March 8 Will be Even Busier than Expected!

Readers may recall that this site has already accounted for two events taking place on Sunday, March 8, which is now about a week and a half away. The earlier of those events is the next performance by the San Francisco Symphony Youth Orchestra, which will begin at 2 p.m., and the other will be a Chamber Music San Francisco program at the Presidio Theater, which will begin at 3 p.m. The latter of these will be a Groupmuse event. It will be “competing” with two other Groupmuse events, one of which is already sold out.

Photograph of a living room, presumably where Scarfe’s recital will be performed (from its Groupmuse Web page)

The full title of the other event is A Victorian Living Room Concert: Solo Piano with Ian Scarfe. The living room is in a historic Victorian home that even has its own name: “Agape.” Scarfe is no stranger to the venue, which is where he played his very first Groupmuse recital. Program details have not yet been finalized, but the composers he has selected are Philip Glass, Frédéric Chopin, Ludwig van Beethoven, Isaac Albéniz, Enrique Granados, and Manuel de Falla.

As readers will expect, Groupmuse has created a Web page for purchasing tickets, twelve of which are available as of this writing. Ticket prices will be $20 at the door, but reservations may be made for $5. The performance will begin at 2:30 p.m. after doors open at 2 p.m., and the performance will conclude at 4 p.m.

Ian Scarfe to Bring Spanish Music to Century Club

Poster for the event being described, showing the three performers (screenshot from the Groupmuse Web page)

Pianist Ian Scarfe will begin the new year with his next visit to the Century Club of California. Once again, he will be joined by a cellist, this time James Jaffe. The title of next month’s program will be An Afternoon in Spain – Classical Spanish Music and Flamenco. Each of the instrumentalists will begin with a solo selection.

Scarfe will open the program with Frédéric Chopin’s Opus 19, his “Boléro” in A minor. This will be followed by Jaffe’s performance of the three-movement suite for solo cello composed by Gaspar Cassadó in 1926. (Cassadó was taught by Pablo Casals and was probably influenced by his teacher’s performances of the solo cello suites by Johann Sebastian Bach.) Scarfe will then accompany mezzo Deborah Rosengaus in a performance of Siete canciones populares españolas, Manuel de Falla’s arrangements for soprano and piano of seven traditional Spanish songs.

The remainder of the program will be devoted to settings of Spanish dances. Scarfe will begin with Isaac Albéniz’s Opus 37, the six Danzas Españolas. This will be followed by the “Ritual Fire Dance,” an episode from the music composed Falla for the ballet El amor brujo (the bewitched love). The program will then conclude with the Spanish Dances collection by Enrique Granados.

For those that do not already know, the Century Club is located at 1355 Franklin Street, between Post Street and Sutter Street. However, all arrangements must be made through a Groupmuse Web page. Ticket prices begin at $25, with $5 to hold a reservation. As of this writing, 43 of 75 spots are still available. The performance will begin at 2 p.m. on Sunday, January 25. Doors will open at 1:30 p.m. Drinks will be provided at the intermission (both with and without alcohol). However, the club itself is not wheelchair accessible.

San Francisco Opera Orchestra: Beethoven & Falla

Eun Sun Kim conducting the San Francisco Opera Orchestra (photography by Sasha Arutyunova, courtesy of San Francisco Opera)

Last night the stage of the War Memorial Opera House was turned over to the San Francisco Opera Orchestra for a concert performance. Eun Sun Kim conducted the ensemble with violinist Kay Stern as Concertmaster. The soloist for the program, entitled Beethoven 5 & Falla, was mezzo Daniela Mack. Those familiar with Ludwig van Beethoven would immediately see that Mack accounted for the Falla selection.

That selection was the familiar Siete canciones populares españolas, arrangements by Manuel de Falla of seven traditional Spanish songs. This was coupled with the second suite extracted from Falla’s score for the two-act ballet The Three-Cornered Hat, choreographed by Léonide Massine. As one can guess from the overall title, the second half of the program was devoted entirely to Ludwig van Beethoven’s Opus 67 (fifth) symphony, composed in the key of C minor. Those familiar with Massine’s ballet know that, at a critical moment, Falla evokes the opening motif of the Beethoven symphony (far from the only dramatic incident to be accompanied by that music).

Since most of Kim’s time is spent in an orchestra pit, I relish opportunities to have a clearer view of her conducting style. Her approach to Beethoven could not have been better. Her command of the score was up there alongside just about every major conductor. Her chemistry with the ensemble could not have been better, allowing for the many subtleties in both phrasing and the scope of dynamic range. Opus 67 may be the most familiar work in the symphonic canon; but Kim brought both freshness and urgency to her interpretation, making the experience far from “just another Beethoven’s fifth” encounter.

Her command of Falla was just as engaging. The songs are relatively short, but Mack knew how to endow each of them with its own dimension of expressiveness. Falla’s approach to the vocal offerings could almost serve as a harbinger of Buckminster Fuller’s injunction that we should learn how to make more and more out of less and less. Somewhat in the spirit of haiku, each song has its own “target of reflection,” distilled into little more than a brief moment. Mack displayed a solid command of this rhetoric of brevity, and her engagement with the orchestra could not have been more compelling. Left to its own devices with the Three-Cornered Hat score, the ensemble captured the full scope of dramatic dispositions, one of which included a “sneak preview” of the music to come during the second half of the program.

As is usually the case with these events, I enjoyed the opportunity of a clearer vision of Kim’s approach to conducting; but what mattered most were the results, which could not have been more engaging!

