A Northern Lights Festival in Detroit

Yesterday evening the Detroit Symphony Orchestra presented its latest live-streamed performance. Once again, due to the shift in time zones, my wife and I settled down to dinner while viewing the concert through the YouTube app on our living room television set. The title of the program was Northern Lights Festival, presenting three Scandinavian composers. The ensemble was led by Principal Guest Conductor Tabita Berglund.

The first of those composers was Einojuhani Rautavaara. “Cantus Arcticus” is also known as “Concerto for Birds and Orchestra,” since the full forces of the orchestral ensemble are augmented with recordings of birdsong. (The composer’s source was the sound-effects collection of Finnish Radio.) There was no questioning the uniqueness of sonorities in the interplay of the birdsongs with the instrumental sonorities. Nevertheless, it did not take the composer long for establishing that interplay in the mind of the attentive listener. After that, the composition began to overstay its welcome for a duration that gradually became intolerable.

Johan Dalene, violin soloist for the performance of the Sibelius violin concerto conducted by Tabita Berglund (screen shot from last night’s YouTube’s video feed of the performance)

Fortunately, the composer Jean Sibelius (who died in 1957 at the ripe old age of 91) had a much better command when it came to sustaining attention. His D minor violin concerto was completed in 1904 with subsequent revisions in 1905. The music is particularly demanding on the soloist, but Johan Dalene brought a freshness to this music that has received a lot of attention from a lot of violinists.

The second half of the program was devoted entirely to music that Edvard Grieg composed for Henrik Ibsen’s verse-play Peer Gynt. The play is in five acts, and Grieg’s original score consisted of 26 movements. Berglund began with the prelude music for the first act, given the title “At the Wedding.” This was followed by the two suites extracted from the full score, played in reverse order with the four movements of Opus 55 preceding the four in Opus 46. For many, this meant that the final selection was the most familiar.

The United States is a significant distance from Scandinavia, but yesterday’s live-streamed performance definitely established a “meeting of two worlds!”

SFP Art of Song Series to Conclude Next Month

Soprano Miah Persson (from the Web page for tickets to her performance)

The final vocalist in the Art of Song Series will be Swedish soprano Miah Persson. She will be accompanied at the piano by Magnus Svensson. The title of their program will be Nordic Songs.

I suspect that most readers will not be familiar with this repertoire. The composers of the songs will be, in “order of appearance,” Wilhelm Stenhammar, Gösta Nystroem, Jean Sibelius, Emil Sjögren, Ture Rangström, and Edvard Grieg. By way of disclaimer, I can confess that my only encounter with songs by Sibelius came when I was writing about The Sibelius Edition, an entire account of the Sibelius catalog released in thirteen multi-CD volumes. Where Grieg is concerned, the last time I wrote about his vocal works was at the end of April of 2019 as part of my account of the Warner Classics’ 13-CD collection entitled Grieg: Piano, Orchestral & Vocal Works, Chamber Music.

The performance will begin at 7:30 p.m. on Thursday, April 9. The venue will be Herbst Theatre, which many (most?) readers know is located in the heart of the Civic Center at 401 Van Ness Avenue, on the southwest corner of McAllister Street. Ticket prices will be $70, $60, and $50. As those readers probably also know, SFP has created a Web page for purchasing those tickets, which includes an account of all the selections to be performed.

Spoleto Festival USA Launches Album Series

In the early summer of 1958, composer Gian Carlo Menotti launched the Festival dei Due Mondi (festival of the two worlds) in Spoleto, Italy. He is best known for the one-act Christmas opera Amahl and the Night Visitors, commissioned by the National Broadcasting Company (NBC) to be broadcast live on television on December 24, 1951. For the better part of my secondary school years, I would watch that performance annually. In 1977 Menotti launched a second festival in Charleston, South Carolina, naming it, appropriately, Spoleto Festival USA.

Over the course of my life, I have known about these festivals in name only. I had written a term paper about Menotti in secondary school; but, by the time I began my freshman year (1963) at the Massachusetts Instutue of Technology, he had pretty much faded into a figure of the past, making Charleston an effort to revive attention. Nevertheless, the festival has outlived its founder, who died on February 1, 2007. While I knew about the festival from time to time by leafing through magazines, I never encountered any specifics about the music being performed.

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

A little over a month ago, I learned that Phenotypic Recordings would release a series of albums documenting performances at last year’s Spoleto Festival USA. The first of these albums will be released tomorrow with two more releases to follow in April and May, respectively. The title of tomorrow’s release is Live from Spoleto 2025: Orchestra. The Spoleto Festival USA Orchestra is conducted by Timothy Myers, and the concerto soloist is violinist Alexi Kenney.

The concerto is Jean Sibelius’ Opus 47 in D minor, first composed in 1904 and revised in 1905. The “overture” for the program is the world premiere recording of “Stellar,” composed by Nigerian-American Shawn Okpebholo. The “symphony” is the suite of music extracted from Richard Strauss’ opera Der Rosenkavalier. The origin of this suite is somewhat uncertain, but the Wikipedia page for the opera suggests that it was probably arranged by conductor Artur Rodziński, who first performed it with the New York Philharmonic in October of 1944.

“Stellar” is a vigorous burst of energy lasting less than three minutes. Sadly, it is the only track on the album that does not overstay its welcome. Mind you, the Rosenkavalier music was given a fair shake; but, for anyone that has experienced and enjoyed the entire opera, it does little more than revive pleasant memories. Similarly, there is no arguing with Kenney’s violin skills; but, under Myers’ baton, the performance comes across as just another visit to the Sibelius concerto.

Whether the April and May albums of chamber music performances from Spoleto will make a more lasting impression remains to be seen.

Engaging Mahler From SFS Youth Orchestra

The San Francisco Symphony Youth Orchestra on the stage of Davies Symphony Hall (from the Web page for yesterday’s performance)

Yesterday afternoon the San Francisco Symphony (SFS) Youth Orchestra presented the fourth of the five programs prepared for this season. The second half of the program was particularly ambitious, devoted entirely to Gustav Maher’s fourth symphony, composed in the key of G major. In many ways this may be his most “affable” symphony, with each of the four movements having its own upbeat rhetoric. The last of these brings in a soprano, singing a text from the Des Knaben Wunderhorn extolling the virtues of “the heavenly life.”

