Next PBO Program to Include Spirituals

Banner for the Web page being discussed

The title of the next program to be presented by the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra is Pearls of Sorrow. As was observed when the season was first announced this past July, it may be the first time that American spirituals will be included on the program. That program will be structured into five episodes, each of which interjects one or more spirituals to “rub shoulders” with works by composers from the Baroque period. Those composers will include both Johann Sebastian Bach and Johann Christoph Bach as well as many others, including Pietro Locatelli, Heinrich Schütz, and Dieterich Buxtehude. The vocalist will be countertenor Reginald Mobley, and Christine Brandes will conduct. The titles of the episodes will be as follows:

1. Trauma
2. Sorrow
3. Pain
4. All My Trials
5. Finding

To borrow a text from Eugene O’Neill, one may describe the overall program as “a long day’s journey into night.”

As usual, this performance will take place in Herbst Theater, located at 401 Van Ness Avenue on the southwest corner of McAllister Street. The performance will begin at 7:30 p.m. on Friday, March 13. Ticket prices range from $40 to $125. They may be purchased through a City Box Office Web page, which includes a diagram showing where seats are still available.

CBS: Christmas Music from Three Centuries

Design by David Lance Goins used for the California Bach Society poster

As expected, California Bach Society (CBS) has prepared its next program for the holiday season. The full title of the program will be Laudate Coeli: Songs of Light in Winter’s Deep. (Note that, like the first program of the season last month, the title couples Latin and English!) Artistic Director Nate Widelitz will conduct. The vocal soloists will be soprano Rita Lilly, mezzo Mindy Ella Chu, tenor Corey Head, and bass Chung-Wai Soong. Instrumental accompaniment by strings, organ, and harp will be provided by members of the Jubilate Baroque Orchestra.

The program will be based on three centuries, but they will not be consecutive. The earliest composers will be from the seventeenth century: Dietrich Buxtehude (the BuxWV 13 for mixed chorus, strings, and continuo, “Das neugeborne Kindelein”) and two selections by Marc-Antoine Charpentier, “In nativitatem Domini canticum” (H.314) and one of the ten settings of the Magnificat canticle. The seventeenth century is then elided with two nineteenth-century compositions: the Oratorio de Noël by Camille Saint-Saëns and “O Heiland, reiß die Himmel auf,” the second of the two Opus 74 sacred motets for unaccompanied mixed choir composed by Johannes Brahms. Finally, the twentieth-century composer will be Hugo Distler, whose oratorio Die Weihnachtsgeschichte (the Christmas story) is based on the hymn, “Es ist ein Ros entsprungen”(a rose has sprung up).

The San Francisco performance of this program will take place at 7:30 p.m. on Friday, December 5. The venue will be the Trinity+St. Peter’s Episcopal Church, which is located 1620 Gough 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 the February and May performance at St. Mark’s Lutheran Church. Doors will open at 7 p.m.

VoM: Six Seventeenth-Century Sopranos

The New Year has brought a new season to the Sunday Mornings at Ten series of YouTube concerts presented by Voices of Music (VoM). This morning saw the release of The 17th Century Soprano, a program featuring five composers and one very familiar traditional song from that century. Each of the six selections was sung by a different soprano. Overall this made for a thoroughly engaging showcase.

The program began with the BuxWV 38 cantata Herr, wenn ich nur dich hab sung by Laura Heimes. This is a single-movement composition structured as a chaconne in which the vocal line weaves its way in and around a ground bass. This was a “first contact” listening experience, and Heimes served as an excellent guide in leading me through an unknown domain. I subsequently discovered a “fun fact” through Wikipedia. In the spirit of the Bach-Werke-Verzeichnis (BWV), there is also a Buxtehude-Werke-Verzeichnis catalog of the composer’s complete works. The first 112 entries account for all of the cantatas; and they are (for the most part) ordered alphabetically by title!

Heimes was followed by Sophie Junker singing “O Maria,” the seventh song in Barbara Strozzi’s Opus 5 collection, Sacri musicali affetti (sacred musical affects). This was structured as a rondo with a coda setting an “Alleluia” text. It has been some time since I have had an opportunity to listen to Strozzi’s music. I have a recording of the entire Opus 5, and Junker’s performance convinced me that I should get to know it better.