November will Begin with a Hard Choice

Those particularly interested in art song will find themselves facing a bit of a predicament at the beginning of next month. Three concerts will be taking place at 7:30 p.m. on November 1. One of them will mark the beginning of the season for the New Century Chamber Orchestra with the Vivaldi: Recomposed program announced this past July. Of the other two, one will feature a mezzo and the other a soprano. Both involve significant repertoire that, as far as I am concerned, deserves more attention than recorded performances can offer.

San Francisco Opera Music Director Eun Sun Kim (courtesy of San Francisco Opera)

The first of those two concerts will be performed by the San Francisco Opera Orchestra led by its Music Director Eun Sun Kim. The vocalist will be mezzo Daniela Mack singing the Siete canciones populares españolas (seven Spanish folksongs), composed by Manuel de Falla originally soprano and piano. This music has been orchestrated at least twice; and, most likely, Kim will conduct the orchestration by Falla’s student, Ernesto Halffter. This will be coupled with the three dances included in the second suite that Falla extracted from his score for the two-act ballet The Three-Cornered Hat (El sombrero de tres picos). Following the intermission, the Orchestra will play Ludwig van Beethoven’s Opus 67 (fifth) symphony in C minor.

Ticket prices for this special event range from $29 to $250. All tickets may be purchased in the outer lobby of the venue for the performance, the War Memorial Opera House at 301 Van Ness Avenue or by calling the Box Office at 415-864-3330. Box Office hours are 10 a.m.–5 p.m. on Monday and 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Tuesday through Saturday. In addition, a Web page has been created for online purchases.

The second concert will mark the beginning of the season for the Left Coast Chamber Ensemble. They will be joined by soprano Nikki Einfeld, who will perform a chamber music arrangement of Gustav Mahler’s Rückert-Lieder, settings of five poems by Friedrich Rückert. The program will conclude with the winner of the 2024 Composition Contest, “Sillage,” composed by Artur Akshelyan. This will be preceded by Fanny Mendelssohn’s Opus 11, her piano trio in D minor, which will feature pianist Allegra Chapman. The program will begin with Roberto Sierra’s “Tríptico.”

Ticket prices range from $5 to $40. There will also be a facility fee of either two or three dollars, depending on the location of the seats. The Web page for online purchases includes a free “Print at Home” option. The performance will take place at the Noe Valley Ministry, which is at 1021 Sanchez Street.

SFIPF: A Hispanic Finale

Late yesterday afternoon the San Francisco International Piano Festival concluded with a program entitled Maurizio – Ravel’s Basque & Spanish Masterpieces. The title of the program refers to Maurice Ravel’s origins. He was born on March 7, 1875 in the Basque region, specifically in the French town of Ciboure, near the better-known Biarritz. His father was born in Versoix, near the border with Switzerland; but his mother, born Marie Delouart, was Basque.

The first half of yesterday’s program (which, due to other circumstances, was all I was able to view through my livestream source), featured three Spanish composers (in order of appearance): Manuel de Falla, Enrique Granados, and Joaquín Rodrigo. Paul Sánchez and Asiya Korepanova gave a two-piano account of Rodrigo’s five short pieces collected under the title Piezas infantiles. In the absence of any introduction, it was unclear whether this was music to be played by the young or whether it evoked youthful behavior.

Indeed, no background material was provided regarding any of the compositions or the performers. If the music was familiar, such as the two-piano version of Emanuel Chabrier’s “España” (performed by the same duo), one could appreciate the familiar rhetorical context. On the other hand, the Rodrigo set was a journey of discovery (and may have been my first encounter with one of his compositions that did not involve the guitar). Ironically, in spite of its brevity, I came away recalling the classic phrase from the play Amadeus about “too many notes!”

Paul Sanchez accompanying Esther Rayo in her performance of Maurice Ravel’s “Vocalise” (screen shot from the YouTube video of the performance)

The program began with a survey of vocal works by Falla, Ravel, and Debussy sung by soprano Esther Rayo. In this set Ravel was represented by his “Vocalise en forme d’étude,” which has been a personal favorite for some time. Sadly, Rayo took a forceful approach which undermined the cloying subtlety of Ravel’s rhetoric. This was followed by a selection from the first book on the Goyescas collection by Enrique Granados, which Sánchez delivered with excessive affectation. Taken as a whole, the first half of the program did little to meet the expectations promised by the program’s title.

Warner’s CD of David Oistrakh’s Encores

Cover of the Seraphim album of Oistrakh encore recordings when it was released on vinyl by Seraphim (from the Amazon.com Web page)

This morning I listened to the single CD of encore performances in the Warner Remastered Edition box set collection of recordings of performances by Russian violinist David Oistrakh. This consisted of eight compositions, five of which were composed for violin and piano. Among the three arrangements, the only one familiar to me was the “Jota” movement from Manuel de Falla’s set of seven Spanish folksongs (Siete canciones populares españolas), arranged by Paul Kochanski. The other two arrangers are Alexandre Roelens and Vasily Bezekirsky. The “original” compositions are as follows:

• Eugène Ysaÿe: “Extase” (Opus 21)
• Josef Suk: “Píseň lásky” (“song of love,” the first in the Opus 7 collection of six piano pieces)
• Zoltán Kodály: arrangements of three Hungarian folk songs
• Henryk Wieniawski: “Légende” (Opus 17)
• Aleksander Zarzycki: “Mazurka” (Opus 26)

This makes for a rather modest offering when compared with the generous number of encore selections that were recorded by Jascha Heifetz. Nevertheless, the CD definitely serves up an engaging journey of discovery. Sadly, I do not have many opportunities to encounter violin recitals. However, now that I have been introduced to the works on this album, I would certainly enjoy encountering them in performance.

This completes my account of the Warner CDs of recordings that Oistrakh made for Columbia in New York and HMV in London. However, the box set also includes 31 additional CDs under the rubric Premières, Rarities & Live Performances, along with three DVDs. Quite honestly, I am not yet sure how I shall work my way through the rest of this collection. Watch this space for further developments and (hopefully) insights into Oistrakh’s reputation!

