Early Twentieth Century Music from England

Cover of the album being discussed (from its Amazon.com Web page)

This Friday will see the release of a new Onyx album surveying works by two Englishmen composed in the early decades of the twentieth century. Most of the album is devoted to Gustav Holst, beginning with the St Paul’s Suite, which was very popular in my student days and is almost never performed these days. The other Holst selections were new to me: “A Fugal Concerto” (Opus 40, Number 2), Two Songs without Words, and the early Opus 4, “Egdon Heath,” given the subtitle “A Homage to Thomas Hardy.” The remainder of the album offers three selections by George Butterworth composed between 1911 (Two English Idylls Found on folk-tunes) and 1913 (“The Banks of Green Willow”). The last of the tracks, “A Shropshire Lad,” was composed in 1912.

Holst was a relatively familiar composer during the second and third quarters of the twentieth century, particularly since he composed music for concert bands. However, by the last quarter of that century, that genre of English concert music was on a decline. My guess is that audiences began to experience in that music a strong touch of nostalgia for a time that they no longer remembered.

That nostalgia is most evident in the Butterworth selections. I confess that it is a nostalgia that I share, partly because some of the tunes were familiar to my parents. On the other hand, while the music of Holst has been with me since my own “distant past,” I was delighted with the opportunity to encounter the St Paul’s Suite again. The Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, under the baton of Andrew Manze, gave this music a delightfully vigorous account, which reminded me of the fun I had in playing all that band music!

Simon Rattle in Berlin: 20th Century Britain

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

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

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

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

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

ZOFO Echoes Gamelan Practices

ZOFO pianists Eva-Maria Zimmermann and Keisuke Nakagoshi (photograph by Keith Saunders, courtesy of Old First Concerts)

This morning I was somewhat saddened to discover that I had not encountered a performance by the ZOFO duo of pianists Eva-Maria Zimmermann and Keisuke Nakagoshi since May of 2016 until I live-streamed their latest recital in the Old First Concerts series last night. I remember when this four-hands-on-one-keyboard duo made its debut and the innovative approach they took to repertoire that subsequently followed. That approach surfaced last night with a program entitled Echoes of Gamelan.

Many readers probably know by now that gamelan refers to both a genre of traditional Indonesian music and the ensemble that performs the music, consisting primarily of metallophone instruments, augmented by hand-drums to keep the beat, and occasionally joined by vocalists, both male and female. While a piano keyboard cannot match the sonorities of those instruments, Colin McPhee, who spent much time in Bali, transcribed gamelan music for two pianos; and roughly half of last night’s program consisted of four-hand arrangements of McPhee’s efforts. The remainder of the program then involved works by recent and twentieth-century composers reflecting on gamelan practices.

Sadly, some of those reflections seemed to be rather remote, if not distorted. I have not yet come up with a good reason for why Nakagoshi’s arrangement of the “Saturn” movement from Gustav Holst’s Opus 32 suite, The Planets, was included; and the “Sirènes” movement from Claude Debussy’s collection of three orchestral nocturnes, also arranged by Nakagoshi, was similarly opaque. However, these were outliers in a program that explored how the thematic content of the gamelan repertoire could hold up under the limitations of a piano keyboard.

For the most part, the results were satisfying. Mind you, my wife and I had the good fortune to experience gamelan performances in both Java (Yogyakarta) and Bali (Ubud). These were not “concert” experiences. It would be better to say that we had the good fortune to be in the presence of music being made. This is not to say that there were not situations that involve “stage” and “audience.” However, more often than not, the music is associated with particular occasions; and it is the nature of the occasion, rather than a “concert setting,” that matters.

Nevertheless, last night’s “concert setting” made for an engaging account between traditional and contemporary practices, leaving the attentive listener with a feast of food for thought.

SFS Showcases Brass Players (with Percussion)

Last night in Davies Symphony Hall the Great Performers Series of the San Francisco Symphony (SFS) turned “inward.” The program presented SFS musicians primarily from the brass section. The ensemble consisted of six horn players, six trumpeters, four trombonists (one doubling on euphonium), and two tubaists. There were also three percussionists and one timpanist, but most of the works on the program involved only the brass instruments. The conductor was Brad Hogarth, who provided brief but informative introductions.

This is one of those situations in which it would be wise to begin at the end. Over the course of these brass concerts that I have attended, I have taken an interest in the compositions by Principal Trombone Timothy Higgins. Therefore, it was no surprise that the program concluded with a work that he finished writing in 2022, given the straightforward title “Concert Music for Brass, Percussion and Timpani.” The work consisted of two movements, the first a tribute to Dale Clevenger, the former Principal Horn of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra (CSO), who had died on January 5, 2022. The second was a tribute to the entire CSO brass section on the occasion of their return to performing after the COVID pandemic. The first movement was particularly poignant, particularly with its wistful nod to “Beim Schlafengehen” from Richard Strauss’ Four Last Songs during the coda.

The high point of the evening came with the performance of Magnus Lindberg’s “Ottoni.” I realized, with a bit of regret, that I had not encountered any of his music since Yuja Wang played his third piano concerto with SFS in October of 2022. Lindberg has appealed to me for quite some time, particularly for his successful efforts to push the pendulum away from minimalism; so I like to call him an “unabashed maximalist.” While listening, I jotted some notes about his textures being thicker than any composer I had encountered since Charles Ives while also exercising the spontaneity of Ives’ turn-on-a-dime rhetoric. “Ottoni” was the wildest ride I had encountered for quite some time, and I loved every minute of it.

The other seriously wild ride on the program came from Roger Harvey’s arrangement of Witold Lutosławski’s “Variations on a Theme by Paganini.” The theme (as many will probably guess), comes from the last of the 24 Caprices that Niccolò Paganini composed for solo violin, which was, itself, a set of variations on a relatively short theme. Among many it is best known for the rhapsody that Sergei Rachmaninoff composed for piano and orchestra. Lutosławski, on the other hand, used Paganini’s own variations as a “blueprint,” to which he added his own twists and turns, scoring the results for two pianos. The result was one of Lutosławski’s most prankish efforts, and the brass arrangement made his wild ride even wilder.