Far darker was Tarquinio Merula’s “Hor ch'è tempo di dormire” (now it’s time to sleep). As might be guessed from the title, it is basically a lullaby based on a minimal ground bass. However, as the text unfolds, one realizes that the vocalist is anticipating the Crucifixion, making the aria one of the earliest musical ventures into irony. The song was delivered by Jennifer Ellis Kampani, who negotiated the tension between lullaby and Crucifixion with almost blood-curdling rhetoric. The listener could then find relief from that intensity in Sherezade Panthaki’s delivery of “Laudate dominum in sanctis eius” from Claudio Monteverdi’s Selva morale e spirituale collection of different forms of sacred music.

The last two selections were the most familiar. Anna Dennis sang the aria known as “Dido’s Lament” from Henry Purcell’s opera Dido and Aeneas. This is the final vocal solo in the entire opera, and it has become one of the most familiar arias in the entire opera repertoire. Even more familiar was the anonymous “Greensleeves,” sung by Molly Netter with accompaniment by plucked viols. Pete Seeger used to joke about the enormous number of verses set to this tune. (As he put it, “Each one dumber than the last!”) Netter was considerably more discreet in her delivery of an appropriately abbreviated number of verses.

The current plan is that next week’s program will advance into the eighteenth century!

Advent Liturgy at Church of the Advent

Yesterday evening my wife and I visited the Church of the Advent of Christ the King to attend the Advent Liturgy that, for many, marks the beginning of the celebration of Christmas. Both of us are atheists. Nevertheless, the Director of Music Paul Ellison leads a chamber choir, which plays a significant role in major services; and, before the service began, organist George Anton Emblom performed about twenty minutes of organ music relevant for the occasion. As a result, we often attend services to experience the music, while showing all due respect for the congregation and keeping a low profile.

Engraving of Weimar published by Christoph Riegel showing the church of St Peter and Paul, where Bach may have played his Orgelbüchlein chorale settings during his service to the ducal court (made by Andreas Knorz in 1686, public domain, from Wikimedia Commons)

The service itself was framed by four different musical interpretations of what, in Germany at least, has become the most prominent hymn for the occasion, “Nun komm, der Heiden Heiland” (savior of the nations, come). Two of those interpretations were by Johann Sebastian Bach. BWV 599, the very first entry in the Orgelbüchlein (little organ book), was one of the opening selections; and the service concluded with BWV 661, the arrangement Bach composed for the collection of eighteen chorale preludes, which is often known as the “Leipzig” chorale settings. The other settings were by Bach’s predecessor Dietrich Buxtehude and contemporary composer Gerald Near (born in 1942). Emblom’s opening selection also included “Desseins éternels" (eternal designs), the third of the nine movements of Olivier Messiaen’s La Nativité du Seigneur (the Nativity of the Lord).

The service itself was one of six lessons, each followed by either a carol or a hymn. Those couplings were followed by Thomas Tallis’ setting of the “Magnificat” canticle in the Dorian mode. This made for a generous diversity of music, which could be appreciated without showing any disrespect for the solemnity of the service itself.

Sunset Music and Arts: September, 2022

As is the case this month, next month Sunset Music and Arts will present two programs. Both of these will be solo keyboard recitals. The first will be a program of music for the piano, and the second will showcase repertoire for the organ. Specifics are as follows:

Saturday, September 17, 7:30 p.m.: Pianist Alison Lee, who is based in the Bay Area, has prepared an ambitious program of two compositions by Alexander Scriabin. She will begin with his Opus 11 set of 24 preludes accounting for all major and minor keys. This will be followed by his Opus 19 (second) sonata in G-sharp minor in two movements, which he called a “Sonata-Fantasie.”

Saturday, September 24, 7:30 p.m.: In contrast to Lee, Alexandra Kraft Cross will present an organ recital that will account for eleven different composers. These will range across music history from the transition from the end of the Renaissance to the beginning of the Baroque era (represented by Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck) to the very recent past (represented by a composition that Cross completed in 2010). The “in between” composers for this program will be Dietrich Buxtehude, Georg Böhm, Johann Sebastian Bach, Alexandre Boëly, César Franck, Jean Langlais, Camille Saint-Saëns, Eugène Gigout, and Charles-Marie Widor.