The First of the Two Classical Offerings in Davies

As usual, the classical repertoire performed by the San Francisco Symphony is limited during Summer with the Symphony programming. Last night the ensemble performed the first of its two programs, Spanish Favorites, conducted by Carlos Miguel Prieto. The soloist was guitarist Pablo Sáinz-Villegas performing Joaquín Rodrigo’s “Concierto de Aranjuez.” Readers may recall that this composition was performed in a three-guitar arrangement on an OMNI on-Location video a little over a month ago. However, unless I am mistaken, this was my first encounter with a concert performance of the music in its original instrumentation.

This provided an excellent opportunity to appreciate both Rodrigo’s many talents as a composer exhibited through Sáinz-Villegas’ accounts of those talents. However, one could also appreciate, just as much, the rich coloration arising from the composer’s imaginative capacity for instrumentation. This was a “concerto for solo and orchestra” with a plethora of richly engaging sonorities, and Prieto always found just the right balance between soloist and ensemble.

Those sonorities were also richly on display during the opening selection. This consisted of orchestrations of four of the movements from Isaac Albéniz’s Opus 47, a collection of eight movements for solo piano entitled Suite española. The selections were orchestrated by Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos, who was previously better known to me as a conductor. Ironically, I had first encountered those movements on an old hand-me-down LP; and many years elapsed before I finally encountered a recording of the entire suite played on the piano. Much as I prefer that version, I was definitely impressed by the orchestral setting, which made full use of just about all available instrumental resources.

The second half of the program was devoted entirely to “The Three-Cornered Hat,” music composed for Serge Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes by Manuel de Falla. The scenario concerns the failed efforts of a Corregidor (and his hat) to engage in a dalliance with a miller’s wife. The structure on the program sheet offered little by way of an account of the ballet’s narrative, but the program note provided a more useful précis. Nevertheless, the music did not make much of an impression on its own; but the three interjections by mezzo Nikola Printz (each from a different location in the hall) were heavenly!

The monument to Francisco Tárrega in Castellón, Spain (photograph by Trewert, public domain, from a Wikimedia Commons Web page)

More engaging was the encore following the Rodrigo concerto. This was the “Gran jota Aragonesa” by Francisco Tárrega (which would later be appropriated by Mikhail Glinka). This solo guitar composition was a lively account, which could not have been a better addition to the overall Spanish flavor of the evening.

Daniel Hope’s Violin Recital for CMSF

Last night in Herbst Theatre, violinist Daniel Hope gave his San Francisco recital debut in a performance presented by Chamber Music San Francisco (CMSF). He was accompanied at the piano by Simon Crawford-Phillips. The program spanned music from the nineteenth to the current century, including the United States premiere of Jake Heggie’s Fantasy Suite 1803, completed in 2022. There was also a last-minute augmentation, which did not appear on the program sheet.

The high point of the evening came in the second half, which was devoted entirely to César Franck’s A major violin sonata. I first became acquainted with this music in the late Seventies during my time in Santa Barbara. I had a neighbor on the faculty of the Music Departments at the University of California, and she was preparing this sonata for a recital. Since I was a frequent visitor to her unit, I heard a wide diversity of excerpts from the sonata each time I came to her door; so I was well prepared for my first encounter with the sonata in its entirety. It remains one of my favorites, and the expressiveness that both Hope and Crawford-Phillips brought to their interpretation triggered many fond memories.

The same could be said of the encore selection, Fritz Kreisler’s “Liebesleid” (love’s sorrow), the second of the two pieces collected under the title Alt-Wiener Tanzweisen (old Viennese melodies). This is music I have known from childhood, probably because it was often injected into soundtracks for silent cartoons! Hope’s delivery captured the nostalgia of the music without letting the rhetoric get too syrupy.

The first half of the program did not leave as strong an impression. The opening selection was George Enescu’s “Impromptu Concertante.” Enescu was a major figure in the twentieth century, not only as a composer but also as a violinist, a conductor, and a teacher. “Impromptu Concertante” was one of his earliest works, composed in 1903 but not published until 1958. In retrospect I would call it one of those pieces by an up-and-coming-talent throwing everything but the kitchen sink into his efforts. Hope had a solid command of the technical demands, but the overall rhetorical framework left much to be desired.

This was followed by Maurice Ravel’s first violin sonata, composed in the key of A minor and not published until after his death. This was a relatively short single-movement composition, and one can appreciate why Ravel never published it. Hope chose to segue it into Suite populaire espagnole, six of the seven Spanish folksongs (Siete canciones populares españolas) composed by Manuel de Falla, who made the arrangement with Paul Kochanski. I never fail to enjoy these pieces, regardless of setting; but I did not think that Hope quite caught the spirit of the music.

The first half of the program concluded with the Heggie suite, and the composer was on hand to introduce the audience to its four movements. Considering its relatively brevity, this music was, as they say, “all over the map,” which may have been foreboded by an opening movement entitled “Constellations.” The following movements capture the aggressive nature of Ludwig van Beethoven, the rise and fall of his relationship with George Bridgetower (for whom the “Kreutzer” sonata was written), and Heggie’s own opera Dead Man Walking. (I am surprised that the kitchen sink did not show up in the midst of all that diversity!)

Fortunately, the second half of the program compensated for any shortcomings encountered during the first.

Samantha Hankey’s Schwabacher Recital

Pianist Carrie-Ann Matheson accompanying mezzo Samantha Hankey (photograph by Matthew Washburn, courtesy of San Francisco Opera)

Last night in the Dianne and Tad Taube Atrium Theatre of the Diane B. Wilsey Center for Opera, the annual Schwabacher Recital series concluded with a recital by mezzo Samantha Hankey, accompanied at the piano by Carrie-Ann Matheson. The program was performed without an intermission, but there was more than enough in the content to engage the serious listener.