The program also included two composers whose works I had not encountered for quite some time. Gustav Holst was represented by Paul Welcomer’s arrangement of A Moorside Suite, which was originally scored for a full brass band. Welcomer’s introductory remarks about brass band traditions in England were particularly informative, making this offering more than a little sentimental. Alex Bedner, currently a student at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, prepared arrangements of four short pieces by the French organist Maurice Duruflé, which were described as “Motets on Gregorian themes.” Since my knowledge of plainchant is both distant and limited, none of the themes were familiar to me; but the listening experience was still an engaging one.

The weaker selections were the two “urban” offerings. The program opening with music from a suite that Leonard Bernstein compiled from the soundtrack he had composed for On the Waterfront. Between Elia Kazan’s directing and Marlon Brando’s acting, I have to confess that, after seeing this movie several times, I have no recollection of any of the music; and I fear that last night did little to refresh my memory! I was also left cold by Shulamit Ran’s “Chicago Skyline.” Perhaps I have lost my taste for tone poems inspired by urban life!

As might be expected, the audience refused to leave the house without an encore. The encore was the duel scene from the music that Sergei Prokofiev composed for the full-evening ballet Romeo and Juliet. An all-brass account of that scene worked quite successfully, allowing me to re-create the choreography I had seen so many times in my mind.

Clerestory Announces Post-Pandemic Program

The Clerestory vocalists at their Christmas performance last month at the Noe Valley Ministry

Following up on last month’s Christmas concert, Clerestory will return to Noe Valley for its first performance of the new year. To mark the emergence from pandemic conditions, the professional all-male vocal ensemble will present a timely program entitled Phoenix Rising. As was the case with the Christmas concert, program details have not yet been finalized for announcement. However, the theme of the program will involve a musical exploration of loss, longing, metamorphosis, and rebirth.

Composers from the Renaissance will include Thomas Tallis and Josquin des Prez. At the other end of the timeline, there will be new works by living composers like Saunder Choi and Stacy Garrop. The “classical” composers on the program will include Clara Schumann, Edward Elgar, and Gustav Holst.

The San Francisco performance of this program has been scheduled for 7:30 p.m. on Saturday, March 4. The Noe Valley Ministry is located at 1021 Sanchez Street, between 23rd Street and Elizabeth Street. Tickets are being handled through an Eventbrite event page. General Admission is $30 with a $20 rate for seniors and $5 for students.

A Disappointing Encounter with SFSYO

This afternoon was my first post-pandemic encounter with the San Francisco Symphony Youth Orchestra (SFSYO), which began its first three-concert season in Davies Symphony Hall this past November. Daniel Stewart began his tenure as Wattis Foundation Music Director in October of 2019, meaning that this is his first complete season of three concerts. The first half of the program was devoted to two relatively short (roughly ten minutes) compositions by two composers with roots in the Bay Area. In “order of appearance” these were Gabriella Smith and Mason Bates. The intermission was followed by the full instrumental resources (along with off-stage female chorus) required for the performance of Gustav Holst’s suite The Planets.

Both of the “local” compositions came across as overstaying their welcome after about five minutes. Smith’s “Tumblebird Contrails” was a reflection on the diverse environments that the composer encountered while backpacking in Point Reyes. The attentive listener could either follow those environments by reading Smith’s program note or just let his/her/their imagination run its course through past personal experiences. Either way, it was not difficult to appreciate Smith’s ability to turn those environmental impressions into instrumental themes and textures, but she exhausted her vocabulary and her capacity for elaboration roughly halfway through the duration of the score. That said, Stewart’s management of the SFSYO resources definitely facilitated the listening experience until that experience had run its course.

Mason Bates added his own electronica performance to the orchestral resources interpreting his “Mothership” score. Sadly, here, too, the overall execution left the impression that there was little to say and even less to be added by Bates’ contribution to the performance. The music was composed in 2011, during the time when Bates served as Mead Composer-in-Residence for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra between 2010 and 2015. Personally, I found myself more drawn to “Alternative Energy,” also composed during that residency in 2011, possibly because the score was based on a more substantial underlying narrative.

The Planets is, of course, one of the best compositions to show off the rich diversity of a large orchestral ensemble. Holst had a particularly keen ear for “special effects.” Sadly, he was not as skilled in laying down a narrative foundation for the seven character studies, each of which associates one of the Ancient Roman gods with one of the planets. The durational scale of both the individual movements and the overall suite is far more demanding than either of the selections by Smith and Bates; but much of Holst’s capacity for duration derives from repetition, frequently where “again” simply means “but louder this time.”

There are, of course, conductors that have found ways to establish a narrative framework that maintains listener attention from beginning to end. Unfortunately, Stewart is not one of them. While the SFSYO musicians clearly followed his direction and the dispositions based in the score, the overall experience was far from satisfying, even during the mystical lure of the off-stage female voices in the final movement.

The final concert will take place at the end of this coming May. The major work, which will fill the second half of the program, will be Johannes Brahms’ Opus 73 (second) symphony in D major. Hopefully, Stewart will fare better in delivering an expressive account of this symphony.

Karajan on Decca: 19th-Century Instrumental

Herbert von Karajan (from the booklet accompanying the collection being discussed)

The lion’s share of repertoire in The Complete Decca Recordings, a 33-CD box of recordings by conductor Herbert von Karajan, is focused on the nineteenth century. Indeed, in contrast to the collection of recordings of pianist Peter Serkin, which I have been following in parallel to the Karajan collection, there are so many nineteenth-century CDs that they are best divided into two subcategories. For want of better terminology, I shall these subcategories “Instrumental” and “Opera;” and this article will examine the first of those subcategories.

Readers may recall that, when writing about Karajan’s recordings of First Viennese School composers, I drew the most satisfaction from his interpretation of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s K. 492, The Marriage of Figaro. In this case it would be fair to say that the instrumental CDs did little more than pique my curiosity about the operatic offerings. For the most part the instrumental selections are “the usual suspects,” not only according to Karajan but also as approached by just about any conductor with a viable recording career.

As expected, there is a CD devoted to two members of the Strauss family, with five selections by Johann Strauss II and one, the Opus 212 “Delirien” (deliriums) waltz, by his brother Josef Strauss. The composer that receives the most attention is Richard Strauss, with the “dance of the seven veils” music from the Opus 54 opera “Salome” providing a “punch line” for four tone poems. This accounts for two CDs, the first devoted entirely to the Opus 30 “Also sprach Zarathustra” (thus spoke Zarathustra), while the second covers its three best-known predecessors, “Don Juan” (Opus 20), “Death and Transfiguration” (Opus 24), and “Till Eulenspiegel’s Merry Pranks” (Opus 28). These are all given perfectly satisfactory accounts, none of which rise significantly above the many other recorded interpretations of these pieces.