These performances will take place in the Sunset district at the Episcopal Church of the Incarnation, located at 1750 29th Avenue, about halfway between Moraga Street and Noriega Street. Ticket prices for both performances are $25 for general admission with a $20 rate for students and seniors. Because the demand tends to be high, advance purchase and registration are highly advised. Both may be arranged through Eventbrite. Each of the hyperlinks on the above dates leads to the appropriate event page. Further information may be obtained by calling 415-564-2324.

Finally, because we are still under pandemic conditions, all health and safety guidelines provided by the City and County of San Francisco must be honored. That means that a face covering is required for admission to all concerts, and it must be worn at all times. Face masks must completely cover the nose and mouth and have ear loops or similar to hold in place. Gaiters and bandanas are not acceptable.

In addition, proof of vaccination will be required for admittance. This may be provided with either a paper copy or a digital image. Sunset has created a Health and Safety Web page with a self-assessment based on ten easily answered questions. Those entering the building will implicitly acknowledge that they have answered “no” to all ten questions. Anyone that has answered “yes” to a question will be asked to return for another concert or offered a refund for paid tickets.

Seasonal German Baroque Music from ABS

Participants (clockwise from the upper-left corner) Mark Bonney, Nola Richardson, Jeffrey Thomas, Curtis Streetman, Jay Carter, and Elijah McCormack (from the ABS Calendar Web page)

At the end of this month, American Bach Soloists (ABS) will present a program appropriate for the Lent season. Four soulful and moving compositions will be presented, each by a different prominent German composer from the Baroque period. Five vocal soloists will contribute to the performance: soprano Nola Richardson, male soprano Elijah McCormack, countertenor Jay Carter, tenor Mark Bonney, and bass Curtis Streetman. As always, Artistic Director Jeffrey Thomas will conduct.

The program will begin with the least familiar of the four contributing composers, a the ten-movement composition by Johann Theile entitled PASSIO, Domini nostri Jesu Christi (the Passion of our Lord Jesus Christ). This will be followed by Johann Sebastian Bach’s BWV 196 cantata Der Herr denket an uns (the Lord is mindful of us). Those are the first words of Psalm 115; and the cantata was probably composed to celebrate the wedding of the minister who had married Bach and his wife, Maria Barbara. However, the words of that Psalm are appropriate for meditation during Lent. A far darker meditation is inspired by Christ lag in Todesbanden (Christ lay in the bonds of death), a seven-movement cantata by Johann Pachelbel composed for a ten-part ensemble. The program will then conclude with Dieterich Buxtehude’s setting of the Eastertide chorale “Jesu, meine Freude” (Jesus, my joy).

The San Francisco performance of this program will begin at 4 p.m. on Sunday, March 27. It will take place in St. Mark’s Lutheran Church, located at 1111 O’Farrell Street, just west of Franklin Street. The eastbound Geary Bus (number 38) stops within a block of the church after it leaves Geary Boulevard to proceed along O’Farrell. There are also nearby stops for buses on Van Ness Avenue.

Ticket prices are $101, $77, $56, and $39, with seating for the disabled priced at both $101 and $39. All tickets may be purchased through an ABS Web page. That Web page includes an interactive display for checking where seats are available in each of the four sections. The checkout process will include a display of safety policies, and an agreement must be affirmed before the transaction is completed.

SFEMS to Begin Year with “Fantastical” Music

The Ars Lyrica Houston Chamber Players, Matthew Dirst, Mary Springfels and Elizabeth Blumenstock (courtesy of SFEMS)

Next month the San Francisco Early Music Society (SFEMS) will present the third of the seven concerts in its 2018–19 season. As usual, the season involves both local and visiting talent; and, since the performance at the beginning of this month was given by the local a cappella choir Cappella SF, next month’s concert will bring in visitors. They will be the trio that calls itself the Ars Lyrica Houston Chamber Players. Members are Director Matthew Dirst (harpsichord), Elizabeth Blumenstock (violin), and Mary Springfels (gamba).

The program they will present has the title Semper Fantasticus. This refers to the “fantastical style” explored by both Italian and German composers during the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. The adjective basically refers to seeking out particularly unconventional approaches to invention. Some of the more familiar names of composers who took these approaches are Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber, Dietrich Buxtehude, and (of course) Johann Sebastian Bach. (Bach will be represented on the program by Dirst playing selections from both books of The Well-Tempered Clavier. The Italian practitioners tend to be less familiar, and they include Antonio Bertali and Francesco Rognoni.