Where my own tastes were concerned, what interested me most about the program was the inclusion of music by Alexander Zemlinsky. This composer has fascinated me ever since I read Alma Mahler’s Gustav Mahler: Memories and Letters. She had been a composition student of Zemlinsky, who (like many of the men of that time) fell in love with her. However, that relationship did not last. (She found him too ugly.) As well all know, Alma subsequently married Mahler.

Last night’s selection was composed after Zemlinsky had gotten over that relationship. The title (in English) is Six Songs to texts by Maurice Maeterlinck; and they set the texts in German between 1910 and 1913. (The texts were originally written in French, and the music was subsequently orchestrated in 1924.)

Hankey sang four of these songs:

• Die drei Schwestern (the three sisters)
• Die Mädchen mit den verbundenen Augen (the girl with bandaged eyes)
• Als ihr Geliebter schied (when her lover left)
• Und kehrt er einst heim (if he returns one day)

Her vocal delivery provided the perfect match to the darkness of the texts, while Matheson’s accompaniment enhanced the underlying rhetoric. To be fair, however, I know much of Zemlinsky’s music through cherished experiences of seeing several of his operas; and I can appreciate why he chose to orchestrate these settings. I have listened to them in that setting, and they are positively bone-chilling. Nevertheless, Hankey’s interpretations cut to the heart of each of her texts, leaving me on the edge of my seat as she advanced through her four selections.

The Zemlinsky offering was preceded by another set of selections. These were four of the seven canciones populares españolas (Spanish folksongs) composed by Manuel de Falla:

• El paño moruno (the Moorish cloth)
• Seguidilla murciana
• Asturiana
• Polo

I have encountered the full cycle in performance many times. (The most recent was almost exactly a year ago, when mezzo Sasha Cooke was accompanied by guitarist Jason Vieaux.) As was the case with all of the song texts, English translations were projected behind the performers; but Hankey’s body language was as expressive as the words she was delivering.

The program began with Claude Debussy’s settings of three of the poems from Pierre Louÿs’ collection of erotic poetry entitled (in English) The Songs of Bilitis:

• La flûte de Pan (Pan’s flute)
• La chevelure (the hair)
• Le tombeau des Naïades

Debussy worked with this music in a variety of instrumental settings. Matheson clearly appreciated the technique behind the composer’s keyboard music; but the focus was on Hankey’s interpretation which delivered the erotic qualities with just the right level of subtlety.

The program concluded with selections by Harold Arlen, Cole Porter, and Kurt Weill. Arlen was represented by what is probably his best-known tune, “Over the Rainbow,” composed for Judy Garland to sing in the movie The Wizard of Oz. This was followed by Cole Porter’s “So in Love,” composed for the musical Kiss Me, Kate. Finally, there were two Weill selections. “Youkali” was a tango sung in French; and it was followed by “Speak Low,” composed for the musical One Touch of Venus. Hankey then returned for a single encore, once again in English: Samuel Barber’s “Sure on this shining night,” setting a poem by James Agee.

If the evening was shorter than usual, it could not have been more satisfying. I was glad to see that, in her credentials, Hankey has been making a name for herself in opera performances. Nevertheless, I was really drawn to her skills as a recitalist last night. I would be only too happy to have another encounter with one of her art song journeys.

Schwabacher Recitals to Conclude with Mezzo

Mezzo Samantha Hankey (courtesy of San Francisco Opera)

This year’s annual Schwabacher Recital Series began with mezzo and Merola Opera Program alumna Simona Genga. In a sort of nod to symmetry, the series will conclude with a solo recital by another mezzo, Samantha Hankey, who will be accompanied at the piano by Carrie-Ann Matheson. The program has been somewhat updated since it was first announced. The “core” of the program will still be Alexander von Zemlinsky’s Opus 13 settings of six poems by Maurice Maeterlinck; and the program will still conclude with three selections from musicals performed on Broadway, the first by Cole Porter and the other two by Kurt Weill. The program will now begin with Claude Debussy’s song cycle Trois chansons de Bilitis (three Songs of Bilitis), setting texts from Pierre Louÿs’ collection of erotic poetry entitled (in English) The Songs of Bilitis. This will be followed by selections from Manuel de Falla’s Siete canciones populares españolas (seven Spanish folksongs).

The performance will take place on Wednesday, April 3, beginning at 7:30 p.m. Like the previous two recitals, it will be held in the Dianne and Tad Taube Atrium Theater. As most readers probably know by now, this is part of the Diane B. Wilsey Center for Opera, which is located in the Veterans Building (on the fourth floor) at 401 Van Ness Avenue on the southwest corner of McAllister Street. General admission will be $30. Tickets may be purchased in advance online through an event page on the San Francisco Opera Web site. Note that it is possible to select the option of Wheelchair Accessible seats. In addition, subject to availability, student rush tickets will go on sale at 7 p.m. at the reduced rate of $15. There is a limit of two tickets per person, and valid identification must be shown.

Perianes Returns with German-Spanish Program

Pianist Javier Perianes (photograph by Igor Studio, courtesy of San Francisco Performances)

Last night Spanish pianist Javier Perianes returned to Herbst Theatre for his second appearance as a soloist for San Francisco Performances. He devoted the first half of his previous recital to the music of Franz Schubert and shifted to the work of Spanish composers in the twentieth century (including those based in Paris) for the second half. Last night’s program had a similar division. This time the “Spanish second half” was devoted entirely to the Goyescas suite, the Opus 11 of Enrique Granados. The first half was an “extended family affair” involving the relationship of Johannes Brahms with Clara and Robert Schumann.