Conductor Radu Paponiu had clearly internalized the durational scope of each of the four movements, each of which has its own story to tell. Unfortunately, in the final movement Hannah Cho’s soprano voice was too weak to hold its own against Mahler’s rich instrumentation. Mind you, Mahler himself had scaled back his resources to accommodate the soprano line. However, Cho could not rise above the ensemble to say her piece. Whether this was a problem with her own vocal strength or Paponiu’s control of dynamic levels must be left as a choice to be made by the attentive listener!

The intensity of Mahler’s symphony was balanced at the beginning of the program by Jean Sibelius’ best-known tone poem, “Finlandia.” The relationship between conductor and ensemble could not have been better. The music is a panorama of changing dispositions, and Paponiu knew who to evoke each of the moods from his attentive ensemble. Jennifer Higdon’s “blue cathedral” tone poem had its own panorama, with an opening progression recalling Aaron Copland’s rhetoric. Nevertheless, it had little to offer the attentive listener other than its overall brevity.

Taken as a whole, the program fared well through the chemistry of Paponiu’s engagement with his ensemble, making the afternoon another engaging encounter with the “next generation” of orchestral musicians.

Canellakis Links Dvořák, Prokofiev, and Sibelius

I look forward to Karina Canellakis’ visits to the podium of the San Francisco Symphony because she always seems to find imaginative approaches to preparing her programs. Her last visit in April of last year offered a coupling of Richard Strauss with Maurice Ravel, not the sort of “balancing act” one tends to expect! This week the second half of her program consisted entirely of Jean Sibelius’ Opus 22, a composition of four “Legends,” each based on one of the epic poems collected in the Kalevala, a collection of tales from Finnish, Karelian and Ingrian folklore and mythology. The first half began with Antonín Dvořák’s Opus 66, given the title “Scherzo capriccioso.” This “overture” was followed by the concerto selection, Sergei Prokofiev’s Opus 26 (third) piano concerto in C major with Alexandre Kantorow as soloist.

Conductor Serge Koussevitzky, during his tenure as conductor with the Boston Symphony Orchestra (from Wikimedia Commons, no known copyright restrictions)

Opus 26 tends to be the most affable of the five Prokofiev piano concertos, which is not to say it shies away from bold strokes. It was completed after his move to the United States and was championed by Serge Koussevitzky, then conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. There are no end of technical demands on the soloist, and Kantorow rose to the challenges of all of them. Prokofiev was clearly as interested in the diversity of instrumental sonorities as he was in the technical keyboard challenges, and Canellakis could not have done a better job in giving all of those sonorities their due. Having established the full scope of his technical capabilities, Kantorow then selected, as his encore, Franz Liszt’s transcription of “Isoldes Liebestod,” the final scene of Richard Wagner’s opera Tristan und Isolde. This probably went down well with those (like myself) that had enjoyed the performance of Parsifal at the San Francisco Opera!

For those acquainted with Dvořák’s music, Opus 66 was probably familiar. Canellakis gave it a vigorous account, giving the evening an energetic start. This was an excellent example of the composer’s capacity for instrumentation at its richest. Canellakis knew how to balance the full breadth of those sonorities every step of the way. Unless I am mistaken, this was my first contact with the music in a concert setting; and there was much more to hear than could be delivered by any recording!

The second half of the program was devoted to Jean Sibelius’ Opus 22 Lemminkäinen Suite, known more accurately as Four Legends from the Kalevala. Lemminkäinen is the heroic character of the Kalevala, a collection of Finnish folklore, myths, and epic poetry. The most familiar of the “legends” is the second movement, “The Swan of Tuonela.” This piece is the envy of English horn players, and Russ de Luna could not have given it a better account, even if the mythic context is a somewhat morbid one. Sadly, this is the only one of the four movements that says its piece in just the right duration of time. The others tend to overstay their welcome. Whether or not this is also the case for the texts that inspired the music will be left as an exercise for the reader!

TwoSet Violin Finally Comes to Davies

Brett Yang and Eddy Chen taking a bow with their pianist Sophie Druml (photograph by Cecilia Tan, from The Strad)

Some readers may recall that the TwoSet Violin duo of violinists Brett Yang and Eddy Chen was scheduled to perform in Davies Symphony Hall during last July’s Summer with the Symphony season. That debut recital had to be postponed, but last night they finally made it to Davies to perform their Sacrilegious Games program. The “sacrilege” was, of course, their approach to the violin repertoire. The result was an engaging evening of physical comedy recalling the past antics of Peter Schickele and Victor Borge. Indeed, their (intentionally) delayed appearance almost served as an homage to Schickele’s frantic opening shtik.

In this case, however, the waiting was ameliorated by the appearance of their piano accompanist, Sophie Druml, who took the stage right on time. She warmed-up the audience with an arrangement (her own?) of the last of the “24 Caprices for Solo Violin” by Niccolò Paganini. This was followed by music from the “Winter” concerto from Antonio Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons involving a charade of violin-playing.

Of course both of the violinists had a solid command of technique. When they were not poking fun at the classics in all directions, Chen delivered a thoroughly engaging solo account of the opening passage in Jean Sibelius’ Opus 47 violin concerto, and Yang was just as rock-solid in his delivery of Camille Saint-Saëns Opus 20 “Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso.” However, the heart of the program was the diversity of their takes on comedy. Most memorable, probably, was when both of them played the last of the Paganini Caprices while spinning hula hoops. The most ambitious undertaking, however, was probably taking “La campanella” (the theme of the final movement of Paganini’s second violin concerto) and performing it in a series of styles as a journey through music history: baroque, classical, romantic, twentieth-century, jazz, and K-pop.

It’s nice to know that Davies can be just as welcoming to physical comedy as it is to “serious music!”