The San Francisco performance of this concert will take place on Sunday, January 13, at 4 p.m.; and the venue will be St. Mark’s Lutheran Church, which is located at 1111 O’Farrell Street, just west of the corner of Franklin Street. Single ticket prices will range between $45 and $12. In addition, there are membership and subscription options for attending three or more concerts with discounts of up to 25%. All information about ticketing options has been summarized on a single Web page. Tickets may also be purchased by calling 510-528-1725.

Imaginative Approach to Philip Glass From SFGC

Last night in Herbst Theatre the San Francisco Girls Chorus (SFGC) began its 2017–2018 season with a program entitled Philip Glass and the Class of ’37. This is the first of two of the programs in the season that have been designed to celebrate the 80th birthday of Philip Glass, which took place this past January 31. The “class of ’37” refers to three other composers, each born in the 37th year of a different century: Dietrich Buxtehude (1637), Michael Haydn (1737), and Mily Balakirev (1837). Short selections from each of them opened the program, after which all of the works were by Glass with SFGC Artistic Director Lisa Bielawa contributing to arrangements of two of them.

It is important to note at the beginning that all of the Glass selections were written for theater pieces. Glass’ career has been rich with experiences that required him to be a “team player;” and some of the products of those experiences maintain a rich connection to Glass’ own name. Excerpts from two of them were included in last night’s program, the monument-scale four-act opera Einstein on the Beach, created with artist and stage director Robert Wilson, and the soundtrack for Geoffrey Reggio’s film Koyaanisqatsi. However, the most compelling performance last night came from the third and final act of a mixed media chamber opera first performed in 1982, The Photographer.

The photographer referred to by the title is Eadweard Muybridge, best known for his pioneering motion studies. To the extent that the opera had a narrative, the plot was based on Muybridge having been tried from the murder of a man he suspected to be his wife’s lover. In the original production, the final act involved bringing together all of the characters from the first act (the basis for the trial) for an extended dance. The music for that dance is moderately long; and it is repeated three times, each time at a faster tempo.

When The Photographer was first performed at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, attention to the narrative was almost entirely absent. The dance in the third act, choreographed by David Gordon, was, instead, inspired by Muybridge’s motion studies. The realization of that concept did not quite work, and the overall duration of that act proved to be rather a strain on even the most attentive members of the audience.

The music for the dance was scored for chamber ensemble and chorus vocalizing without any words. Last night SFGC and local instrumentalists were joined by two members of the Philip Glass Ensemble, Michael Riesman on electric keyboard and Andrew Sterman, playing flute for the Photographer excerpt. Some sense of the strain of the overall duration remained, even 35 years after the piece was first performed. Perhaps because it was the final work on the program, my vantage point provided me with a generous view of people getting up to leave while the music was still being performed.

Nevertheless, Music Director Valérie Sainte-Agathe clearly appreciated the three stages of tempo in the score. They could not have been more clearly distinguished, as was the rising tension in the final iteration. Considering the minimality of content and the scrupulous need for precision, the SFGC singers could not have been better. This was a performance that was not afraid to remind us of how notorious Glass was when pieces like this were first presented; and those three and one-half decades have not blunted the sharp edginess of the composer’s rhetorical stance. Indeed, the fact that this was a performance that could still provoke may be the best testament to its staying power.

On the other than the two excerpts from Einstein on the Beach were sufficiently short that they were hardly provocative at all. Indeed, listening to “Building” (the first scene of the fourth and final act) without the eyes being flooded by Wilson’s vast images and his dancers’ glacial pace, one could pay more attention to the lyrical wailing of Sterman’s saxophone work (which never rises above the background with much strength in the recording of this opera). The same could be said for the violin solo performed in “Knee Play 5.” (The violinist was supposed to be the embodiment of Albert Einstein. Last night the solo was taken by Owen Bhasin Dalby.) On the other hand the narration that takes place while this music is performed (“Lovers on a Park Bench”) was omitted last night, thus depriving listeners of appreciating just how affectionate the concluding moments of this opera could be.

The excerpt (“Vessels”) from Koyaanisqatsi was situated in the program between Einstein and The Photographer. While this reading was as attentive as the other Glass selections had been, there is a good chance that those familiar with the film missed the images. Glass did not write his score for this film to be “art music;” and this was a case in which the part could not stand on its own without the whole being present.