As the title suggests, Goyescas was inspired by the paintings of Francisco Goya. However, only one of the six movements carries the title of one of Goya’s works. “El amor y la muerte” (love and death) is the title of one of the prints in Los caprichos. Granados subsequently added an “appendix” to his suite, “El pelele” (the straw man), which is named after one of Goya’s paintings. Taken as a whole, Goyescas is a suite on a large scale, with each of the movements unfolding a narrative reflection on Spanish culture through an extended series of tempo changes. This was a major undertaking for Perianes, and he could not have been more convincing in presenting each of those narratives to his audience.

Since this was the second half of the program, he added a “punch line” by way on an encore. This was a much more familiar selection, the “Danza ritual del fuego” (ritual fire dance) from the one-act ballet “El amor brujo” (love, the sorcerer), whose music was composed by Manuel de Falla. The intensity of Perianes’ delivery put a welcome cap on the depth of the Spanish portion of his recital.

Each of the three composers in the first half was represented by a set of variations. Two of them were based on the same theme, taken from Robert Schumann’s Opus 99 collection entitled Bunte Blätter (colorful leaves). The program began with Clara’s Opus 20 set of variations and concluded with Brahms’ Opus 9 set. Robert’s variations were taken from the third movement of his Opus 14 piano sonata in F minor. For this set the theme was an Andantino movement that Clara had composed. The unfolding of all three of these compositions made for engaging listening. It is worth noting, however, that Robert called his Opus 14 sonata a “concerto without orchestra;” and this modestly engaging set of variations gives the listener a break from the overblown intensity of the other movements!

Taken as a whole, Perianes’ return was a welcome one. He knew how to bring just the right technical command to each of his selections, and his expressiveness was never overblown. He is a recitalist that has something to say, and what he has to say is definitely worthy of attention!

De los Ángeles: “Post-Romantic” Songs

Readers may recall that the “lion’s share” of opera recordings in the Victoria de los Ángeles: The Warner Classics Edition; Complete Recordings on His Master’s Voice & La Voix de son maître anthology occupied what I called the “post-romantic” category. This is also the case where arias and songs are involved. As might be expected, a significant portion of that category is devoted to the Spanish repertoire.

What struck me the most in listening to that repertoire was the diversity of “sub-genres” within that category. Thus, in addition to songs that are attributed to a specific composer (who often is providing a “personal twist” to traditional music), the individual albums traverse categories that include not only “Spanish Songs” but also “Songs of Andalusia,” “Songs of Catalonia,” “Sephardic Songs,” and “Zarzuela Arias.” It is also worth noting that the “Songs of Andalusia” category includes the subtitle “Music from the Middle Ages and Renaissance.”

Cover of the original vinyl album of the Hunter College recital by Victoria de los Ángeles accompanied by Alicia de Larrocha (from the Amazo.com Web page for this album)

Personally, I tend to prefer recordings of recitals to the “studio-made” albums. Readers know that I have already cited de los Ángeles’ contributions to the “retirement recital” given by pianist Gerald Moore. However, there is also a French recital album, whose entire repertoire consists of “post-Romantic” compositions by Henri Duparc, Claude Debussy, and Maurice Ravel. Then there is the 1964 recital in the Royal Festival Hall (again with Moore), which includes composers such as Joaquín Rodrigo, Manuel de Falla, and Joaquín Nin. Several years later, Angel released an album of a recital given “on this side of the pond” at Hunter College, with pianist Alicia de Larrocha accompanying de los Ángeles. That program is distinguished for its account of the two major song cycles composed by Enrique Granados, the Colección de Tonadillas and the Colección de canciones amatorias.

The fact is that these last two paragraphs account for only the “tip of the iceberg” when it comes to the closing of the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth. Attentive listeners will find this genre to be the “mother lode” of de los Ángeles’ repertoire. I have only just begun to appreciate the richness of that repertoire, and I expect to spend a fair amount of time getting to know it better!

De los Ángeles: “Post-Romantic” Opera

Victoria de los Ángeles on the cover of her Warner box set (from the Amazon.com Web page)

In my last dispatch in accounting for the Victoria de los Ángeles: The Warner Classics Edition; Complete Recordings on His Master’s Voice & La Voix de son maître anthology, I decided that it would be appropriate to separate the earlier composers from the nineteenth century (Gioachino Rossini, Giuseppe Verdi, Charles Gounod, and Georges Bizet) from composers that chose to work with more dramatic “post-romantic” material. This later genre flourished in both Italy and France. Italy lead the way with Giacomo Puccini and the “Cav and Pag” composers, Pietro Mascagni (“Cavalleria rusticana”) and Ruggiero Leoncavallo (“Pagliacci”). On the French side, Jules Massenet accounts for two operas (Manon and Werther). He may be viewed as the predecessor to two more recent French composers, Claude Debussy (Pelléas et Mélisande) and Jacques Offenbach. The latter is represented only by the fourth act of Les Contes d’Hoffmann, since the libretto calls for three different sopranos accounting for the three different “tales,” the last of which being the one in which de los Angeles sang the role of Antonia. The one remaining opera in the collection is Manuel de Falla’s La vida breve.

Taken as a whole, this is clearly the lion’s share of the de los Ángeles collection. From a personal point of view, I am glad to have been able to fill in some of the gaps in my library of recordings. For the most part, however, I was not particularly concerned about those gaps. At the risk of drawing fire from unhappy critics, I would say that these operas all have narratives for which the decisions of the stage director count for more than the musical expertise of the performers. Thus, where my own work is concerned, I can benefit from familiarizing myself with the music so that I can subsequently consider the role that it plays in establishing the critical elements of a fully-staged drama.