SFS: Strauss and Sibelius Prevail over New Work

Last night in Davies Symphony Hall, Esa-Pekka Salonen led the penultimate program in his tenure as Music Director of the San Francisco Symphony (SFS). The program was framed by the two best-known tone poems by Richard Strauss, beginning with “Don Juan” (Opus 20) and concluding with “Till Eulenspiegel's Merry Pranks” (Opus 28). Opus 20 was followed by Jean Sibelius’ final symphony, Opus 105 (the seventh), a single-movement composition in the key of C major. The second half of the program began with “Rewilding” by Gabriella Smith, composed on an SFS commission.

Taken as a whole, the occasion provided the perfect opportunity to appreciate Salonen’s mastery of detail and his chemistry with the ensemble. The two Strauss works, both composed late in the nineteenth century, have sustained their war horse reputation well over a century later. Both of them exploit the affordances of a large symphonic ensemble. Salonen clearly appreciated all of those affordances and guided the entire SFS ensemble in such a way that any attentive listener could appreciate them just as readily.

The Sibelius symphony, on the other hand, is seldom encountered, perhaps because the uninterrupted flow of his five movements is unabashedly enigmatic, even though the key signature is C major. My last account of this music involved the first recording of the work ever made, which was by Serge Koussevitzky conducting the Boston Symphony Orchestra in 1939. The last time Salonen conducted the work in California was during his tenure with the Los Angeles Philharmonic. Last night he knew how to make every note count, and every member of the ensemble was there with him to make sure that even the subtlest of gestures would be within the “auditory grasp” of anyone prepared to listen.

Sadly, the weakest offering was also the most recent. Smith had previously composed “Tumblebird Contrails” in 2014. It was selected for the Nobel Prize Concert in 2023, when Salonen conducted it with the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic. It was then performed by SFS later that year, following up on a performance by the SFS Youth Orchestra in March of 2022. I was fortunate enough to attend that performance and wrote the following:

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.

Were I to substitute “Rewilding” for “Tumblebird Contrails” in the above text, the message would remain the same.

Cover design for Littoral (from the Recordings Web page on Cheryl E. Leonard’s Web site)

A little less than a year ago, I was fortunate enough to encounter composer Cheryl E. Leonard presenting a program entitled Antarctica: Music from the Ice at the Golden Gate Valley Branch of the San Francisco Public Library. Leonard had an uncanny knack for taking field recordings and turning them into music, and I took great pleasure writing an article about two of her albums. Little did I know how high the bar had been set in the genre of creating music inspired by natural sounds. Sadly, that bar was too high for Smith to mount, at least on the basis of her approach to “Tumblebird Contrails.”

Stasevska Returns: More Sibelius and a Premiere

Conductor Dalia Stasevska (from her Web site)

Finnish conductor Dalia Stasevska made her debut with the San Francisco Symphony almost exactly two years ago, at the end of April of 2023. Her program emphasized Finnish composer Jean Sibelius with Joshua Bell as soloist in a performance of the violin concerto (Opus 47 in D minor), followed by the second symphony (Opus 43 in D major) for the second half of the program. Last night she returned to Davies Symphony Hall, concluding her program with another Sibelius symphony, Opus 82, the fifth in E-flat major. The first half of the program presented the world premiere of “Before we fall,” composed for cello and orchestra by Icelandic composer Anna Thorvaldsdottir with Johannes Moser as soloist. The program began with Ralph Vaughan Williams’ “Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis,” composed for three string ensembles, a large one on stage, a smaller one in one of the Terrace areas, and a string quartet.

“Before we fall” was the most disappointing of the selections. The program book included two extended quotations from Thorvaldsdottir. Sadly, these said more about the music than the music could say about itself. Mind you, there were many impressive demands on Moser’s cello skills, and he handled them all confidently and adeptly. Nevertheless, there was little to mine from the engagement between soloist and ensemble; and, as is often the case in such situations, the entire affair outstayed its welcome long before the halfway mark of the overall 25-minute duration.

Once again, the listening experience was far more satisfying through the previous century than with the recent past. The Vaughan Williams and Sibelius selections were composed within five years of each other (1910 and 1915, respectively). They could not have been more different; but, under Stasevska’s attentive control, they made for thoroughly engaging “bookends.”

Her conducting skills could not have been better in balancing the three ensembles in the Tallis fantasia. Where Sibelius was concerned, it was a matter of pace and phrasing. There is almost a sense of stream-of-consciousness meandering that pervades the three movements and the final coda feels almost as if it had been deliberately conceived to provoke. One wonders just how this music should be interpreted, but Stasevska seems to have found the path to delivering an account that let the music speak for itself.

To be fair, however, Sibelius composed this symphony in 1915. He revised it one year later, and revised it again in 1919. (When the Sibelius Edition of recordings was released, it included both the 1915 and 1919 versions.) Stasevska opted for the original one from 1915. Personally, I appreciated her making that choice!

SFS to Present Thorvaldsdottir World Premiere

Conductor Dalia Stasevska (photograph by Veikko Kähkönen, from an SF Classical Voice article from January 22, 2024)

Next month will see the last of the three San Francisco Symphony (SFS) concerts of the season to feature a “Snapshot” visiting artist. That artist will be conductor Dalia Stasevska; and the program she has prepared will feature the world premiere performance of “Before we fall,” a cello concerto by Anna Thorvaldsdottir, composed on an SFS commission. The soloist for this performance will be cellist Johannes Moser.

The entire program will follow the usual overture-concerto-symphony format (at least somewhat in a manner of speaking). The “overture” preceding the concerto will be Ralph Vaughan Williams’ “Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis. This was scored for double string orchestra with string quartet, allowing for many inventive textures in the overall sonority. The second half of the program will be devoted entirely to Jean Sibelius’ Opus 82 (fifth) symphony in E-flat major, perhaps best known for its enigmatic conclusion. (Some readers may recall that Stasevska made her SFS debut almost exactly a year ago with an all-Sibelius program.)

As most readers probably already know, this performance will take place in Davies Symphony Hall. It will begin at 7:30 p.m. on Thursday, May 15, Friday, May 16, and Saturday, May 17. The address is 201 Van Ness Avenue; but it occupies the entire block with Van Ness to the west, Franklin Street to the east, Hayes Street to the south, and Grove Street to the north. The entrance is on the Grove Street side, which is also where tickets may be purchased at the Box Office. Tickets are currently available at prices from $30 in the Terraces to $179 in the Orchestra and Boxes. A Web page has been created for online purchases. Tickets may also be purchased by calling the SFS Box Office at 415-864-6000.