There are only three symphonies in this collection. Two are by Johannes Brahms, Opus 68 (first) in C minor and Opus 90 (third) in F major. The other is by Antonín Dvořák, Opus 88 in G major, a perfect complement to the spirit of Brahms; and Brahms himself is also represented by his Opus 81 “Tragic” concert overture.

The only other composer to be represented by multiple compositions is Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky. Three of the four compositions are suites from his best-known ballets: The Nutcracker, Swan Lake, and The Sleeping Beauty. The “overture-fantasy” “Romeo and Juliet” is also included. In addition an entire CD is devoted to the French ballet that is the most significant predecessor of the three Russian ballets with Tchaikovsky’s music. That ballet is Giselle, whose music was composed by Adolphe Adam. This is not quite a “complete score” recording (as can be seen from the sequence of Roman numerals in the accompanying booklet); but those that like Adam’s music may well find it the most satisfying of the the offerings in this subcategory. I happen to be one of those that likes the music, but I much prefer listening to it while watching the ballet. (In all fairness, I am inclined to say the same about the Tchaikovsky suites!)

The only other nineteenth-century instrumental composer included is Edvard Grieg, represented only by selections from the incidental music he composed for Peer Gynt. The pieces include all four of the movements in the first suite and two from the second. Curiously, these are presented as an “afterword” to Gustav Holst’s Opus 32 suite The Planets. Holst composed his suite’s seven movements between 1914 and 1916; but, considering what more adventurous composers were doing at that time, it would be fair to say that Holst’s heart was very much in the nineteenth century. As a result, this is probably the most satisfying recording in the category. Those that know the piece know that its dynamic range is extraordinarily wide. Karajan may be at his most admirable when he “pulls out all the stops;” but his command of a hushed rhetoric, particularly in the final movement, is just as impressive.

Uneven Recording from Chicago Gargoyle Brass

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

As of this morning, I have managed to catch up on my backlog of physical recordings. (The downloads are another matter. They are still pretty imposing, but I tend to be able to work through them at a steadier pace.) This morning provided me the opportunity to listen to Nights Bright Days, the second MSR Classics release of the Chicago Gargoyle Brass and Organ Ensemble. This group was founded as a brass chamber ensemble in 1992 by its Artistic Director, H. Rodney Holmes, whose members were faculty and students at the University of Chicago. (The name came from the number of gargoyles one could encounter in the campus architecture.) By 2006 the ensemble had professionalized and established a residency in the western suburbs at a major church with a full-time professional organist. Its first MSR Classics album was released in August of 2015. Nights Bright Days was released this past April, followed by an album of music of the Reformation, which was released in November.

The album title is taken from the last line of William Shakespeare’s 43rd sonnet, whose final couplet is:

All days are nights to see till I see thee,

And nights bright days when dreams do show thee me.

That sonnet was one of four to be set to music by Peter Meechan in a composition entitled Love Songs. He wrote the piece to serve as a memorial for Holmes’ wife Charlene. The work was scored for brass quintet, organ, narrator, and choir. The two trumpeters double on flugelhorn, performing with horn, trombone, and tuba. The organist is Mark Sudeith, the narrator is Kevin Gudahl, and the choir combines the resources of the Oriana Singers and the City Voices of Chicago, both led by William Chin.

Setting the sonnets of Shakespeare is no easy matter. As can be seen from that above couplet, just figuring out how to read the text aloud without twisting the tongue is a challenge unto itself. One can appreciate Meechan’s decision to allocate some of that text to a narrator, rather than to any vocalists. One can also appreciate his acknowledgement that his approach to interpreting the texts was “of course in no way definitive.” However, even in giving the composer the benefit of the doubt, there were too many instances on the recording of inadequately polished sonorities matched by uncertain intonation and dynamics (shared by both instrumentalists and the choir). There are also noticeable problems of balance, and it is hard to tell whether they are due to the space in which the recordings were made or the skills of the recording team.

All the other selections on the album are arrangements by Craig Garner. None of them are particularly convincing, but it is difficult to discern whether the problems arise with the arranger or the performers. The composers whose music is being arranged make for an impressive list: Henry Purcell (excerpts from the ode Come Ye Songs of Art), Gustav Holst (a Cornish folk song that found its way into his second suite for military band), and Benjamin Britten (the instrumental episodes from his Peter Grimes opera). The weakest of the selections comes from Britten, whose meticulous sense of sonorous detail just does not hold up between the shortcomings of the arrangement and those of the performance.

SFCM Brass to Perform 2019 Hoefer Prize Winner

2019 Hoefer Prize winner Alexandra Vrebalov (from the event page for the concert being previewed)

Traditionally, the winning composition for the annual Hoefer Prize has been performed at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music (SFCM) under the aegis of the BluePrint program and presented by the SFCM New Music Ensemble. The prize is awarded each year to an SFCM graduate; and the winner for this year is Alexandra Vrebalov, from the class of 1996. The title of her winning composition is “A Wonderful Panorama of the Heart;” and it was scored for brass choir. As a result, this year’s performance of the prize-winner will be given by the SFCM Brass Ensemble, consisting of student players of instruments in the brass family.

The group will be conducted by Trombone Faculty Member Paul Welcomer; and Vrebalov’s composition will be preceded by Robert King’s arrangements of two selections from the Sacrae symphoniae of Giovanni Gabrieli, the second “Canzon septimi toni” and the “Sonata a 8.” The intermission will be followed by Welcomer’s arrangement of Gustav Holst’s A Moorside Suite. The program will conclude with a performance of “Eastwind” by Jean-François Michel, scored for solo trumpet and trombone with brass ensemble. The soloists will be faculty members Mark Inouye on trumpet and Nick Platoff on trombone.

This performance will take place tomorrow, Wednesday, November 6, at 7:30 p.m., in the Caroline H. Hume Concert Hall. The SFCM building is located at 50 Oak Street, between Van Ness Avenue and Franklin Street, a short walk from the Van Ness Muni Station. There will be no charge for admission, but reservations are recommended. Reservations may be arranged online through a hyperlink on the event page for this concert.