Where de los Ángeles herself is concerned, I suppose the primary issue is whether or not her talents as a vocalist carry the same impact in the recording studio as they did on the operatic stage. Readers may recall that, where the earlier operas from the nineteenth century were concerned, I was never really drawn to any of these studio recordings. However, the full collection will be released for sale on an Amazon.com Web page, after which readers may feel free to disagree with any of my assertions or positions!

An Abundance of Guitarists at St. Mark’s

Last night St. Mark’s Lutheran Church hosted the fourth recital in the 2023/2024 Dynamite Guitars series of concerts, presented by the Omni Foundation for the Performing Arts. The title of the program was Maestros of 50 Oak Street, an acknowledgement of the impressive Guitar Faculty at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, whose primary address is 50 Oak Street. The four guitarists to perform last night were (in alphabetical order) Sergio Assad, David Tanenbaum, Richard Savino, and Marc Teicholz. All of them performed solo compositions, Assad played a duo with Teicholz, and all four concluded the program with two selections from the Filmaginaires collection of short works by Roland Dyens. In addition, Savino’s set included a duo with violinist Scott Moore. The program was also given an “overture” presented by the SFCM Guitar Youth Orchestra and members of the SFCM Guitar Community Ensemble. Scott Cmiel conducted a performance of “Bluezilian,” composed by Clarice Assad (Sergio’s daughter).

This made for an evening longer than most guitar recitals. Presumably, “Bluezilian” was intended to draw a generous audience of “friends and family;” and it succeeded in doing so. Sadly, after that selection was performed, there was a noticeable exodus after all the family members had filled their telephones with photographs and videos. Fortunately, there was still a good crowd that had showed up for the 50 Oak Street players.

Tanenbaum assembled an engaging set of works by composers with little (if any) knowledge of the guitar. They were Manuel de Falla, Francis Poulenc, and Thomas Adès. The Falla selection was taken from his Homenajes suite, originally composed for orchestra. The second movement was a memorial for Claude Debussy given the subtitle “Elegia de la guitarra;” and Falla prepared his own arrangement for guitar. He also acknowledged Debussy with a fragment from “Soirée dans Grenade” (evening in Granada), the second of the three compositions in Debussy’s Estampes collection. The Adès selection, on the other had, was originally composed for his opera The Exterminating Angel.

In that “geographical” context Assad focused his set on Brazil with two selections by Luiz Bonfá and a samba by Jacob Bittencourt. Teicholz took the Opus 55 piano suite by Joaquín Turina, entitled Danzas Gitanas (gypsy dances), and arranged the movements for solo guitar. This was a significant undertaking with highly satisfying results. I was also left wondering whether Stephen Sondheim had appropriated the “Dance of seduction” movement when he was working on Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street.

The only disappointment was Savino, who trashed the selections in the printed program and mumbled his way through announcing the alternatives. Nevertheless, his duo performance with Moore based on the “Folia” theme was engaging to the extent that some of the variations on the repeated bass line may have been improvised. Taken as a whole, the full set of guitar selections left much to occupy the attentive listener, who probably would have sustained the guitar performances more attentively had the “Bluezilian” overture been eliminated from the program.

Omni Video Premiere: Duo Evocaciones

Guitarist Pietro Locatto and cellist Martina Biondi (courtesy of the Omni Foundation for the Performing Arts)

This morning the Omni Foundation for the Performing Arts released the latest video to be added to its Omni On Location series. As was the case with the last video in this series, the performance involved the pairing of a guitarist, Pietro Locatto, with another instrumentalist, this time cellist Martina Biondi. This time the video was recorded in Villa Ala, an eighteenth-century villa located in the Italian town of Rivalba. The performance took place earlier this year on February 20.

The performers call themselves Duo Evocaciones. As they put it, their objective is to “‘evoke’ the expressive colors of the main protagonists of the Spanish national school which developed between the 19th and 20th centuries.” Only one of the works on the program was explicitly composed for the cello, “Requiebros” (compliments), by Gaspar Cassadó, written for cello and piano in 1934. (As might be guessed, Cassadó was, himself, a cellist.)

The entire program was framed by arrangements of two instrumental compositions. It began with the “Intermezzo” from the one-act opera “Goyescas,” composed by Enrique Granados; and it concluded with the “Danza ritual del fuego” (ritual fire dance) from the one-act ballet “El amor brujo” (love, the sorcerer), whose music was composed by Manuel de Falla. The remaining works on the program were arrangements of music originally composed for solo piano. The first of these was “Granada,” the opening movement of the first collection that Isaac Albéniz entitled Suite Española. The other two were selected from the collection of twelve Spanish dances compiled by Granados.

Those of my generation are likely to associate at least some of these selections with solo performances by guitarist Andrés Segovia. Others might associate these performances with the recent cello-piano recital presented by LIEDER ALIVE! at the end of last month. Personally, I found myself easily drawn into the cello-guitar arrangements of music that I had previously known from guitarists and/or pianists. Duo Evocaciones has clearly established their own approach to repertoire; and I would have no problem with encountering them a second time, perhaps when they embark on a tour of the United States!

Omni Video Premiere: Duo Chinoiserie

Duo Chinoiserie members Jing Xia and Bin Hu with their respective instruments (from the Duo Chinoiserie home page)

This coming Sunday the Omni Foundation for the Performing Arts will release the latest video to be added to its Omni On Location series. This video was recorded in a church in Tucson, Arizona. The performance will be by Duo Chinoiserie, which is true to its name in a rather unique way. Classical guitarist Bin Hu will be joined by Jing Xia, whose instrument is the Chinese guzheng. As can be seen from the above photograph, the guzheng differs significantly from any member of the guitar family!