David Oistrakh on Warner: the First DVD

Having now accounted for all of the CDs in the Warner Remastered Edition box set collection of recordings of performances by Russian violinist David Oistrakh, I can now turn to the first of the three DVDs that remain in the box. This is an assembly of filmed accounts of Oistrakh performances curated by Bruno Monsaingeon and compiled on a DVD entitled The Oistrakh Collection. As might be guessed, there is a fair amount of variation in the quality of the video contents, matched by the variation in accuracy of when the content was created.

David Oistrakh as soloist in a performance of Johannes Brahms’ violin concerto on a recording conducted by Otto Klemperer (from a Web page on The Listeners’ Club)

The leading figure on this album is, as might be expected, Ludwig van Beethoven, with accounts of both orchestral and chamber music. The Opus 61 concerto is complemented with concertos by Johannes Brahms, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, and Jean Sibelius, along with an excerpt from Édouard Lalo’s Opus 21, “Symphonie espagnole,” performed with only piano accompaniment by Vladimir Yampolsky. Towards the end of the CD, there is a track of one of Fritz Kreisler’s most familiar compositions, his “Liebesleid;” and the “program” concludes with “Laberinto armonico” (harmonic labyrinth), the capriccio that begins the last of the twelve concertos that Pietro Locatelli collected in L’arte del violino, arranged for solo violin and orchestra by Gennady Rozhdestvensky.

Taken as a whole, the DVD provides an engaging profile of the breadth of Oistrakh’s command of repertoire. Mind you, the Sibelius concerto stands out as the most adventurous selection on the album. However, when we consider how much of Oistrakh’s repertoire is rooted in traditions of earlier centuries, the fact that he took on the Opus 47 at all merits a star in his heavenly crown! For my part, however, the high point of the collection was the opportunity to both view and listen to Sviatoslav Richter accompanying Oistrakh in the last two movements of Ludwig van Beethoven’s Opus 12 (third) sonata in E-flat major.

Mind you, I am not sure that video does very much to enhance the listening experience; but I can still confess to enjoying the interplay between Oistrakh and Richter!

David Oistrakh’s “Concertos++” Recordings

David Oistrakh (photograph taken at a 1954 performance in Dresden, from Wikimedia Commons, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Germany license)

In continuing my examination of the 31 CDs classified as Premières, Rarities & Live Performances in the Warner Remastered Edition box set collection of recordings of performances by Russian violinist David Oistrakh, the above “Concerto++” was conceived to account for not only the concerto genre but also chamber music with piano. (String quartets will be examined in the next article.) This accounts for seven CDs, three for chamber music and the other four for the concertante genre. The timeline is a wide one, with Johann Sebastian Bach at one end and Paul Hindemith at the other. As with my previous account of the “Rarities” category, I shall try to account for this one through categories, all of which are relatively modest in size.

The largest of those categories accounts for performances of music by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. This consists of one album of sonatas (with two different accompanists, Lev Oborin and Vladimir Yampolsky), a “concertante and chamber music” album, and one that couples a concerto (K. 218 in D major) with concertos of Jean Sibelius and Henri Vieuxtemps, all with piano accompaniment. Personally, I was satisfied with the light touch that Oistrakh takes to Mozart, particularly when performing with his two accompanists, Lev Oborin and Vladimir Yampolsky. He clearly had a playful side, which is less evident in the more “serious” performances in this collection.

His Bach repertoire consists of four duo sonatas (BWV 1015 in A major, BWV 1016 in E major, BWV 1018 in F minor, and BWV 1019 in G major) and two concertos (BWV 1041 in A minor and the “Brandenburg” BWV 1049 in G major). These may not be “historically informed;” but they are given clear and expressive accounts that would have satisfied listeners in the Fifties. Where the nineteenth century is concerned, I was particularly glad to encounter Ernest Chausson’s Opus 21, his “Concert” scored for violin, piano, and string quartet. I also appreciated Oistrakh’s interest in Claude Debussy, even if he could only approach his music through violin-piano arrangements by Alexandre Roelens.

In many respects, this is a “usual suspects” collection with a certain nineteenth-century bias towards Max Bruch, represented by both his Opus 26 (first) concerto in G minor and his more familiar Opus 46 “Scottish Fantasy” in E-flat major. With the notable exception of Hindemith, many listeners will associate this collection with the repertoire of Jascha Heifetz; but that should be no surprise. The two of them were contemporaries born in Russia; but Oistrakh remained in Russia, eventually to be honored as a People’s Artist of the USSR  in 1953. Heifetz may have the broader recording legacy, but there is still much to be gained in examining Oistrakh’s “alternative” perspective on repertoire.

David Oistrakh on Warner: Twentieth Century

In his Warner Remastered Edition box set, David Oistrakh’s attention to the twentieth century was about as modest as his late Romantic recordings. Readers may recall that this earlier category focused primarily on Johannes Brahms with two recordings each of two of his compositions. The good news about the twentieth-century repertoire is that there are no overlaps across the eight CDs.

Croatian conductor Lovro von Matačić (photographer unknown, from Wikimedia Commons, made available under the Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication)

As might be guessed, the composer to receive the most attention is Sergei Prokofiev, accounting for three of those CDs. He is represented by both of his violin concertos, Opus 19 in D major and Opus 63 in G minor, as well as his Opus 94bis (second) sonata in D major. Both of the concertos were recorded in London, the first with the London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Lovro von Matačić and the second with the Philharmonia Orchestra led by Alceo Galliera. Both of these are solid accounts, even if the conductors are not familiar to current listeners. The pianist for the sonata was Oistrakh’s usual accompanist, Vladimir Yampolsky. The CD of the first concerto begins with Max Bruch’s Opus 26 (first) concerto in G minor, making for a decidedly engaging compare-and-contrast experience.

