringer. The Mark Foehringer Dance Project Ensemble will present a program entitled Like An OX On The Roof & Other Dances. The program will consist of two world premieres and a restaging of two audience favorites from the company’s repertory. All four of the offerings will be presented with live musical accompaniment.

Sadly (at least for the music lovers), specifics about the compositions themselves have not been announced. Fortunately, the Friction Quartet of violinists Otis Harriel and Kevin Rogers, violist Taija Warbelow, and cellist Doug Machiz has announced that they will be performing at this concert. They further announced that they will be playing Benjamin Britten’s Opus 4, which he called “Simple Symphony.” This was originally scored for string orchestra; but it has the ability to stand up reliably to one-to-a-part playing. According to Foehringer’s Web site, the other composers contributing to the program will be Franz Liszt, Darius Milhaud, and Ernest Bloch.

Like An OX On The Roof & Other Dances will be given two performances, both at 8 p.m., on March 22 and 23. The performances will take place in the Cowell Theater at the Fort Mason Center for Arts & Culture. The entrance to the Center is located in the Marina near East Harbor, where northbound Laguna Street ends and turns left into Beach Street. Ticket prices are $22.50, $32.50, and $42.50. Tickets for both concerts may be purchased from the same Web page, which has a pull-down menu for selecting the date.

Piatigorsky’s Concertante Recordings on RCA

Jascha Heifetz (left) with Gregor Piatigorsky (right) on the cover of the RCA box set of their joint recordings (from the Amazon.com Web page for the collection)

As promised a week ago, in considering the RCA portion of the collection Gregor Piatigorsky: The Art of the Cello, I am addressing the concertante and chamber music performances separately. Of the four concertante pieces that Piatigorsky had recorded for Columbia, only Max Bruch’s Opus 47 “Kol Nidrei” (which had been coupled with Antonín Dvořák’s Opus 104 cello concerto in B minor) does not appear in the RCA catalog. Instead, the Dvořák concerto is the only work on the RCA album, performed with the Boston Symphony Orchestra (BSO) conducted by Charles Munch.

However, the absence of Bruch is compensated by a recording or Ernest Bloch’s “Schelomo,” also with Munch conducting the BSO. As Bruch’s Opus 47 had provided an “afterthought” following Dvořák, the Bloch selection follows a performance of William Walton’s cello concerto (also with Munch and the BSO). Thus, while Columbia opted for a “pairing” of late nineteenth-century rhetoric, RCA chose to link together two decidedly modernist (but still unabashedly tonal) composers.

Indeed, in my own listening experience, Walton and Bloch have one thing in common. Every time I listen to a composition by either of them, either in concert or on recording, I wonder why I do not hear more of their music! Unless I am mistaken, this Piatigorsky recording was my first encounter with Walton’s concerto, even though it has been recorded by the likes of both Yo Yo Ma and Steven Isserlis.

Bloch, on the other hand, gets a bit more respect, at least here in San Francisco, where he used to live; and “Schelomo” has become a concert favorite. Indeed, I have to wonder whether it was included on the Walton album by RCA as a marketing “lure.” “Schelomo” would attract buyers, who would then get Walton as part of the bargain!

Another marketing tactic may be responsible for the one oddity among the concertante selections. This is the recording of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s K. 219 “Turkish” concerto in A major. Those who know their Mozart will immediately recognize that he never composed a cello concerto and that K. 219 is a violin concerto. Sure enough, the concerto soloist is Jascha Heifetz; and the album is actually titled The Heifetz-Piatigorsky Concerts.

However, Piatigorsky is on the recording. He is leading the cello section of the accompanying chamber orchestra. Since no conductor is named, we can assume that Heifetz is also leading that ensemble. To be fair, the cello part is not particularly rich in this concerto; and the RCA recording team did not give it very much respect. Nevertheless, in some (slightly warped) literal sense of the words, this is a recording that Piatigorsky made for RCA!