Resonance Jazz Ensemble Returns to O1C

Last night in the Old First Presbyterian Church the Resonance Jazz Ensemble, led by Stephen McQuarry, returned to the Old First Concerts (O1C) series. This was my third encounter with the group, although I think it was their fourth O1C performance. The group might be called a “little big band,” since it is on the same scale at the Fil Lorenz Little Big Band that played at Union Square Live a little over a week ago. However, neither the instrumentation nor the book follow the usual big band traditions, which is what makes Resonance such an absorbing listening experience.

The biggest departures from tradition can be found on the front line. About the only “standard” player is saxophonist Georgianna Krieger, who played soprano, tenor, and baritone over the course of the evening. She was joined by flutist Laura Austin Wiley, who also took one vocal number. The most noticeable difference, however, was that the rest of the front line consisted of a string trio, Michèle Walther on violin, Charith Premawardhana on viola, and Nancy Bien on cello. The rhythm section was more traditional with Ted Burik on bass, Greg German on drums, and McQuarry leading from the piano.

Equally impressive was how many members of the group contributed to either composition or arrangement. Indeed, McQuarry was the only arranger, presenting Chick Corea’s “Spain” and what the program listed as “Jupiter” by Gustav Holst. (For those who like to pick nits, the arrangement was actually of the British patriotic hymn “I Vow to Thee, My Country,” which Holst set to a poem by Cecil Spring Rice. The music was such a favorite that he worked it into the middle section of the “Jupiter” movement from his suite The Planets.) McQuarry also concluded the program with his own “Journey of Each Other.” The program also included one piece by Wiley (“Waiting for Rain,” the opening selection), two by Krieger (“Jingletown” and “Last Honeybee”), two by Bien (“Banana Bread” and “Smoke and Mirrors”), and two by Walther (“Five Seasons” and “Anoushka’s Story,” along with the encore selection, “Valentine’s Waltz”).

Taken as a whole, the evening was a delightful journey through a wide variety of both composition styles and approaches to performance. Most surprising was that Bien’s performance as a cellist contrasted sharply with her preference for down-and-dirty blues as a composer. (“Banana Bread” was the selection in which Wiley shifted from flute to voice; and her approach to blues was a real hoot.) However, the full scope of the program made it clear that this was a repertoire that was as much chamber music as jazz by other means as it was jazz as chamber music by other means. This puts McQuarry in the same league as Satoko Fuji, who similarly seems more inclined to synthesize traditional categories, rather than pull them apart.

Pianists Just Want to Have Fun

Pianist Jean-Efflam Bavouzet (courtesy of the San Francisco Symphony)

Last night in Davies Symphony Hall, San Francisco Symphony (SFS) Resident Conductor Christian Reif took the podium to present some fascinating twists on the usual overture-concerto-symphony format. The concerto soloist was French pianist Jean-Efflam Bavouzet, who has made several stimulating visits to San Francisco since performing his SFS debut in 2012. I deliberately used the adjective ”fascinating” to recall those many moments from the original Star Trek when Spock would utter that word while raising his left eyebrow.

Bavouzet’s concerto selection was Franz Liszt’s second piano concerto in A major. Liszt first drafted this concerto in 1839. After putting away the manuscript for ten years, he then subjected it to four rounds of revisions, finalizing his efforts only in 1861. That interval is a significant one in Liszt’s biography, since Liszt completed his only piano sonata (in B minor) in 1853; an ambitious project in which he wished to encompass the full scope of a sonata in a single uninterrupted movement.

As might be guessed, there is considerable disagreement over whether or not Liszt succeeded in this project. Personally, I can claim to have listened to a pianist provide a brief but first-rate verbal introduction to how the sonata was structured, after which he executed what remains to this day the clearest account I ever heard of the piece. I inject this bit of history because Liszt decided to achieve that same single-movement goal with his second piano concerto.

As with the sonata, reasonable listeners will definitely differ over how successful Liszt was with that concerto. Like the sonata, the concerto is a cup that runneth over with virtuoso display, often suggesting that the orchestra is there only to allow the soloist to catch his breath and flex his muscles a bit. Given that Liszt had more than ample opportunity to examine the scores of both Hector Berlioz and Richard Wagner, one would have thought that he could have picked up a few basic rules about what to do with a full instrumental ensemble; but the number of instances of poorly-conceived balance or instrumental combination are legion. This concerto is clearly all about the piano.

However, if one can find an underlying structural framework for the sonata to guide attentive listening, one is less likely to succeed in doing the same for the A major concerto. To paraphrase Winston Churchill, the piano part boils down to one damned display of raw virtuosity after another. All the orchestra does is shift the lights that shine on that virtuosity.

Nevertheless, one can still marvel at an accomplished pianist taking on this piece. Somewhere around the halfway mark, the listener trying to follow Liszt’s path can only gape and wonder how he managed to cram in so much. Later, as the end draws near and the orchestra strikes up a jaunty march, it is hard for even the most serious listener to hold back an attack of the giggles.

As a result, the best way to appreciate this music is to accept it as an opportunity for the pianist to have lots of fun. Bavouzet was not shy about letting the audience take in his good spirits. If this meant that paying attention to him was more important than paying attention to the music, then, for all we know, that may have been the composer’s primary intention. Meanwhile, Reif seemed to know exactly how to let Bavouzet enjoy his romp, to the point that both of them had a hard time concealing their giddiness while taking their bows. (I also liked Bavouzet waving to first cellist Amos Yang across the length of the piano, recognizing that Yang’s cello solo may have been the high point of Liszt’s instrumental writing.)

To some extent Reif took the same approach to the “symphony” part of the program, Gustave Holst’s Opus 32 seven-movement suite, The Planets. However, in contrast to Liszt, Holst had an awesomely impeccable command of orchestral resources. Over the course of the suite’s seven movements, each of which had a “personality trait” for the mythical namesake of each of the planets, Holst’s ability to keep the entirety of his instrumental resources in balance never faltered. Last night this was most evident when one encounters the mournful voice of a bass oboe in the depiction of Saturn as “the Bringer of Old Age.”