The collection also affords a “Khachaturian family encounter.” Oistrakh’s account of Aram Khachaturian’s violin concerto in D minor was recorded with the Philharmonia Orchestra under the composer’s baton. More interesting is that the composer’s nephew Karen is included in this selection with a recording of his Opus 1 violin sonata (again with Yampolsky). There are two Russian composers of note, the earlier of which is Sergei Taneyev, whose Opus 28 Suite de concert is performed by the Philharmonia Orchestra under the baton of Nikolai Malko. More familiar is Dmitri Shostakovich, with his Opus 99 (first) concerto in A minor, performed by the New Philharmonia Orchestra led by Maxim Shostakovich.

Aside from Bruch, the only departure from the Russian repertoire is Jean Sibelius. Oistrakh performs his Opus 47 concerto in D minor with the Stockholm Festival Orchestra conducted by Sixten Ehrling. This is music that very much has a voice of its own. One might even say it deliberately resists Russian efforts to influence Finnish life. Oistrakh gives the concerto a solid account, but it would be fair to say that I have encountered more passionate interpretations from violinists more sympathetic to Finland than they were to Russia!

“All San Francisco Concert” Anniversary

Last night in Davies Symphony Hall, San Francisco Symphony (SFS) marked the 45th anniversary of its All San Francisco Concert. This is the annual event that has more to do with the citizens of San Francisco (many of whom are not necessarily fans of classical music) than with the more “elite” concert-goers. As I previously observed, it was conceived for those “who work tirelessly to make the Bay Area a more just and equitable place.” Those working for Bay Area nonprofit, social services, and grassroots organizations are offered admission for only $12.

The program itself presented works by four composers whose names were likely familiar to most (if not all) of the audience. The first half coupled Jean Sibelius and Edvard Grieg, each represented by a suite extracted from a longer composition. The second half was devoted to “concert music” by two twentieth-century French composers, Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel. Esa-Pekka Salonen conducted what amounted to full SFS resources, including harpist Katherine Siochi serving as soloist in the Debussy selection.

The chromatic harp built by Henry Greenway on display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York (photograph donated to Wikimedia Commons as part of a project by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, made available under the Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication)

The full title of that piece was “Danses pour harpe chromatique avec accompagnement d'orchestre d'instruments à cordes” (dances for chromatic harp with string orchestra accompaniment). My only encounter with a chromatic harp has been in a museum. The most familiar design can be seen in the above photograph. The instrument consists of two planes, corresponding to the white and black keys of a piano, respectively; and Debussy probably conceived his score with regard to how a pair of hands could deal with such a structure.

These days the music is almost always performed on the usual pedal harp. I have to confess that I really appreciated the view afforded by my seat last night. Since I am relatively familiar with the music, I was able to coordinate Siochi’s fingerwork with the sonorities I was expecting. She was accompanied only by the string section, and Salonen knew exactly how to capture the dance-like qualities of the score. This is music that deserves far more attention than it tends to get. The last SFS performance took place in May of 2006, around the end of my Silicon Valley days, when then SFS harpist Douglas Rioth played it with Edward Outwater conducting.

By way of contrast, the second of the two suites that Maurice Ravel extracted from his score for “Daphnis et Chloé,” the “symphonie chorégraphique” choreographed by Michel Fokine for Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, can definitely claim warhorse status. It was taken from a one-act ballet in three sections and basically accounts for the final section. Ravel, of course, had a prodigious command of the wide spectrum of sonorities that he could summon from an orchestral ensemble; and there is no shortage of those sonorities in this particular suite. This was one of those occasions when it was clear that both the conductor and his ensemble were having a good time, and the final cadence erupted with enthusiastic approval from the audience.

The program began with a suite that was not as structured around a narrative. Jean Sibelius’ Opus 11, Karelia Suite consists of three movements extracted from his Karelia Music. As Lyle Watson observed in his Musical Quarterly article, the collection was conceived as a reflection on the folk music of Karelia without necessarily appropriating it. The suite is relative short in duration (usually clocking in at less that a quarter of an hour); but each of the three movements explores is own unique reflections on folk styles.

This suite was followed by another, more familiar, one: the first of the two suites that Edvard Grieg extracted from the music he wrote for a performance of Henrik Ibsen’s five-act play Peer Gynt. All four of the movements are familiar to most concert-goers; and the last of them, “In the Hall of the Mountain King,” is an unabashed roof-raiser. Salonen knew exactly how to built up the intensity of that movement, making for roaring approval from the audience at the final cadence.

Last night was the first performance of the new season, even though the “Opening Gala” is still a week and a half in the future! As a result, this was my first encounter with All San Francisco; and I think it would be fair to say that the chemistry between audience and orchestra involved more attention to the latter than I have seen in past Gala occasions. Last night’s audience clearly appreciated that the occasion was all about the music, and their enthusiastic response made it clear just how significant this ensemble is to our city.

SFS: 2024 All San Francisco Concert

This past March, when San Francisco Symphony (SFS) released its first announcement of plans for the 2024–25 season, I promised readers, “Specifics for the All San Francisco Concert will be announced later this year.” “Later” turned out to be this past Thursday. For those unfamiliar with the event, it was launched by SFS about 45 years ago to celebrate those “who work tirelessly to make the Bay Area a more just and equitable place.” Tickets are sold for the event at the subsidized price of $12 for Bay Area nonprofit, social services, and grassroots organizations.

As of this coming Thursday, a limited number of these tickets will be available to the general public at that same $12 price. On that date, this event will be added to the Calendar Web site for SFS; and tickets may be purchased online through that site. They will also be sold at the Davies Symphony Hall Box Office at 201 Van Ness Avenue, on the southwest corner of Grove Street. Purchases may also be made by calling 415-864-6000. The performance will take place in Davies at 7:30 p.m. on Thursday, September 12.