A more “legitimate” conjunction of Heifetz and Piatigorsky can be found on the 1960 recording of Johannes Brahms’ Opus 102 “Double” concerto in A minor with Alfred Wallenstein conducting the “RCA Symphony Orchestra” (presumably a “pick-up” gathering of Hollywood studio musicians who happened to be available at the time). I know this recording well through my RCA Heifetz Collection, but I still can’t get enough of it. I continue to find it a valuable benchmark for the interpretation of this concerto on both technical and rhetorical grounds.

On the other hand, this is also the one selection that warrants two distinct RCA recordings. The other is much earlier (1951); and the violinist is Nathan Milstein. The performance is of The Robin Hood Dell Orchestra of Philadelphia (members of the Philadelphia Orchestra and others, who would give outdoor concerts during the summer months) conducted by Fritz Reiner. (The recording, fortunately, was made indoors at the Academy of Music in Philadelphia.) While the technology is weaker, this is also a thoroughly well-conceived interpretation. (By way of context, when Heifetz recorded the Brahms violin concerto in D major, Opus 77 for RCA, he performed with the Chicago Symphony conducted by Reiner.)

My high opinion of Reiner also extends to his interpretations of the music of Richard Strauss, as I had observed in writing about Piatigorsky’s Columbia recordings. He does not return for the RCA recording of Richard Strauss’ Opus 35 tone poem “Don Quixote.” Piatigorsky made that recording with Munch and the BSO in 1953. (Reiner would make his RCA recording with the Chicago in 1958 with Antonio Janigro.) As the reader should probably guess by now, Piatigorsky had a good working relationship with Munch and his Bostonians. This was a time when the BSO took great pride in its brass section, and it does not take much listening to this Munch recording to see why!

Flambeau’s Delightful Taste of New Orleans

Flambeau players Brent Rampone, Doug Dayson, Steve Parks, and Tom Rigney (photograph by Linda Dembo)

This afternoon I made my first foray into the Yerba Buena Gardens Festival (YBGF) to listen to Tom Rigney and the group he formed called Flambeau. Working with this group, Rigney has built up both a repertoire and a catalog of recordings, most of which involve different approaches to “roots.” These styles include Cajun, zydeco, blues, funky grooves from New Orleans, ballads, and waltzes. Rigby leads the group on violin and takes most of the vocals. The rest of the group consists of pianist Caroline Dahl, Steve Parks on bass guitar, and drummer Brent Rampone. For this performance the group was joined by a guest artist, guitarist Doug Dayson, a venerable veteran of Queen Ida and the Bon Temps Zydeco Band.

Note that “most of” qualifier, though. The most engaging waltz that Flambeau played actually came from an opera aria, “O mio babbino caro” (oh my dear daddy) from Giacomo Puccini’s one-act Gianni Schicchi. The treatment was strictly instrumental, but the spirit of the music was as clear as if one were encountering it on an opera stage. Equally engaging was the group’s approach to George Gershwin’s “Summertime,” from his opera, Porgy and Bess. Then there was Rigney’s own Irish influences, which he acknowledged in a piece called “Guinness and Gumbo.”

The real surprise of the afternoon came from what I have always felt was a classic in the New Orleans blues repertoire. The program would have not been true to its roots, so to speak, without an account of “The House of the Rising Sun.” It would be hard to enumerate how many different approaches have been taken to the traditional folk song that probably deserves the label “New Orleans classic” more than any other. However, Rigney gave his version a longer than usual introduction, which gave absolutely no hint of what was about to come. In fact the whole introduction wove its way around motifs from, of all places, Ernest Bloch’s “Schelomo.” Setting aside any connotations of Jewish tradition, was Rigney trying to tell us that he really wanted to be a cellist?

Any kidding aside, what made this afternoon fun was not only the extended breadth of Rigney’s take on “roots” traditions but also they ways in which he could draw on unexpected sources to put his own personal stamp on each number. He has been a YBGF regular for several years. It was clear from looking over the audience that he had built up quite a fan base. It was just as clear than many of those fans had come to dance as well as to listen, making the whole affair a truly festive visual offering. Both my wife and I were blown away by the whole occasion, so I suppose we have increased the size of his fan base by two!