A similar problem with lack of context arose with “Father Death Blues,” originally written for six solo voices at the conclusion of Hydrogen Jukebox a chamber opera in two parts with a libretto created from poems by Allen Ginsberg. “Father Death Blues” is the song that brings together all six of these characters; and the choral arrangement (prepared jointly by Glass and Bielawa) did nothing to establish connections between words and personalities. Instead the music amounted to an abstract depiction of the process of adding voices to a mix and then removing them. Any semantic link to the text was purely coincidental.

Nevertheless, in a context rich with Glass’ imaginative rhetoric, the members of “the class of ’37” seemed awkwardly out of place. The readings of all three of the composers emerged as almost entirely featureless and little more than routine. This was more than regrettable, since the selections themselves reflected wide differences in personal outlook across these three composers. The overall result was a program that could have done with far more attentiveness to part-whole relationships.

The Music Lives On

I am not sure the BBC had any particular message in mind when they went into streets around the world to collect comments on the death of Michael Jackson. Whether it was their intention to show how thin a line separates appreciation from cultism, the remark that made the deepest (and most aggravating) impact on me came from a young American (probably too young to remember the Jackson Five), who declared the day of Jackson's death to be "the day the music stopped." From that point of view, while I cannot personally understand the extent to which this story as blocked out so many others, I am glad to see that the ABC News team came up with a variety of perspectives on how, as has always been the case so many times in the past, the music is showing healthy signs of outliving the musician.

Nevertheless, my initial aggravation was further provoked when I read the "This Week" column in the Sunday Datebook section of today's San Francisco Chronicle. The specific event announcement that piqued me concerned the appearance of Mose Allison and Bob Dorough at Yoshi's; and I knew there would be trouble when I saw that the event was listed under a "Comedy" header. Still, I was not prepared for the text that followed:

Even if you don't recognize the name Mose Allison, you're sure to recognize his music. Van Morrison, John Mayall, the Who, the Clash, Eric Clapton, the Yardbirds, Elvis Costello and others have covered his songs. The list goes on and one, and so does the beat. Allison has not stopped writing and performing since he moved to the Big Apple in 1949 to immerse himself in the emerging jazz scene.

Coming from a culture (and a campus radio station) that was playing Allison's own recordings before any of the names on that list had become public figures (which probably means back when they were listening to the same recordings), I found this presentation to be narrow-mindedly offensive; but I suspect that Allison is enough of a professional to realize that you have to take what you can get. Still, the culture of performance is rarely one of acknowledging your sources. If neither Eric Clapton nor the Rolling Stones were particularly conscientious about giving credit to Robert Johnson during their concerts, then I have to remind myself that Johann Sebastian Bach was not that better in the matter. If Bach had an impact on the "discovery" of Antonio Vivaldi and Dietrich Buxtehude by the recording industry, then this has served the interests of listeners around the world and is not that different from the influence that Clapton may have had on Columbia's decision to release all of the recordings that Johnson ever made on two compact discs. Nevertheless, Allison is still alive and still at it as both composer and performer; and I find it tragic that he should "live" only by virtue of those of a later generation who covered his material.

I suspect that this is nothing more than a sobering reminder that the history of music is no different than the history of nations. In both cases the past is necessarily viewed through the distorting lens of the present. George Bernard Shaw captured the latter situation with more wit at the end of his play, The Devil's Disciple. He delegated that wit to his characterization of General John Burgoyne, who knows that he will soon be leading his army to defeat at the Battle of Saratoga. When asked by his aide how history will judge both him and the British army, he replied (in Shaw's words):

History will tell lies, as usual.

Kurt Vonnegut would later add his own riff to Shaw's in his reflection on the "historical view" of the fire-bombing of Dresden in Slaughterhouse-Five:

So it goes.

In the face of such inevitability of historiography, I wish Allison a good gig at Yoshi's!