Harpist Katherine Siochi performing at the 11th USA International Harp Competition at Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana, 2019 (photograph by James Brosher, from the Gallery on her Web site)

As tends to be the case, the program will tend to favor familiar offerings. The earliest work on the program will be the first of the suites that Edvard Grieg compiled from the incidental music he composed for the Henrik Ibsen’s play Peer Gynt. This will follow another suite, which will open the program, Jean Sibelius’ Opus 11 three-movement Karelia Suite. The second half of the program will shift from Scandinavia to France. It will conclude with yet another suite: the second of two extracted from the “choreographic symphony” that Maurice Ravel composed for Michel Fokine, “Daphnis et Chloé.” This will be preceded by the “Dances for Harp and String Orchestra” by Claude Debussy. SFS Principal Harp Katherine Siochi will make her SFS solo debut with this performance. Music Director Esa-Pekka Salonen will conduct.

Rodziński and the Cleveland Orchestra

In April of 2021, I wrote about the Sony Classical release of sixteen CDs covering the complete recordings of Artur Rodziński leading the New York Philharmonic for Columbia Masterworks. Rodziński was appointed Music Director of the Philharmonic in 1943 and held that position for four years. Prior to that appointment he served as Music Director of the Cleveland Orchestra, beginning in 1933; and, during that tenure, he visited the Philharmonic podium on several occasions (one of which happened to be the date of the attack on Pearl Harbor).

Tomorrow Sony Classical will release the collection of recordings that Rodziński made in Cleveland (with one slight, but significant, exception). This is a box set of thirteen CDs; and, for those that cannot wait, Amazon.com has created the Web page for processing pre-orders. The parenthesis applies to the final CD in the collection, whose first three tracks do not involve Rodziński. They account for a recording of Arnold Schoenberg’s Opus 36 violin concerto with Louis Krasner as soloist. However, the performance is conducted by Dmitri Mitropoulos leading the New York Philharmonic.

When this recording was released as an LP, the “flip side” was of Krasner performing the Alban Berg violin concerto; and for that recording Rodziński conducted the Cleveland. Both of those recordings are on that final CD along with Rodziński conducting Nathan Milstein in a performance of Felix Mendelssohn’s Opus 64 violin concerto in E minor. I am not going to quibble with the content of this CD, since I enjoyed many hours of listening to the Schoenberg-Berg LP during my student days!

Sadly, Amazon did not take the trouble to provide the track listing for all thirteen of the CDs. Fortunately, the Presto Classical Limited Web page does account for all of the tracks; but it does not provide the “boundaries” that define which tracks are grouped on each of the thirteen CDs! For the most part the repertoire is familiar. Of greatest interest, however, is that the collection includes two symphonies by Dmitri Shostakovich, his Opus 10 (first) symphony in F minor, composed during his student days, and the Opus 47 (fifth) symphony in D minor, which was the one that received the most attention during my student days!

I was also pleasantly struck by the inclusion of Jean Sibelius’ Opus 82 (fifth) symphony in E-flat major. The coda of this symphony’s final movement is one of the great mind-benders in music history, significant enough that the Wikipedia page accounted for the piano reduction of those critical nine measures. In that context it is worth recalling that the Philharmonic collection includes the Opus 63 (fourth) symphony in A minor, which is another mind-bender.

Rather unique is the appearance of Jerome Kern. His “Show Boat: A Scenario for Orchestra” amounts to a “tone poem” based on the themes of the more familiar songs from the original musical. It is also worth noting that Show Boat was performed by the San Francisco Opera in June of 2014 with staging by Francesca Zambello and John DeMain as conductor. Thus, while, for the most part, Columbia wanted to take a “back to basics” approach in recording Rodziński’s work with the Cleveland Orchestra, the conductor still managed to provide listeners with several less-familiar compositions in his repertoire.

Further Czech Preferences from Weilerstein

SFS Visiting Conductor Joshua Weilerstein (photograph by Sim Canetty Clark, courtesy of the San Francisco Symphony)

When Joshua Weilerstein made his debut as visiting conductor of the San Francisco Symphony (SFS) in June of 2021, he prepared a program that juxtaposed and contrasted two Czech composers. The more familiar was Antonín Dvořák, represented by his Opus 22 serenade in E major for string ensemble, which he composed in 1875 when he was 33 years older. The other was Bohuslav Martinů with a performance of his 1938 concerto for two string orchestras, piano, and timpani.

Last night Weilerstein returned to Davies Symphony Hall; and, once again, his focus was on Czech composers. Also again, one of those conductors was Dvořák, represented this time by what is probably his best known symphony, his Opus 95 (ninth) in E minor, given the more familiar title “From the New World.” The other composer was a contemporary of Martinů, whose fate in Europe was not as fortunate as  Martinů’s, Pavel Haas. While Martinů was fortunate enough to escape Adolf Hitler, fleeing first to Switzerland and subsequently to New York City, Haas was not so fortunate. He became one of the many Jewish musicians held at the Theresienstadt concentration camp, where he continued to compose because the Nazis saw it as useful propaganda. His “Study for Strings,” which Weilerstein selected to begin his program, was one of the works he completed and was performed by his fellow inmates. Not too long after that performance, however, he and his fellow musicians were transported to the gas chambers of the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp.

Ironically, the “Study for Strings” was an energetically upbeat composition, just the right sort of thing to begin a concert program. In includes an awesomely mind-boggling fugue, whose primary subject (if I am not mistaken) was an inversion of the well known B-A-C-H motif (which Johann Sebastian Bach happened to be writing into his The Art of Fugue at the time of his death). The fact that the Nazi’s selected this music for an audience of visitors to Theresienstadt made it clear that they knew good propaganda when they saw it. The fact that all the participants were subsequently gassed makes the playful qualities of “Study for Strings” all the more poignant, if not downright harrowing. The coupling of that music with Dvořák’s Opus 95 served as a reminder that, had Haas’ fate proceeded in a different direction, he would have been as fortunate as Martinů in being able to continue his work in the United States.

The concerto selection for this program was Jean Sibelius’ Opus 47 violin concerto in D minor. The soloist was Alexi Kenney, making his SFS debut. He is an alumnus of the SFS Youth Orchestra and performed as a concerto soloist with them in 2017. His selection for this program was one of the most technically challenging works in the violin repertoire (or, at least, the tonal repertoire). This is one of those concerto compositions in which the soloist is already dealing with cadenza material at the very beginning, and (s)he must contend with no end of technical challenges as all three of the movements progress.