The program will include a selection of Chinese classical music, “A Moonlit Night on the Spring River,” which Jing arranged for the duo. More interesting is the opening selection, “Mulan,” which Sérgio Assad composed for them. The duo has prepared their own arrangement of the “Ritual Fire Dance” movement from Manuel de Falla’s score for the one-act ballet “El amor brujo” (the sorcerer love). The other work on the program will be “La Catedral” by Agustín Barrios.

This performance will be streamed through the Omni Foundation’s YouTube channel. The premiere will be live-streamed at 10 a.m. this coming Sunday, April 23. The YouTube Web page for viewing has already been created. There is no charge for admission, which means that these performances are made possible only by the viewers’ donations. A Web page has been created for processing contributions, and any visits made prior to the streaming itself will be most welcome.

Guitarist Vieaux Partners with Mezzo Cooke

SFP Guitarist-in-Residence Jason Vieaux (photograph by Tyler Boye, courtesy of SFP)

Last night’s guitar recital by Jason Vieaux, co-presented by San Francisco Performances (SFP) and the Omni Foundation for the Performing Arts, was a special occasion on several accounts. Vieaux is currently the SFP Guitarist-in-Residence, and this was his third appearance in the SFP Guitar Series. On this occasion, however, he was joined by mezzo Sasha Cooke, who also happened to be making her third SFP appearance. While Vieaux performed two solo selections, the remainder of the program was devoted to duo performances.

From a personal point of view, I was looking forward to yet another opportunity to listen to songs by Franz Schubert accompanied by a guitar, rather than a piano. My “first contact” with this approach took place at one of the SFP Salon programs presented at the Hotel Rex. Baritone Philippe Sly was accompanied by guitarist John Charles Britton, and their partnership led to the release of Schubert Songs an album of sixteen of those songs. Most recently that baton was picked up by Nikola Printz, who sang songs from the D. 957 Schwanengesang and D. 911 Winterreise cycles accompanied by Jon Mendle on guitar as part of their Schwabacher Recital Series program, which they presented a little over a year ago.

Cooke selected four songs for last night’s recital: “Gretchen am Spinnrade” (D. 118), “Schlaflied” (D. 527), “Nacht und Träume” (D. 827), and “Auf dem Wasser zu singen” (D. 774). I was particularly struck by how Vieaux subtly reworked the ostinato pattern of the spinning wheel in D. 188 to accommodate more manageable fingering without disrupting the tension conveyed through that ostinato. As expected, Cooke endowed each of these songs with her own account of the underlying personal dispositions.

The one “cycle” on the program was the opening selection, Manuel de Falla’s collection of seven canciones populares españolas (Spanish folksongs). Falla originally composed this for soprano and piano. According to my records, my last encounter with a guitar performance involved the duo of guitarists Eliot Fisk and Ángel Romero performing without a vocalist. This was also an SFP/Omni offering, which took place in March of 2018.

Personally, I prefer it when a setting of songs involves a vocalist, and Cooke knew exactly how to capture the delivery of each of those seven songs. She brought that same sense of interpretation to the “Aria” movement from the fifth of  Heitor Villa-Lobos’ Bachianas Brasileiras compositions. This was originally written for solo soprano and an orchestra of cellos, but last night’s version for guitar and voice was the composer’s own arrangement.

The other arrangement on the program was Roland Dyens’ version of “A Felicidade” by Antônio Carlos Jobim for solo guitar. Personally, I would have preferred to listen to how Cooke would manage the lyrics by Vinicius de Moraes; but, as another song puts it, “you can’t always get what you want!” This was the second of Vieaux’ two solo performances. The first of these was the second movement of the four-movement Paths of Light suite, which Pat Metheny composed for Vieux. It has been a while since I have listened to Metheny’s compositions, and this account left me curious about the other three movements.

The program closed out in a more popular vein. Cooke brought her own take on songs from two of Stephen Sondheim’s musicals, Into the Woods and Follies, both capturing the ways in which the composer could get under the skin of the characters his music had been composed to portray. This was followed by two songs from the Beatles’ White Album, Paul McCartney’s “I will” and John Lennon’s “Julia.” For those of my generation, this felt like a nostalgic reflection on a turbulent past. The duo then returned for one encore. Cooke shifted from the Beatles to Michael Tilson Thomas to sing his “Not everyone thinks like you,” an engaging afterthought for a program of songs rich in their own individual perspectives.

José Iturbi the Conductor

In examining the CDs in the From Hollywood to the World: The Rediscovered Recordings by Pianist and Conductor José Iturbi collection, Iturbi’s role as a conductor has focused primarily on his doing “double duty” by both leading and performing as concerto soloist. However, the twelfth and thirteenth CDs in the collection provide more examples of performances in which conducting is his only priority. The first of these two CDs documents his performance of two familiar nineteenth-century symphonies, Felix Mendelssohn’s Opus 56 (third) symphony in A minor, known as the “Scottish,” and Antonín Dvořák Opus 95 (ninth) symphony in E minor, best known as “From the New World.” Both of these recordings present satisfying accounts of Iturbi conducting the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra.

The second CD, on the other hand, follows him to Spain, where he conducts the Valencia Symphony Orchestra. On the first of the nine tracks allotted to his performances, he conducts from the piano in a performance of Franz Liszt’s “Hungarian Fantasy,” which is basically an arrangement for piano and orchestra of the fourteenth of his “Hungarian Rhapsody” compositions for solo piano. On the remaining eight tracks is a “full-time” conductor.