Simone Porter’s Engaging Janáček at SFP

Violinist Simone Porter (courtesy of San Francisco Performances)

Last night in the Concert Hall of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, San Francisco Performances (SFP) concluded its 2017–2018 Young Masters Series with a violin recital by Simone Porter. Porter is currently studying with Robert Lipsett at the Colburn Conservatory of Music in Los Angeles, but last season she performed as soloist with the Los Angeles Philharmonic under the baton of Gustavo Dudamel at the age of nineteen. Her accompanist last night was pianist Hsin-I Huang, and both of them were making their respective San Francisco debuts.

Like many emerging recitalists, Porter prepared a program that went for breadth, with Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart at one end at Esa-Pekka Salonen at the other. There was an impressive diversity of compositional structure in her selections; but each half of the program began with a multi-movement duo sonata. Of these two the strongest impressions were left by Leoš Janáček’s only violin sonata, a piece with a somewhat rocky history.

It was originally composed in 1914, but Janáček could not find a violinist interested in performing it. In 1915 he published the second (Ballada) movement separately and set about to revise the sonata as a whole. The completed revision was first performed in 1922. As a point of reference for Janáček’s activities as a composer, his best known works between 1914 and 1922 would probably be his opera Káťa Kabanová (first performed in 1921) and his symphonic rhapsody in three movements, “Taras Bulba” (completed in 1918).

I have SFP to thank for introducing me to Janáček’s violin sonata, since I first heard it in January of 2009 at an SFP recital given by violinist Christian Tetzlaff accompanied by pianist Leif Ove Andsnes. Sadly, last night was only my second performance encounter, although I wrote about a recording for Examiner.com when harmonia mundi reissued an album of violinist Isabelle Faust accompanied by pianist Ewa Kupiec. Like the composer’s two string quartets, this sonata shows the composer’s skill at bringing intense dramatic qualities to seemingly abstract compositional forms. In the case of the sonata, the listener is so drawn into Janáček’s rhetorical skills that (s)he barely notices the solid foundation of traditional sonata movement forms. Last night’s performance brought back fond memories of those rhetorical skills, owing as much to the intricate interplay between Porter and Huang as to Porter’s own solo work.

Would that the same could have been said of their approach to the opening selection, Mozart’s K. 376 sonata in F major. To her credit Huang summoned just the right lightness of touch to capture the high spirits of the music without overplaying the many show-off gestures that Mozart required from the keyboard. Unfortunately, Porter approached her part with the same uncompromising intensity that listeners would subsequently encounter in her Janáček performance. Where Mozart was concerned, however, this came across as challenging Huang’s keyboard work, rather than complementing it.

Indeed, forcefulness came across as the strong suit in Porter’s hand of rhetorical skills. This certainly saw her through with a bold approach to Salonen’s “Lachen Verlernt” (laughter unlearned). However, her performance did not necessarily give a credible account of the work’s structural foundation (a chaconne) or the source of its rhetorical stance (Arnold Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire, the title being taken from a line of text in the libretto).

Once again, I have SFP to thank for my listening experience with this piece, since I first heard it performed by Jennifer Koh in Herbst Theatre in March of 2010. On that occasion it was performed with a projected video created by Tal Rosner, which tended to distract more than enhance. On the other hand Koh had programmed “Lachen Verlernt” to follow a performance of Johann Sebastian Bach’s BWV 1004 solo partita in D minor, which concludes with a chaconne movement of monumental proportions, when compared with the structures of all the preceding movements. That “predisposition” made for a far more engaging listening experience than Porter was able to summon up last night.