There was thus something jaw-dropping in watching Kenney rise to each of those challenges, taking on all of them as if they were merely warm-up exercises. Fortunately, the score, taken as a whole, has far more substance than having the soloist jump through a bevy of technical hoops. There is just as much an abundance of lyrical thematic material, particularly in the second movement; and Kenney was as confident in his expressiveness as he was in his technique. On the audience side this was very much an edge-of-your-seat event. Even those familiar with the concerto (probably through recordings for the most part) quickly realized just how mind-boggling this performance was and how effective was the chemistry established between soloist and conductor. Given Kenney’s roots in the Bay Area, we can only hope that he will pay us more visits in his performance schedule.

A New Profil Anthology of Violinist Ivry Gitlis

courtesy of Naxos of America

According to my records, the last time I wrote about a Profil anthology was in October of 2022, when I discussed the six-CD collection entitled The Young Friedrich Gulda. Those that have been following up on my work for some time probably know that I never pass up an opportunity to write about that pianist and his strikingly diverse repertoire. This Friday Profil will release its latest collection; and, once again, repertoire was the reason for drawing my attention. Ivry Gitlis: The Legend is a four-CD collection of recordings by a violinist with a command of the standard repertoire that preferred to focus his attention on works composed in the twentieth century. As usual, Amazon.com has created a Web page for pre-orders for those wishing to be “first in line” to appreciate this violinist’s legacy.

This is one of those anthologies that has autobiographical significance. As a freshman at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, most of my extracurricular time was spend in the studios of the campus radio station (whose call letters then were WTBS), where I initiated a weekly program of music of the twentieth century. While the station had a moderately good library, I found that I could also draw upon the recordings in the Library building, which included an entire area for a Music Library (which happened to be almost adjacent to the building housing WTBS). It was through that Music Library that I first encountered Alban Berg’s violin concerto. There was only one recording, and the violinist on that recording was Ivry Gitlis.

A few years later I found myself dividing most of my spare time between WTBS and the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, run by Marvin Minsky. Minsky had invited mathematician Seymour Papert to join his staff; and Papert, in turn, invited Gilbert Voyat, who had earned his doctorate at the University of Geneva and was working there as a research associate and instructor at the International Center for Genetic Epistemology. Because Voyat and I frequently talked about music, the Berg violin concerto showed up in our conversations sooner rather than later. When I mentioned that I knew of only one recording, I learned that Gitlis was one of Voyat’s friends!

In spite of my new “knowledge source,” I learned almost nothing about the scope of Gitlis’ repertoire. As a result, over half a century elapsed before I knew anything more about Gitlis or could listen to recordings to account for the rest of that repertoire. The scope of that repertoire in the Profil anthology is best approached by first identifying the selections that predate the twentieth century.

The most familiar of the “usual suspects” are included: Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s Opus 35 violin concerto in D major and Felix Mendelssohn’s Opus 64 in E minor. There are also two short “encore” pieces by Henryk Wieniawski and the version of Ernest Chausson’s Opus 25 “Poème” for violin and piano. Finally, there is Giuseppe Tartini’s G minor violin sonata best known as the “Devil’s Trill Sonata.” However, the version that Gitlis recorded was an arrangement by Fritz Kreisler (which probably “liberated” the accompanist from dealing with figured bass) that included a cadenza of Kreisler’s own invention.

Where the twentieth century is concerned, there was a generous assortment of conductors that worked with Gitlis. The conductor for the Berg concerto was William Strickland, an American whose primary focus was on American composers. The European conductors, on the other hand, included Hans Rosbaud, Heinrich Hollreiser, Hans Swarowsky, and (of particular interest to me) Jascha Horenstein. (Some readers may recall that I discussed Horenstein’s Profil collection in June of 2020. That article referenced an additional recording of a twenty-minute conversation with Horenstein conducted by Alan Blyth.)

In the context of the entire Gitlis collection, however, the Berg concerto continues to register the lion’s share of my attention. Mind you, where “historical authority” is concerned, there will probably never be a substitute for the recording that Louis Krasner made on May 1, 1936 with Anton Webern conducting the BBC Symphony Orchestra. However, while Krasner clearly honored the spirit of Berg, I have been impressed over the years with the number of violinists I have encountered that have found their own approach to giving the concerto an expressive interpretation. Nevertheless, given how few of those recordings were available during the third quarter of the twentieth century, the significance of Gitlis’ recording cannot be denied.

Having listened to the entire Profil collection, I would say that such significance also applies to composers such as Paul Hindemith, Igor Stravinsky, Béla Bartók, and Jean Sibelius; this new collection is definitely “one for the books.”

Sibelius and Salonen Shine with SFS at Davies

Last night in Davies Symphony Hall, San Francisco Symphony (SFS) Music Director Esa-Pekka Salonen conducted the only performance of the second of four programs highlighting the piano. However, the high point of the evening was the instrumental selection that followed the intermission, Jean Sibelius’ Opus 82 (fifth) symphony in E-flat major. This composition task did not come easy. The original version was completed in 1915, but Sibelius radically revised the score the following year. Even then, he was dissatisfied; and the symphony did not see its final version until 1919.

That final version now stands as one of the composer’s most provocative ventures into ambiguity. The attentive listener will have no trouble recognizing the thematic building blocks, but they come and go almost as if they had been conceived through stream of consciousness. While the original version provided at least some recognition of the conventional four-movement symphony, the final version amounts to a flow of episodes that have been grouped into three movements, possibly only for the sake of allowing the ensemble two brief pauses.

One of the reasons Sibelius kept reworking his score may have been because he was trying to get beyond the usual conventions of structuring a modest collection of themes. By the time he had completed the final version, he seemed to have found a rhetoric that amounted to a flow of episodic gestures. Any resemblances to traditional symphonic structures and rhetoric were little more than coincidental. Those departures from tradition come to a mind-bending head in the “cadence” (scare quotes intentional) of the entire symphony:

from the Wikipedia page for the Sibelius fifth symphony

Note that the spaces between the chords are deliberately never the same. The listener has no idea where Sibelius is going until the simple B-flat/E-flat cadence in octaves in the last two measures. This is a mind-bending experience, and last night Salonen knew just how to deliver it.