"The Art of the Transcription"

Last week I described the program for Sandro Russo's piano recital as organized around the theme of the art of embellishment. I argued that, taken on those terms, the recital was most impressive, the only weak point being the performance of a Haydn sonata which made heavier cognitive demands on puzzling out just what was being embellished and how. This week, for her "Musical Lunch Break" recital, Tien Hsieh chose a far more challenging theme and, unfortunately, was less successful in meeting the challenge. That theme is the title of this post. I use quotation marks because it happened to be the title of a recital that Earl Wild gave in Carnegie Hall in the fall of 1981, which was subsequently released as a recording. (As a footnote, that recital happened to be my first date with the woman who would later be my life; so I have very fond memories of it!) Wild was most judicious in his choice of title, because his performances made it clear that there was an art to both composing and performing transcriptions that was qualitatively different from the performance of works composed for solo piano. The problem is one of juggling multiple levels of interpretation of the "text." The "original text" is the work being transcribed; but the "text" of the transcription is a reflection of both that work and the impressions of the work by the composer of the transcription. The performer then has to establish his own impressions of how both the "original text" and the transcription can be presented to the audience. Needless to say, this requires as thorough an understanding of the original as of the transcription; and Ms. Hsieh was, for the most part, not particularly convincing in regard to either level of understanding.

This was most apparent in her performance of Liszt's transcription of Beethoven's only song cycle, An die Ferne Geliebte. Beethoven was rarely at the top of his game when writing for voice, but I happen to have a soft spot for this work, probably because in his play, Beethoven's Tenth, Peter Ustinov conjured up a scene in which Beethoven, having come back to life in the twentieth century and had his hearing restored (don't ask), coaches a soprano in singing the first song in the cycle. This scene was convincing enough to change the way I listened to Beethoven (whether or not its message was musicologically sound); and that is more than I can say about just about any of the scenes from Amadeus! Having said all that, I should also point out that Liszt was not at the top of his game for this particular transcription, either, particularly when it is compared against his transcriptions of Schubert Lieder that have been performed so well by pianists like Wild and Jorge Bolet. Still, Hsieh's performance left me wondering if she had ever tried to accompany a vocalist's performance of this cycle, since it invoked no understanding at all of what Beethoven had been doing, even to the point of ignoring where the commas were in the text. (That text is included in the Peters edition of this transcription.)

Things were somewhat better in Hsieh's performance of Liszt's transcription of Bach's G minor organ fantasy and fugue (BWV 542); but Liszt brought better understanding to this transcription, probably because of his own experience with playing the organ. There are a lot of "grand sounds" in both parts of this work. Liszt was clearly interested in capturing that grandeur, and Hsieh was not shy about accommodating his demands. At the same time she brought a delicacy to the exposition of the fugue subjects that treated all four voices (the fourth is a "late arrival") with the individual attention they deserved. Of the two Bach transcriptions she performed, this one was truer to its "original text," which had a lot to do with why listening to it was so satisfying.

The other was Rachmaninoff's transcription of three movements from the E major partita for solo violin (BWV 1006), in which there is a heavy element of Rachmaninoff trying to upstage Bach (fortunately without the blatant vulgarity that Lukas Foss invoked in the "Phorion" movement of his "Baroque Variations"). Nevertheless, I seem to recall that the recording that Rachmaninoff made of these transcriptions had the decency to recognize that the "Gavotte" and "Gigue" movements were dance pieces that benefited from a relatively steady tempo. Notwithstanding a Romantic "tradition" of pulling tempi like pieces of taffy, Hsieh's performances were far from danceable. The "Prelude," however, was suitably dazzling in the best Rachmaninoff tradition.

The only other transcription of a Prokofiev treatment of a Buxtehude organ prelude and fugue with which I was totally unfamiliar. As a matter of fact, until this concert I had been unaware that Prokofiev had attempted this "art of the transcription" (at least not for any music other than his own). This left me at a disadvantage with regard to both the "original text" and the transcription, and I fear that the performance did little for me. On the other hand what was I to expect? Was this meant to invoke the kind of interest that had motivated Bach to make a pilgrimage to Lübeck to hear Buxtehude at the top of his game? Also, if my recording of the complete organ works of Buxtehude includes this in the "Epiphany" section, does that mean it has a liturgical connotation? No such sense was evident in Hsieh's performance.

After all the transcriptions, Hsieh concluded with the first of Liszt's "Mephisto" waltzes. Once again, there was nothing particularly danceable in this performance; but this time it was Liszt at work (being "diabolic"). Unfortunately, the performance was more rambling than diabolic, doing little to invoke the elements of tension and suspense that give this piece all of its impact. The notes were all there, but Mephisto was absent.