It is also worth considering the extent to which Holst allowed his own listening experience to impact his efforts as a composer. Uranus is described as “the Magician.” However, his theme is not one of summoning up arcane spells. Instead, it is, as Scott Foglesong described it in the program book, “a galumphing dance.” One might think, “This is a magician?;” but then one might realize that Holst may have been nodding at Paul Dukas’ “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice,” whose protagonist prances around to music whose rhythm bears a strong family resemblance. Similarly, it is hard to imagine that Holst did not have the last of Claude Debussy’s orchestral nocturnes in mind when he deployed a choir of female voices for the distant connotations of the final “Neptune” movement.

Sadly, one might have appreciated some of these subtleties better had Reif not decided to overload every loud passage. The impact was certainly blood-curdling in the opening “Mars” movement. However, when Uranus’ “galumphing” burst out with the same intensity, it was a wonder that the eardrums were still up to the subtleties of “Neptune.” Some of us would like to believe that there is more to Holst’s music than raw spectacle.

Reif managed both his instrumental resources and his dynamics far better in the evening’s “overture,” which was actually the instrumental prologue to the first act of Richard Wagner’s opera Götterdämmerung (twilight of the gods). Most listeners know that this is the last of the four operas that constitute Der Ring des Nibelungen. For those familiar with the entire cycle, that prologue, usually known as “Siegfried’s Rhine Journey” serves up a remarkably comprehensive account of many of the themes that have cut across the entire four-opera cycle. Reif conducted as one who clearly knew the whole story and recognized the extent to which the music summarizes “the action thus far.” In doing so, he provided an excellent “warm-up” for all those planning to experience the entire four-opera cycle when it is presented by San Francisco Opera this coming June.

Fascinating Arrangements from Alliage Quintett

courtesy of Sony Music

This past Friday Sony Classical released its latest album of the Alliage Quintett, entitled Lost in Temptation. Based in Germany, this group consists of keyboardist Jang Eun Bae together with the saxophone quartet of Daniel Gauthier (soprano), Hayrapet Arakelyan (alto), Simon Hanrath (tenor), and Sebastian Pottmeier (baritone). As might be guessed, most of their selections are arrangements, some of which involve the collaboration of the entire group.

No explanation is given for the album title. However, I can come up with at least one viable hypothesis. While a group like the Rova Saxophone Quartet has sustained itself through its own inventive approaches to improvisation and collaborations with particularly adventurous composers and performers, Alliage, on this album at least, has given in to the “temptation” of familiar “chestnuts” from the standard instrumental repertoire. However, surrendering to that temptation requires the creation of viable arrangements for performances, which is, of course, as process of translation. The title is thus a play on that familiar phrase (and movie title) “lost in translation.”

The only problem with this explanation is that there is very little, if any, sense of loss in how those old chestnuts have been arranged. Indeed, when it comes to the “Danse Bacchanale” from Camille Saint-Saëns’ opera Samson and Delilah (which many would probably call the “mother of all warhorses”) Pottmeier’s arrangement may actually have improved on the original. In many ways the sonorities of a soprano saxophone come closer to a “Levantine spirit” than any of Saint-Saëns’ uses of his wind section; and, while the piano is far from a Levantine instrument, Pottmeier gives Bae a relatively spare part, present more for specific colors than for any role in melody, counterpoint, or harmony.

It is also worth observing that the album also offers “arrangements of arrangements,” so to speak. Thus, Ottorino Respighi’s three Ancient Airs and Dances suites were all the results of the composer “translating” sixteenth-century lute music. Lost in Temptation offers the first of these suites in an arrangement by Wijnand van Klaveren, which suggested that the arranger had as much respect for the original source material as Respighi did. This resulted in at least a few (if not more) passages where lute sonorities won out over Respighi’s orchestrations; and, of course, the intimacy of the Alliage ensemble has a spirit that owes more to the sixteenth century than to the twentieth. There is also a collaborative arrangement of seven Scottish airs arranged by Gustav Holst. I am less familiar with Holst’s score than I am with Respighi’s; but here, again, there was a sense that the source material had more to do with what Alliage played than did what Holst had committed to paper.

Taken as a whole, one would say that this is an album that throws new light on the familiar. However, while many arrangements tend to distort, the Alliage treatments tend to suggest new ways of listening to pieces that we thought we knew “all too well” (as Leporello put it in response to Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s self-quotation in the second act of Don Giovanni). Even a selection as familiar as the lullaby that is the fourth song in Johannes Brahms’ Opus 49 collection assumes a new view of mother-child affection. This may not have been the view Brahms had in mind, but it is equally compelling.

SFGC to Celebrate Many Holidays in One Concert

San Francisco Girls Chorus in Davies (photograph provided by the San Francisco Girls Chorus)

This month the San Francisco Girls Chorus (SFGC) will continue its tradition of participating in the series of holiday concerts held in Davies Symphony Hall. However, the title of this year’s concert will be Greetings From All Seasons! Taken as a whole, the program will celebrate Christmas, Hanukkah, Chuseok, Holi, Chinese New Year, Maslenitsa, Nowruz and Dio de los Muertos. The selections will present music from more than a dozen countries, including the United States, Ireland, China, Haiti, Mexico, the Philippines and Korea.

The composers to be featured on the program will be Gustav Holst, William Byrd, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, Richard Danielpour, Eric Banks, George Gemora Hernandez, David Conte, and Bernice Johnson Reagon. Music Director Valérie Sainte-Agathe will lead not only the 300 SFGC choristers but several significant guest soloists, including soprano Michele Kennedy, who is an SFGC alumna. Instrumentalists will include Stanford University Organist Robert Huw Morgan, Peter Maund, percussionist for Ensemble Alcatraz, and Shira Kammen, playing a variety of instruments all associated with music from different pre-Classical periods. The audience will also be invited to sing along in selections of music for Christmas, Hanukkah, and New Year’s.

The main entrance to Davies is on Grove Street, halfway between Van Ness Avenue and Franklin Street. This year’s concert will begin at 7:30 p.m. on Monday, December 18. Tickets are being sold for $60 in Premier seating, $45 in Preferred seating, and $30 in the Second Tier. Tickets may be purchased in advance online through a City Box Office Web page which includes a seating chart with information of where tickets are currently available. The chart also shows the locations of wheelchair-accessible seats. In addition tickets may be ordered over the phone by calling City Box Office at 415-392-4400.