Considering the disappointment of the first half of the program, attentive listeners definitely deserved the provocative imagination behind Sibelius’ symphony. That first half accounted for “highlighting the piano.” The selection was Edvard Grieg’s familiar Opus 16 concerto in A minor. However, because the soloist was Lang Lang, the experience had less to do with highlighting the piano, preferring instead to highlight the pianist.

Mind you, there is no questioning the skill behind Lang’s command of the piano repertoire. However, he has a well-earned reputation for seeking out unexpected approaches to phrasing that tend to take any score by any composer and warp it beyond recognition. The result was that, with Salonen on the podium, the orchestral ensemble gave an engaging account of the full breadth of Grieg’s thematic vocabulary; and Lang Lang devoted his attention to delivering the most unconventional interpretations of each of the themes themselves. Ultimately, however, his performance was all about the cadenzas, which at least allowed him the liberty to be even more unconventional. Given the rousing applause from the audience, it would be fair to say that Lang Lang knew how to work that liberty to his advantage.

As expected, he took an encore. As was the case during his last Davies appearance, his diction and projection gave a poor account of his announcement of the selection. My own mind may have been wandering into weird places; but I came away thinking that he had played his own interpretation of the song “Feed the Bird (Tuppence a Bag),” composed by Richard M. Sherman and Robert B. Sherman for the film Mary Poppins. I suppose that was the “Spoonful of Sugar” I needed to consume Lang Lang’s “medicine.”

BBC Legends 3: Two Dark Fourth Symphonies

The penultimate CD in the latest BBC Legends release consists of two fourth symphonies from the early twentieth century. They were performed in the Royal Albert Hall by the BBC Symphony Orchestra led by Malcolm Sargent. The first of these, Ralph Vaughan William’s fourth symphony in F minor, first performed on April 10, 1935, was recorded on August 16, 1963. The second was Jean Sibelius’ Opus 63, recorded on September 2, 1965. This is a much earlier composition, given its debut on April 3, 1911. Taken together, these could have made for a concert program unto itself; but it would probably be too grim for most audiences. For those that recall my observations about Dmitri Shostakovich’s Opus 65 (eighth) symphony in C minor (the fourteenth album in the collection), this is another “Force be with you” recording!

I have to say that, however pessimistic the rhetoric may be, both of these symphonies offer much to engage the attention of the serious listener. I am pretty sure that I have only heard the Sibelius in concert, and that was a San Francisco Symphony performance conducted by Michael Tilson Thomas. I later found a DVD of him conducting the same composition with the Boston Symphony Orchestra when he was much younger. Clearly, this is music that he has relished (since “enjoyed” does not seem appropriate) over the course of his entire career.

On the other hand I have been somewhat disappointed that Vaughan Williams does not receive much attention here in San Francisco. This reminds me of the old joke about the monorail being “an idea of the future that time has passed.” There is richly extensive diversity in the Vaughan Williams catalog, and I continue to treasure the box set of Adrian Boult conducting all nine symphonies for EMI. (These were recorded in sessions with the London Philharmonic Orchestra, the New Philharmonia Orchestra, and the London Symphony Orchestra.) More recently, readers may recall that I have been following the Vaughan Williams Live series released by SOMM Recordings, the fourth volume of which is currently scheduled for release at the beginning of next month.

The recordings for this BBC Legends collection are now over half a century old, and their release on this CD does a great service to music that does not deserve to be forgotten.

BBC Legends 3: Leopold Stokowski in London

The sixth CD in the third installment of the BBC Legends series is devoted to the conductor Leopold Stokowski. To say that Stokowski was a controversial figure during the twentieth century recalls the old joke about Lizzie Borden being a girl that was not kind to her parents. I have tended to shy away from his recordings (as well as the more controversial aspects of his biography); but, in February of last year, I felt it appropriate to write about the album of performances by the Philadelphia Orchestra led by Leopold Stokowski entitled Philadelphia Rarities. One might say that, over the course of his lifetime, Stokowski lived by the Star Trek motto (which was coined about a decade before his death). He committed himself “To boldly go where no man has gone before!”

Some of his efforts were definitely admirable. In my February article I stressed a particular high point:

In 1965, at the age of 83 he was still going strong, working with two assistant conductors to direct the first performance of Charles Ives’ fourth symphony with the American Symphony Orchestra; and that performance led to a recording released by Columbia.

On the other hand, I have to wonder if he was more interested in shaking hands with Mickey Mouse in the Fantasia film than he was in leading the Philadelphia Orchestra. Indeed, he probably had a willing hand in rearranging some of the scores for that film to suit the needs of the cartoon interpretations.

The three selections on the BBC Legends CD were recorded on three different occasions. The album begins with Jean Sibelius’ Opus 43 (second) symphony in D major, a recording of the BBC Symphony Orchestra performing at the Royal Albert Hall on September 15, 1964. This is followed by a “suite” of extracts from Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s Opus 66 music composed for the ballet The Sleeping Beauty. Stokowski again is performing at the Royal Albert Hall, this time with the New Philharmonia Orchestra on September 10, 1965. The final track is a BBC studio recording of the overture from Ludwig van Beethoven’s Opus 84 incidental music for Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s play Egmont.

None of these are particularly compelling performances. Indeed, I would be bold enough to suggest that where the Opus 84 is concerned, the BBC Symphony Orchestra could probably manage on “automatic pilot.” The same might also apply to the Sibelius symphony, which would also be familiar to the ensemble and, in the context of that familiarity, could probably be managed almost entirely from the Concertmaster’s chair. Where the Tchaikovsky selection is concerned, the numbers and labels follow the original scenario by Marius Petipa, at least one of which is mistakenly labeled “Adagio,” even though the tempo is livelier for the “Entrée” label in the score. (Out of fairness to the ballet lovers, this music is better known in its revised version as the “Pas de deux de l’Oiseau bleu et la Princesse Florine,” more familiar in English as the “Bluebird pas de deux.”)

Personally, I would probably have preferred to trade off Stokowski for another CD of Barbirolli performances!