The most familiar of his selections is the second of two three-movement sets that Manuel de Falla excerpted from his score for Léonide Massine’s ballet “The Three-Cornered Hat.” One of the remaining tracks is Iturbi’s own composition, “Seguidillas.” The other familiar composer is Joaquín Rodrigo, but his composition is decidedly less familiar. “Homenaje a la Tempranica” was originally scored for wind band; but Iturbi conducts a version for full orchestra. The remaining composers are less familiar: Manuel Palau and Eduardo López-Chavarri. Personally, I felt that Valencia was not up to Rochester standards; so I suspect that Iturbi was trying to make the best of the cards dealt to him.

The Valencia tracks are not enough to fill the thirteenth CD. Iturbi returns to the piano for two vocal selections performed by soprano Consuelo Rubia. The first of these is Falla’s Siete canciones populares españolas, which will probably be familiar to most listeners. The second is the first of three songs in Joaquín Turina’s Homenaje a Lope de Vega. Each of the songs is a setting of one of Lope de Vega’s texts, the first taken from La discreta enamorada.

The remainder of the thirteenth CD is devoted to radio interviews. The first of these is in Spanish, meaning that I am not in a position to comment on it! The second is hosted by Don Ameche, whom I used to watch on television. Fortunately, there is enough music to balance the chit-chat. The first selection is the familiar Falla “Ritual Fire Dance.” The other is a jazz take on Fats Waller that left me more satisfied than I would have anticipated!

Iturbis: The “Second” Round of Solo and Duo Piano

The ninth, tenth, and eleventh CDs in Sony Classical’s sixteen-CD collection entitled From Hollywood to the World: The Rediscovered Recordings by Pianist and Conductor José Iturbi offer the “second” collection of piano music performed by José Iturbi. As was the case in the first collection, several of the performances are duos that José performed with his sister Amparo. In this collection, however, none of the tracks present solo performances by Amparo.

Note, however, the scare quotes around the adjective “second.” The recording sessions for the fourth, fifth, and sixth CDs took place between 1950 and 1952, while the three CDs being discussed here were recorded between 1933 and 1949. This left me wondering how much thought was put into the planning of this collection with any consideration for allowing listeners to appreciate how the Iturbis approached their repertoire when they were working in recording studios, rather than in the presence of an audience. This includes the fact that Amaparo’s presence in this “second set” is far more diminished than it had been in the first.

The good news is that the ninth CD provides the first opportunity to listen to José’s approach to two Mozart sonatas, K. 331 in A major and K. 332 in F major. These are probably the most familiar of Mozart’s solo piano sonatas, and I would not be surprised it that was also the case in the Thirties. José’s interpretations may not have been as “historically informed” as performances became during the last quarter of the last century. Nevertheless, he endows each of the two sonatas with his own “brand” of engaging rhetoric. I might even go as far as to say that he was more comfortable playing Mozart than he was in satisfying the more compelling preferences for the solo piano music of Frédéric Chopin (particularly those of shorter durations).

Isaac Albéniz playing the piano for his daughter Laura (photographer unknown, from Wikimedia Commons, public domain)

Of far greater interest is the Hispanic side of the repertoire on the tenth and eleventh CDs. The list of composers in the chronological order of their birth years is an impressive one: Domenico Scarlatti (born in Italy in 1685 but spending almost the last 40 years of his life on the Hispanic peninsula), Pietro Domenico Paradies (1707), Isaac Albéniz (1860), Enrique Granados (1867), Manuel de Falla (1876), Manuel Infante (1883), and Iturbi himself (1895). My guess is that most listeners will find the music of at least some of those composers to make for an engaging journey of discovery. For all intents and purposes, Michael Feinstein’s introductory essay says almost nothing about this “Hispanic legacy,” which puts those most interested in listening to the performances in this collection at a disadvantage.

Two Guitar Quintets from Two Centuries

Quatuor Van Kuijk members Nicolas Van Kuijk, Sylvain Favre-Bulle, Anthony Kondo, and Emmanuel François (photograph by Svend Andersen, courtesy of San Francisco Performances)

Last night in Herbst Theatre, San Francisco Performances presented, in conjunction with the Dynamite Guitar season created by the Omni Foundation for the Performing Arts, the second of the five programs in its 2022–2023 Guitar Series. Guitarist Sean Shibe, born in Edinburgh in 1992, is currently touring the United States along with Quatuor Van Kuijk, a string quartet founded in Paris in 2012 by violinists Nicolas Van Kuijk and Sylvain Favre-Bulle, violist Emmanuel François, and cellist Anthony Kondo. All five of them performed two guitar quintets, one at the end of each half of the program.

The first of these was the so-called “Fandango” quintet composed by Luigi Boccherini. The program concluded with Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco’s Opus 143 quintet. The quartet members also began the evening with a performance of Felix Mendelssohn’s final string quartet in F minor. Mendelssohn died two months after completing the work, and it was published posthumously as his Opus 80. In addition, Shibe performed three short solos composed, respectively, by Thomas Adés, Manuel de Falla, and Francis Poulenc, prior to the Castelnuovo-Tedesco quintet.

Taken as a whole, this was a low-key program; but Herbst provided a conducive setting for the intimacy of all of the offerings. This was particularly the case with the two guitar quintets. In both of the performances, Shibe fit comfortably into the intimate “conversations” one usually encounters in a string quartet performance. As a group they captured and affectionately presented the many Hispanic tropes; and, where the Castelnuovo-Tedesco quintet was concerned, those familiar with the score may have wondered if Shibe was channeling Andrés Segovia, for whom the quintet was originally composed. A similar sense of intimacy pervaded Shibe’s solo offerings.

In that context the decision to begin with the Mendelssohn quartet felt a bit out of place. Perhaps the quartet players felt that they should begin on the “dark side,” after which the sun would shine on the rest of the program. Certainly, the intensity they brought to Opus 80 made the attentive listener sit up and take notice. From that point of view, the sunny dispositions of the remainder of the program may have felt more welcome.