The remainder of the program consisted of relatively short pieces. These included three selections from Sergei Prokofiev’s Opus 64 score for the ballet Romeo and Juliet, arranged from violin and piano by D. Gruness. (The first of these,”Dance of the Knights” was mistakenly labeled “Montagues and Capulets” in the program.) There was also the “Nigun” movement from Ernest Bloch’s Baal Shem suite and Maurice Ravel’s “Tzigane.” The encore selection was Fritz Kreisler’s transcription of “Songs My Mother Taught Me,” the fourth of the seven songs in Antonín Dvořák’s Gypsy Songs cycle. All of these selections were given adept accounts with solid technique, but none of them seemed to match technical command with a firm sense of a rhetorical setting.

Kloetzel Returns to the SFP Salon Series

Yesterday evening cellist Jennifer Kloetzel returned to the Hotel Rex to give the third Salon program in the San Francisco Performances (SFP) 2017–18 season. Kloetzel had presented the first of these Salon events a year ago at the beginning of the 2016–17 season, joined by pianist Robert Koenig. This time she was on her own, playing only music from the solo repertoire.

As had been previously announced, she prepared a program that she called Bach & Beyond. The six suites by Johann Sebastian Bach (BWV 1007–1012) are probably the best known compositions for solo cello in the standard repertoire; and Kloetzel used these pieces to form the “spinal cord” of the evening, over the course of which she played selected movements from all six of the suites. Among those selections she introduced works by the “beyond” composers, a 1926 solo cello suite by Gaspar Cassadó (inspired by both Bach and Cassadó’s teacher Pablo Casals, who probably contributed much to Cassadó’s knowledge of Bach), the Prelude movement from the first of Ernest Bloch’s three solo cello suites, composed in 1956, and Elena Ruehr’s 2013 “Lift,” which she composed for Kloetzel.

Another major figure behind Kloetzel’s program was the musicologist Andrew Talle. He recently completed the fourth of the revision volumes for Bärenreiter’s New Bach Edition. Kloetzel explained that there is no “original manuscript” for the cello suites in Bach’s hand. Talle’s volume involves a critical examination of all existing source material (including movements that also appear in the lute suites), which has led to some serious rethinking about performance. Kloetzel did not deep-end on musicological details; but it was clear that last night involved far more than playing from some preferred printed publication.

The first page of Anna Magdalena Bach's manuscript for BWV 1007, one of the sources for Andrew Talle's study (from Wikimedia Commons, public domain)

Nevertheless, she did credit Talle with endorsing one of her approaches to performance. Her first Bach selection was the opening Prelude to the first suites, BWV 1007 in G major, which is probably the most familiar of all the solo cello movements. She raced through it at a tempo I had never previously encountered but then explained that the tempo had met with Talle’s approval. As a listener I have to say that, at that pace, she could present the entire movement as a single, noticeably building crescendo, endowing the final measures with a sense of a truly dramatic climax. This is an expressive rhetoric that can be encountered in Bach, but not very often; and I suspect that this was a setting in which Talle felt that the rhetorical stance was perfectly appropriate. This first Bach offering had been preceded by the Bloch prelude, whose boldly angular gestures guaranteed attention riveted to Kloetzel’s every move; and her approach to the BWV 1007 prelude certainly kept attention at an intense level.

All of her remaining selections involved movements based on dance forms. She made the case that familiarity with the dances informed approaches to rhythm and overall rhetoric. Ironically, our own familiarity with those dances owes more to our knowledge of Bach than to any sense of what the steps were or how they were supposed to be executed. Nevertheless, one can appreciate how the spirit of physical movement pervades these movements; and Kloetzel’s selections provided an engaging guide to how all of Bach’s other dance movements could be approached by the serious listener. She could also then make the case that Cassadó’s suite owed much to reflections on the dance forms that he knew best. Only the Ruehr piece seemed to depart from the dance as a frame of reference, which may explain why its own journey from beginning to end came across as more than a little enigmatic, in not meandering.

Kloetzel used her encore to explore another perspective on “beyond.” She played a short piece entitled “Bach to the Beatles: Here Comes the Sun.” This was an arrangement by Peter Wilson that involved a mash-up of the G major prelude with George Harrison’s song from the famous Abbey Road album. Kloetzel’s execution gracefully perambulated between Bach’s repeated patterns and those in Harrison’s accompaniment line, and the synthesis made for a delightfully engaging conclusion to a highly absorbing evening.