Outwater Evokes SFS Orchestral Colors at Their Finest

For last night’s Summer with the Symphony program presented by the San Francisco Symphony (SFS), Director of Summer Concerts Edwin Outwater prepared and conducted a program that flourished with a wide diversity of imaginative approaches to instrumentation. The major work on this relatively brief offering was Gustav Holst’s Opus 32 suite The Planets, in which each of the seven planets (other than Earth) was characterized not only thematically but also through its own unique approach to orchestral sonorities. The planets themselves were preceded by two short pieces devoted to the moon, the “Song to the Moon” aria from Antonín Dvořák’s Opus 114 opera Rusalka, sung by soprano Julie Adams, and André Caplet’s orchestration of the “Clair de lune” movement from Claude Debussy’s piano collection Suite bergamasque. The “overture” for the program departed from the heavens with John Adams’ down-to-earth fanfare “Short Ride in a Fast Machine.”

Holst was one of those British musicians with prolific output and scrupulous discipline. He was content to focus his attention on education and practice and was not prepared for the “smash hit” status of The Planets. If anything, he seemed to regret fame interfering with the day-to-day music activities that he cherished. The fact is that this suite has more than its share of razzle-dazzle effects; and Holst was so focused on pulling so many rabbits out of one hat that larger questions of architecture, both in each movement and over the entire suite, seem to have been neglected.

Nevertheless, it is music in which just about every instrument has an opportunity to display its virtues; and Holst managed to embody all of those virtues in a programmatic framework that appealed to popular, rather than merely academic, attention. I had never really appreciated how much detail had gone into this score until I had an opportunity to listen to it being prepared at an open rehearsal at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. As a result of that experience, I find myself aware of new aspects of the score’s many details each time I have an opportunity to listen to the piece in concert (which is not often). Last night it was clear that Outwater, too, was aware of those details and responded with assiduous care in making sure that every one of them was brought to audience attention. If Holst had the shortcoming of repeating himself too many times, Outwater responded by finding the most appropriate pace for each movement, duly dismissing just about every possible opportunity for tedium to rear its head.

Just as impressive was the amount of attention Outwater devoted to Caplet’s orchestration of Debussy. Caplet was a close friend of Debussy’s and clearly had a deep understanding of Debussy’s own compositions. However, it is important to note that, while Caplet probably understood the details of Debussy’s instrumentation techniques as well as Debussy did, he judiciously made sure that his setting of “Clair de lune” departed from just about all of those instrumentation techniques. Instead, Caplet chose his own palette of sonorities, which he felt would best suit Debussy’s thematic material; and the result almost amounts to an original composition in its own right. Under Outwater’s baton SFS revealed the full breadth of Caplet’s imagination, offering a listening experience with as much to discover as any of Holst’s suite movements.

The “Song to the Moon” may well be Dvořák’s most compelling piece of solo vocal work. It has a folk-like simplicity on the surface. However, beneath that surface one encounters the complexity of conflicting emotions from which the best fairy tales emerge. As Patricia Racette once observed in a master class, singing in Czech is no easy matter. However, those who know Julie Adams through her work with the San Francisco Opera know that one of her past efforts was the role of the ingenue Kristina in Leoš Janáček’s opera The Makropulos Affair. This translated into a solid command of the text from Dvořák’s libretto and a delivery of this poignant song that went straight to the heart.

As was already mentioned, “Short Ride in a Fast Machine” was the down-to-earth introduction to all the cosmic ventures that would follow. This, again, is music in which every note plays a critical role in one detail or another. Most fascinating is how John Adams managed to take gestures that have at least a vague sense of familiarity and warp them with slightly off-beat rhythmic patterns, often superposing several of those patterns.

All too often this music is played for the splashy effects of its surface structure. Outwater, on the other hand, clearly understood all of those rich details lying beneath the surface. However familiar this music may have been to many of the audience, last night’s performance disclosed so much that those who thought they knew the piece probably found it a journey of new discoveries.

Stunningly Delightful Merola Voices Undermined by Poor Direction

Last night in the Concert Hall of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, the first full-length fully-staged production in the 60th anniversary season of the Merola Opera Program was given the first of two performances. The program was a triple bill of one-act operas, each involving only three characters. The result was an opportunity to appreciate extended passages of deft solo and duo work by selected Merolini. These opportunities were relatively evenly distributed across three highly varied selections, Giovanni Battista Pergolesi’s “La serva padrona” (the servant mistress), Gustav Holst’s Mahabharata-based “Savitri,” and William Walton’s “The Bear,” based on a play of the same title by Anton Chekhov.

Where vocal talent was involved, it was clear that the audience was in good hands as soon as bass-baritone Daniel Noyola sang the opening notes of the Pergolesi opera. He clearly appreciated the buffo nature of Uberto, master of the title character, Serpina. Vocally, soprano Jana McIntyre’s Serpina could not have been a better match in that role. Both vocalists had a solid sense of pitch matched with the light delivery so necessary in comic opera from any century. Sadly, this sometimes involved prevailing over Christopher Ocasek’s conducting, which not only had lapses in its lightness of touch but also never quite realized that “da capo” does not mean “do it exactly the same way again.”

Matters were not helped by the decision of Director Peter Kazaras to pay more attention to the mimed role of the servant Vespone (bass-baritone David Weigel) than to exploring different ways to use the da capo structure to flesh out the personalities of the leading roles. Vespone came across as sort of an early ancestor of Harpo Marx; and, to his credit, Weigel’s mime technique was irresistible. Indeed, it was so irresistible that it frequently felt as if Kazaras was frustrated that both Serpina and Uberto kept getting in the way of his contrivances.

Holst’s opera fared much better. The narrative involves the young wife Savitri (soprano Kelsea Webb) outwitting Yama, the god of Death (Weigel, singing this time), to save the life of her husband Satyavan (tenor Addison Marlor). Kazaras used both the program book and the projected titles to establish a relationship between this narrative and the tremendous number of British casualties that arose from the Battle of the Somme during the First World War.

Visually, the action was translated from the mythic world of Mahabharata to an English country house. (Think Brideshead.) While Kazaras’ concept was ingenious, the extended opening in silence depicting Savitri writing at a vast table did little to establish her character. Ultimately, both male roles were much more sharply conceived and rendered, which sadly blunted the reason why Savitri’s character was strong enough to challenge Death and prevail. Weigel’s depiction of Death was the more compelling, even if he had more than a little trouble maintaining pitch in his opening a cappella solo.

Where “The Bear” was concerned, problems began with the opera itself. Working with Paul Dehn, Walton conceived a libretto which repeated itself far too often. The result was a sad disservice to Chekhov, whose original narrative was so compact that it fit both neatly and effectively into a half-hour episode of Have Gun – Will Travel (complete with commercial interruptions). Conceivably, Kazaras could have compensated for the text’s shortcomings by fleshing out the intersecting trajectories of the title character (Smirnov, sung by bass-baritone Cody Quattlebaum) and the “eternal widow” Popova (mezzo Ashley Dixon) with a bit of variety in the details. Both of these vocalists were impressive, but there was a limit to how many times one could sit through their exercising the same schtick over and over again.

SFS will Give Two Free Summer Concerts Next Month

As part of his duties as Director of Summer Concerts for the San Francisco Symphony (SFS), Edwin Outwater will lead the ensemble in two free performances next month.

The first of these will be an appearance at the annual Stern Grove Festival:

photograph by Scott Wall, courtesy of the San Francisco Symphony

The featured soloists will be soprano Jana McIntyre and baritone Hadleigh Adams. Each will sing an aria from Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s K. 620 opera The Magic Flute; and they will also sing the first-act duet “Bei Männern, welche Liebe fühlen” (in those who feel love). They will also participate in a medley of songs associated with the late French chanteuse Edith Piaf, arranged by Outwater.

The program will begin with the overture to The Magic Flute and will also include Mozart’s final symphony, K. 551 (“Jupiter”) in C major. The French side of the program will feature instrumental selections from Georges Bizet’s opera Carmen. The program will conclude with Maurice Ravel’s “La Valse.”

This concert will begin at 2 p.m. on Sunday, July 9. The entrance to Stern Grove is on the northwest corner where 19th Avenue crosses Sloat Boulevard. No tickets are required. Those planning to attend need to know that there will be no public parking area at Stern Grove for this event. Finding parking is extremely difficult, so all are encouraged to use public transportation. The 19th Avenue bus lines (23 and 28) both stop right at the entrance to Stern Grove. The K and M Muni lines stop one block to the east, where Sloat Boulevard meets St. Francis Circle.

The second free performance will mark a return to the James R. Herman Cruise Terminal on the waterfront. The featured soloist will be soprano Julie Adams, who will sing the “Song to the Moon” from Antonín Dvořák’s Opus 114 opera Rusalka. The first half of the program will feature music by American composers Aaron Copland (“Hoe-Down,” the concluding section of his music for Agnes de Mille’s one-act ballet “Rodeo”) and Leonard Bernstein (his overture for his musical Candide and the orchestral suite of dance music from the musical West Side Story). The program will also include André Caplet’s orchestration of the “Claire de Lune” movement from Claude Debussy’s Suite bergamasque and three of the movements from Gustav Holst’s orchestral suite The Planets, the sections for Mars, Venus, and Jupiter.

This concert will begin at noon on Sunday, July 23. The venue is located at Pier 27, across the Embarcadero from where it meets Lombard Street. Valet bike parking will be available, and those in the audience are encouraged to bring blankets and picnics. Meals will also be available from a selection of local food trucks. Once again no tickets will be required.

Casting Announced for Merola’s Triple Bill

As was announced at the end last month, the first full-length fully-staged production in the 60th anniversary season of the Merola Opera Program will be a triple bill of one-act operas. Each of those operas involves the reduced resources of either two or three vocalists. Casting has now been announced, so this is the time to review the specifics of the three offerings.

The first of these is Giovanni Battista Pergolesi’s “La serva padrona” (the servant mistress). This was originally written as a comic intermezzo for his three-act opera seria Il prigionier superbo (the proud prisoner), which was first performed in Naples in 1733. The intermezzo turned out to be far more successful than the opera seria and has subsequently enjoyed a life of its own. It involves the familiar battle of wits between a cunning young servant maid (soprano Jana McIntyre) and her aging master (bass-baritone Daniel Noyola).

The second opera will be Gustav Holst’s “Sāvitri,” based on an episode from the Sanskrit epic Mahabharata, known as the story of Savitri and Satyavan. It involves the young woman Savitri (soprano Kelsea Webb) and the foreseen death of her husband Satyavan (tenor Addison Marlor). On the day of his predicted death, Savitri accompanies Satyavan into the forest and there confronts Yama, the god of Death (bass-baritone David Weigel). Through her skill in outwitting Yama, the life of her husband is spared.

The final opera is William Walton’s “The Bear,” based on a play of the same title by Anton Chekhov. (Those of my generation may recall that this play was adapted for an episode of Have Gun Will Travel.) It involves the grieving widow Yelena Ivanovna Popova (mezzo Ashley Dixon) having to contend with Grigory Stepanovich Smirnov (baritone Cody Quattlebaum), one of her late husband’s boorish creditors. The result is a raucous battle of both wits and manners. Noyola will return to the stage to sing the role of Popova’s servant Luka.

All three of these operas will be staged by Peter Kazaras, currently Director of Opera and Music Theater at the University of California at Los Angeles. The conductor will be Christopher Ocasek, who is currently part of the San Francisco Opera conducting staff and has worked with Kazaras in the past. This production will be given two performances at 7:30 p.m. on Thursday, July 20, and 2 p.m. on Saturday, July 22.

These performances will take place in the Concert Hall of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, located at 50 Oak Street, a short walk from the Van Ness Muni station. Ticket prices will be $70 and $50. Tickets are being sold by the Box Office in the outer lobby of the War Memorial Opera House at 301 Van Ness Avenue, on the northwest corner of Grove Street. The Box Office may also be reached by telephoning 415-864-3330. The Box Office is open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Monday and from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., Tuesday through Friday. Tickets for both performances are also available online.

Tickets are Now on Sale for the Two Merola Opera Productions

As was announced this past February, the concert season of the 60th anniversary season of the Merola Opera Program will get under way at the beginning of July with the annual Schwabacher Summer Concert. This is a sufficiently popular event that all tickets have already been sold. This thus seems like an appropriate time to provide the dates and times of the two full-length fully-staged programs of the season, for which tickets are still available. The basic summary is still as it was announced in February:

1. Thursday, July 20, 7:30 p.m. and Saturday, July 22, 2 p.m.: The first full-length program will be a triple bill of one-act operas: Giovanni Battista Pergolesi’s “La serva padrona” (the servant mistress), Gustav Holst’s “Sāvitri,” and William Walton’s “The Bear.”
2. Thursday, August 3, 7:30 p.m. and Saturday August 5, 2 p.m.: The second full-length program will be Gioachino Rossini’s two-act opera La Cenerentola (Cinderella).