Highlights of the SFCM Centennial Season

The San Francisco Conservatory of Music (SFCM) was founded in 1917. That means that the coming season will mark the centennial of the oldest institution of its kind on the West Coast of the United States. Several concerts and events have been planned specifically to mark this landmark occasion. Here are the key centennial-specific events currently planned:

A series of four performances will mark the beginning of the season with a Centennial Celebration Weekend. In order of presentation, these will be as follows:

• Saturday, September 16, 5:30 p.m., Recital Hall: Things will begin with a recital by the Pre-College students. This event is still in the planning stage, so program details have not yet been announced. Tickets will be free, but reservations will be required. Reservations may be requested by filling out a Google Forms Web page.
• Saturday, September 16, 7:30 p.m., Concert Hall: The major kick-off event will be the first concert of the season by the Conservatory Orchestra, conducted by Director Eric Dudley. He has selected two compositions, both of which were performed shortly after SFCM’s founding. One of these, Ottorino Respighi’s “Pines of Rome,” will serve as the grand finale, replete with unabashed spectacle. The other will be Igor Stravinsky’s far more austere “Symphonies of Wind Instruments.” The program will begin with “Icarian Rhapsody,” composed by faculty member Mason Bates. General admission for this concert will be $20 with a $15 rate for students. Tickets may be purchased through a Click4tix Web page, which includes a chart showing seat availability.
• Sunday, September 17, 2 p.m., Concert Hall: This will be a recital of both chamber music and solo piano music. Performers will include faculty, students, and Class of 2017 graduate, pianist Joanna Rozewska. The chamber music will feature the first movement of the first string quartet by Ernest Bloch, who served as SFCM Director between 1925 and 1930. The other chamber selections will be the second movement of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s K. 493 piano quartet in E-flat major and the final movement of Gabriel Fauré’s Opus 15 (first) piano quartet in C minor. The piano works will include two pieces by Frédéric Chopin, the second (in A-flat major) of the Opus 50 mazurkas and the Opus 23 (first) ballade in G minor. The program will also feature Adolf Schulz-Evler’s Opus 12, his piano transcription of “The Blue Danube” by Johann Strauss II, which he called a set of “Arabesques.” Tickets will again be free with reservations required through a Google Forms Web page.
• Sunday, September 17, 7:30 p.m., Osher Salon: The final event will be a showcase of the works of students in the Technology and Applied Composition Department under the guidance of Executive Director MaryClare Brzytwa; no reservations will be required for this free concert.

Several other events specific to the Centennial Season have been planned. For the most part the details have not yet been announced, but it will probably be worth while to make note of the dates. Specifics are as follows:

• There will be a series of three Faculty Centennial Concerts that will feature both performances and compositions by faculty members; the dates for these recitals have been set for October 16, January 28, and April 9.
• There will be a special all-day event on January 21 that will offer a series of concerts all programmed in honor of SFCM’s Chamber Music Legacy.
• On January 31 the inaugural class of students in Roots, Jazz, and American Music will give a side-by-side performance with the members of the SFJAZZ Collective.
• Finally, there will be one special event that will be held in the Nourse Theater, rather than in any of the SFCM spaces, during the afternoon of February 25. Sunday with the Sopranos will be an afternoon of music and discussion. The performers will include Patricia Racette, Frederica von Stade, and faculty member Deborah Voigt. They will be joined by other guests, all with strong ties to SFCM.

For those who have not yet visited, SFCM is located at 50 Oak Street, a short walk from the Van Ness Muni Station. Tickets may also be purchased at the Box Office, which is in the building’s entrance lobby. The Box Office is open Monday through Friday in the morning between 10 a.m. and 12:30 p.m. and in the afternoon between 1:30 p.m. and 4 p.m. It is also open one hour prior to all performances for which tickets are required. The Box Office telephone number is 415-503-6275.