All performances will take place in the Concert Hall of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, located at 50 Oak Street, a short walk from the Van Ness Muni station. Ticket prices will be $70 and $50. Tickets are being sold by the Box Office in the outer lobby of the War Memorial Opera House at 301 Van Ness Avenue, on the northwest corner of Grove Street. The Box Office may also be reached by telephoning 415-864-3330. The Box Office is open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Monday and from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., Tuesday through Friday. Tickets for all four performances are also available online. Each of the programs has its own event page on the San Francisco Opera Web site, and the hyperlinks to those Web pages are given according to the specific dates above. Each of those event pages then has separate hyperlinks for purchasing tickets for the evening and matinee performances.

ZOFO will Return to Old First Concerts at the End of Next Month

ZOFO (an imaginative abbreviation for 20-Finger Orchestra) is the delightfully engaging four-hands-on-one-keyboard duo of Eva-Maria Zimmermann and Keisuke Nakagoshi:

courtesy of Old First Concerts

They have made regular visits to the Old First Concerts series at the Old First Presbyterian Church, and the next of those visits will take place in a little over a month’s time. The duo has blazed a bold new path for the four-hand repertoire by focusing on music from the present and preceding centuries, including regular commissions of new works.

The results of one of those commissions will be presented at next month’s recital. This will be the West Coast premiere of “Samudra Manthan,” named after an episode in Hindu mythology that translates as “the churning of the ocean milk.” That episode his to do with how the devas (gods) begin to lose their immortality as a result of a curse by the sage Durvasa. They summon their mortal enemies, the asuras (demons), to assist in churning the ocean to extract the amrit (nectar of immortality). This tale has been realized musically as a five-movement work by the Japanese composer Akira Nishimura. This “cosmic” theme will be complemented with a performance of Nakagoshi’s arrangement of Gustav Holst’s Opus 32 seven-movement suite The Planets, featured on the album ZOFORBIT: A Space Odyssey, which was released in May of 2014.

The Old First Presbyterian Church is located at 1751 Sacramento Street on the southeast corner of Van Ness Avenue. If purchased in advance online from an Old First Concerts event page, general admission will be $23 with a discounted rate of $18 for seniors aged 65 or older. Tickets for full-time students showing valid identification will be $5; and children aged twelve and under will still be admitted for free. There is also a discount available for those parking at the Old First Parking Garage at 1725 Sacramento Street, just up the street from the church.

Merola Opera Program Grants its First Commission to Jake Heggie and Gene Scheer

Yesterday morning the Merola Opera Program announced its first-ever commission of a new operatic work, which will be given its world premiere performance by Merola Opera Program artists in San Francisco in the summer of 2019. This year will mark the 60th anniversary season of the program; and, over the course of those 60 years, the training program, named in honor of the founder of the San Francisco Opera (SFO), Gaetano Merola, has cultivated an international reputation within the global community of those committed to making and performing operas. Every summer Merola participants are screened by SFO; and the best of them “graduate” to enter SFO’s Adler Fellowship Program, a major opportunity to perform in SFO productions. While most of the participants are vocalists, the program also admits several musicians to learn about coaching and accompaniment; and training in stage direction is also part of the curriculum.

All aspects of the program will come into play during the summer of 2019 to prepare the first production of the first opera to be commissioned by the Merola Opera Program. The commission has been granted to composer Jake Heggie and librettist Gene Scheer. The title of the opera that they will create will be If I Were You, the English translation of the title of the 1947 novel by Julien Green, Si j’étais vous…. Green was born to American parents in Paris in 1900, and all of his writing was in French. That includes nineteen volumes of a diary covering the period from 1919 to 1998, a four-volume autobiography, a prodigious number of novels (including a trilogy entitled Dixie that reflected Green’s sympathy for the Confederacy during the Civil War), and at least one screenplay. That screenplay will probably interest opera lovers, since it was for the French film La dame de pique (the queen of spades), an adaptation by director Léonard Keigel of the short story by Alexander Pushkin that inspired Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s opera of the same name. (Keigel decided not to use Tchaikovsky’s music in his film, preferring works by Franz Schubert instead.)

For its time Si j’étais vous… was a pioneering effort to deal with the mind-body problem that had become a major area of study by twentieth-century philosophers, as well as Carl Jung’s approach to the relationship between behavior and personality through his theory of archetypes. In Green’s novel the protagonist, Fabian Hart, makes a deal with the devil through which he is granted the power to transfer his soul into the physical bodies of others. This poses an intriguing problem in creating an opera. The bodies “invaded” by Hart’s soul can be distinguished by different vocal ranges; but that means that each singer will have to distinguish when that character is “inhabited” by Hart’s soul and when it is not. The result may well entail some fascinating new approaches to how character traits may be captured in music, regardless of the words that are being sung.

The Merola Opera Program also used this announcement to outline the plans for the coming summer season. Participants will include seven sopranos, four mezzos, four tenors, two baritones, and six bass-baritones, as well as five pianists serving as apprentice coaches and one apprentice stage director. In addition, all public events have been announced. Further details will be forthcoming for all of them. However, for save-the-date purposes, the basic plan for the summer events in San Francisco will be as follows:

• Sunday, June 11, 8 p.m.: The 60th Anniversary Gala and Concert will take place with performances given in Herbst Theatre.
• Thursday, July 6, 7:30 p.m.: The annual Schwabacher Summer Concert of staged scenes will take place at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music (SFCM).
• Thursday, July 20, 7:30 p.m. and Saturday, July 22, 2 p.m.: The first full-length program, performed at SFCM, will be a triple bill of one-act operas: Giovanni Battista Pergolesi’s “La serva padrona” (the servant mistress), Gustav Holst’s “Sāvitri,” and William Walton’s “The Bear.”
• Thursday, August 3, 7:30 p.m. and Saturday August 5, 2 p.m.: The second full-length program, also performed at SFCM, will be Gioachino Rossini’s two-act opera La Cenerentola (Cinderella).
• Saturday, August 19, 7:30 p.m.: The season will conclude with the annual Merola Grand Finale at the War Memorial Opera House, followed by a reception.