The “Historic Recordings” in Warner Classics’ “Menuhin Century” Release

The title of the second box in the Warner Classics The Menuhin Century collection is The Historic Recordings. According to the description on the back of the box, this section of the package “illuminates Menuhin by setting him in the context of momentous times and his collaboration with other towering musicians.” Those “towering musicians” include the composer Edward Elgar (conducting the London Symphony Orchestra in a performance of his Opus 61 violin concerto), conductor, violinist, pianist, and composer George Enescu (but not in the performance of any of his own music), conductor Wilhelm Furtwängler, violinist Stéphane Grappelli, and composer and sitarist Ravi Shankar. The momentous times were the liberation of Paris in 1944, the celebration of the first anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1949, and Menuhin’s visit to Moscow in 1945.

In discussing the first box, Unpublished Recordings and Rarities, I came to the sad conclusion that nothing “really leaps out and seizes the attention of the listener.” In this case I cannot summon quite as much all-encompassing pessimism. At the very least I must recognize that I still find listening to recordings of Elgar conducting his own music to be very informative, however inadequate the technologies may have been during his lifetime. To be fair, however, my admiration of Elgar had already been shaped by the EMI Classics release of the three volumes of The Elgar Edition (each with three CDs) between 1992 and 1993. (I was living in Singapore at the time, and opportunities to listen to any performances of classical music were very few. These recordings were a particularly welcome addition to my collection.) I have not heard many performances of Elgar’s violin concerto in concert (although Menuhin was conducting one of them); nor do I have many recordings of the piece. However, Elgar was not shy about bringing a thoroughly compelling visceral rhetoric to his reading of the concerto; and getting Menuhin to follow him into that somewhat adverse emotional terrain did not seem to require much effort on his part.

However, as we read in Aristotle’s “Nicomachean Ethics,” “One swallow does not make a summer;” and one concerto does not make an impressive resource of historical recordings. Perhaps the greatest surprise and disappointment came from the sessions with Furtwängler. Mind you, I am way beyond any blind faith that Furtwängler could do no wrong on the podium; but he never managed to get any rhetorical juices flowing in his recordings with Menuhin. One almost got the impression that he made these recordings out of a sense of duty, rather than an opportunity to find new dimensions in familiar composition through the insights of a new soloist. Furthermore, if Furtwängler’s contributions to the collection were disappointing, those from Enescu, supposedly a major motivating force in Menuhin’s life, were even more so.

Most disappointing, however, are probably Menuhin’s efforts to portray himself as a modernist. Particularly frustrating is that none of his recordings with Enescu involve any of Enescu’s compositions. (The only recordings of Enescu sonatas were made with Menuhin’s sister Hephzibah.) His recordings under the baton of William Walton of both the violin and viola concertos show at least a bit of the spark encountered in the Elgar recording, as does the CD of the three Béla Bartók sonatas (one for solo violin), on which the pianist is Menuhin’s son Jeremy. However, his general interest in twentieth-century concertos and chamber music is scattershot; and it is really a pity that composers such as Andrzej Panufnik and Ernest Bloch were not given a fairer shake.

Then, sadly, there are the encounters with Shankar and Grappelli. Rudyard Kipling’s melancholy “never the twain shall meet” phrase is as applicable to the latter as to the former. Nothing on the Grappelli CD comes even close to what that man could do when he was jamming with Django Reinhardt; and, while every now and then, there is some sense that Menuhin found a way to be on the same page with Shankar, he never stayed there very long. It is almost as if this entire box had been conceived to be more about Menuhin wishing to be viewed as an enlightened citizen of the world, which seemed to mean more to him than coming to grips with the rhetorical complexities of convincing violin performance. This is not to dismiss his many humanitarian achievements but simply to recognize that they were on an entirely different plane than his efforts to be a recording artist.

The New Flamboyance

Nicola Luisotti composed an interesting program for his conducting debut with the San Francisco Symphony at Davies Symphony Hall this week, shortly before becoming Music Director of the San Francisco Opera. The first half was all from the twentieth century: Zoltán Kodály's 1933 suite of dances based on material he had collected in the Hungarian town of Galánta and Ernest Bloch's "Schelomo" with Michael Grebanier as cello soloist. The second half represented the nineteenth century with Johannes Brahms fourth symphony in E minor (Opus 98).

As an opera conductor, Luisotti has a clear sense of music as drama; and, as I have written elsewhere, this was particularly evident in the perceptive interpretation of "Schelomo" that he developed with Grebanier. However, he also cuts a very flamboyant figure, never afraid of highly communicative facial expressions and the broadest of gestures. His style thus contrasts radically with, for example, the "Russian subtleties" of conductors like Valery Gergiev and Yuri Temirkanov. Both of these Russians understand the power of body language. Indeed, neither of them uses a baton, as opposed to that rather long stick that Luisotti wielded; but I am not sure that I would call either Gergiev or Temirkanov "flamboyant," while in Luisotti's case the "show" seems to be coming as much from the podium as from the ensemble of the players themselves.

It may be that my impression of Luisotti on Saturday night was influenced by my having spent the afternoon watching Gustavo Dudamel conducting the Berliner Philharmoniker in a concert at the beginning of this month now in the archives of the orchestra's new Digital Concert Hall. Dudamel's debut with the San Francisco Symphony about a year ago was also a closely-watched occasion; and Dudamel brought more than the usual share of flamboyance to that occasion. His Berlin program consisted of Sergei Rachmaninoff's "Isle of the Dead," Igor Stravinsky's violin concerto (with soloist Viktoria Mullova), and Sergei Prokofiev's fifth symphony. This kind of "experience base" made it difficult for me to approach Luisotti's performance without drawing parallels.

On the positive side both conductors worked well with their respective soloists (as Dudamel had done in San Francisco), resulting in a performance of perceptive understanding (regardless of the radical differences between Bloch and Stravinsky). At the same time both brought considerable exhibitionism to the symphony performances. This worked well enough for Dudamel, since Prokofiev's symphony is already a pretty exhibitionistic piece of work. Brahms is another matter. He is certainly capable of summoning intense emotion, but he usually restrains himself from excesses. To be fair to Luisotti, the sound of his Brahms was quite effective; but the performance left me wondering just what role his body language had played in achieving that result. Of course the other parallel involving these two conductors is that they are both young and are both probably still finding their respective voices for the many different regions of the repertoire they must command. Both quests will take some time, and it should be interesting to follow them.

"Sandwiching" the Heavy (Again)

Yesterday's first concert of the season by the San Francisco Symphony Youth Orchestra, conducted by Benjamin Shwartz, provided several opportunities for reflection. The very structure of the program reminded me of last month's recital at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music that featured performances by Menahem Pressler, since, again, the most serious part of the program, in this case Ernest Bloch's "Hebraic Rhapsody," "Schelomo," was sandwiched between two far wittier works, the second of which was Arnold Schoenberg's orchestration of a work that held a similar position on the Pressler program, the Opus 25 piano quartet by Johannes Brahms. Then, of course, Tessa Seymour, who played the cello solo in "Schelomo" also reflected back on the Conservatory, where I first heard her with her Luna Trio in a chamber music recital of the Preparatory Division last May. Finally, the structuring of the program around a "theme" reflected on the Hungarian "theme" of last week's chamber music recital at Kohl Mansion. That recital also concluded with the Brahms piano quartet, providing me with the opportunity to consider Schoenberg's effort only a week after a "live" performance of the original source material.

I try not to miss any opportunity to hear this Schoenberg orchestration. It is somewhat interesting to note that Schoenberg took on the task because the Brahms piano quartet was "seldom played" (from Schoenberg's letter to Alfred Frankenstein on March 18, 1939). Now the chamber version gets considerable attention, the orchestration tends to be neglected, and too many of the orchestral performances are the accompaniment of the ballet that George Balanchine created by a pit orchestra that does not do it justice. Nevertheless, since we do not tend to associate Schoenberg with wit (not that he lacked it), it is interesting to observe how he chose to recast a work in which, as I previously stated, the wit comes both "light and raucous." Ultimately Schoenberg triumphs with the raucous far better than he does with the light. Indeed, when Brahms goes really over the top with what I have called the "puffed-up parade" that practically "invades" the third "Andante con moto" movement, Schoenberg takes us into territory that might be better described as "Lisztich" and might therefore send Brahms spinning in his grave. The same may be said for the heavy use of a full panoply of percussion instruments for the final "Rondo alla Zingarese;" but this is also the same movement where Schoenberg finally uses his light touch to advantage, particularly in his rendering of the piano cadenza and the solo strings that follow.

Ultimately both versions succeed or fail on the basis of the level of spirit in performance. As I have previously written, Pressler has years of experience with that sense of spirit and has no trouble invoking it among whomever happens to be performing with him. Schwartz does not yet have such a track record, but he has established a level of rapport with his orchestra that allows for a controlled discipline that ultimately gets thrown off in favor of wild abandon. Furthermore, lest we had any doubts as to how much control there really was, Schwartz gave the audience an encore by picking up the final movement at that piano cadenza and charging forth once again into the accelerated coda with all the energy he had mustered the first time. Schoenberg could not have been presented in a better light.

On the serious side I think it is fair to begin by making it clear that Bloch is no Brahms. There is a heart-on-sleeve sentimentality to "Schelomo" that draws on all of the melodic motifs that we associate with the "Hebraic," whether we get them from Fiddler on the Roof or from the direct experience of the religious rituals themselves. Of course when the cerebral nature of serial music was all the rage in the twentieth century, compositions like "Schelomo" were dismissed as trivial; and Bloch was far from the only composer to suffer from such dismissal. In this country a similar attitude was aimed at Samuel Barber, meaning that it has only been recently that, as The New York Times recently observed, we have been able to listen to (and enjoy) an opera as "lyric" as his Vanessa. Similarly, we are now in a position to accept Bloch's lyricism for what it is, neither Brahms nor Schoenberg but still with a voice that should not be ignored.

Schelomo is, of course, the name for Solomon in the Hebrew text of the Old Testament; and that text probably provides us with more sides of this one character than of any other (with the possible exception of his father, David). The side that Bloch explored was that of the author of the Book of Ecclesiastes, which gives us Solomon at the end of his most eventful life, now facing death in his most despairing mood. This brings us to the soloist, who is only fourteen years old and (probably) not Jewish. On the other hand when I first heard her she was half a year younger and was performing movements from the Opus 67 piano trio of Dmitri Shostakovich, which may well be the most successful effort to invoke the complexity of Jewish life by a non-Jewish composer. That performance, even though it only involved excerpts, was too scary for words; and, from my end of the time line, I simply could not believe that musicians that young could deliver a performance that was so effective. So I had no reason to be surprised that her performance of Bloch was as eloquent as it was; and, if Bloch had a tendency to smooth things over where Shostakovich left sharper edges, then she and Shwartz seemed to have the right agreement as to how to present Bloch on his own terms. My only question would be, to return to the "sandwich" thesis, whether she also has the ability to deliver wit, be it light or raucous. Martha Graham used to tell anyone who would listen that tragedy is far easier to do than comedy, which may have been her way of apologizing for how few comic dances she composed. Now that Seymour has led me twice into those "lower depths," she has left me curious as to how she would fare with Haydn or the final movement of Beethoven's Opus 11 trio.

In her capacity as soloist Seymour did not join the Orchestra for the performance of George Gershwin's "Cuban Overture," which preceded the Bloch. This was the other work of wit that made up the "sandwich" of the program. It was also the high point of fun for the program, and Shwartz threw himself into it with just the right level of spirit. If the balance was not always a clear as it could have been, the overall pace from start to finish could not be faulted. This was not just the opening of the concert but the opening of the series of concerts that this Orchestra would give. It would set the bar for expectations of what would follow. It should be clear from reading this that the bar is as high as it ever was, and the Gershwin performance set all the right expectations.