Guitarist Yamandu Costa Returning to SF

Yamandu Costa playing “Por una Cabeza” composed by Carlos Gardel in collaboration with Alfredo Le Pera (from the YouTube video of his performance)

Following up on his solo guitar recital for the Omni Foundation for the Performing Arts this past April, Yamandu Costa will return to San Francisco, this time for a program presented by Concerts in America. Readers familiar with his past visits probably know that he is a virtuoso on the seven-string guitar. Sadly, Concerts in America has not provided any information about the program he will present; but they have created a Web page with three YouTube links, each to the performance of a different composition.

Like the last Omni recital, the performance will take place at St. Mark’s Lutheran Church, beginning at 7:30 p.m. on Sunday, November 29. The duration is expected to last for an hour and 45 minutes. There will be no sales at the door, so all tickets must be purchased through the Web page for this event. Attendees must be at least eight years old, and those under the age of sixteen must be accompanied by a parent or guardian. Seating will be first-come, first-served, general admission. That Web page claims that the venue is wheelchair accessible, but those familiar with the venue may question that claim!

SFSYO to Begin Season in a Little over 3 Weeks

Photograph by Fritz Luckhardt of Johannes Brahms, probably taken around 1885 (public domain, from Wikimedia Commons)

Next month will see the beginning of the concert season for the San Francisco Symphony (SFS) Youth Orchestra (SFSYO), which continues to be led by Wattis Foundation Music Director Radu Paponiu. The program will begin by honoring the legacy of Michael Tilson Thomas with his “Agnegram,” which was performed by SFS during this past June’s memorial program for its eleventh Music Director. This will be followed by “Dances of Galánta,” by Hungarian composer Zoltán Kodály, written to celebrate the 80th anniversary of the Budapest Philharmonic Society. The second half of the program will be devoted entirely to Johannes Brahms’ Opus 98, his fourth symphony, composed in the key of E minor. This is one of those symphonies that has been subjected to a plethora of analytical studies; but what interests me the most was Brahms decision to structure the fourth and final movement as a passacaglia, taking the theme from the final movement of Johan Sebastian Bach’s BWV 150 cantata Nach dir, Herr, verlanget mich.

As most readers will probably know, the performance will take place in Davies Symphony Hall. Tickets will be available at the Box Office, which is at the entrance on the south side of Grove Street, between Van Ness Avenue and Franklin Street. Tickets may also be purchased online through the Web page for this concert, and the Box Office may be reached by calling 415-864-6000. This will be an evening performance, beginning at 6 p.m. on Sunday, November 22.

The First of Elim Chan’s SFS Performances

Last night Davies Symphony Hall saw the return to the San Francisco Symphony (SFS) podium by Elim Chan. This was her first SFS performance since her appointment as Music Director Designate earlier this year. She prepared a “three centuries” program with the first half accounting for different periods in the nineteenth century. The second half marked the transition from the late twentieth century to the early 21st.

Both halves of the program began with performances by the SFS Chorus led by Director Jenny Wong. The opening selection was Johannes Brahms’ Opus 82 “Nänie,” setting a text by Friedrich Schiller. The first line is “Even the beautiful must die!,” which basically sets the tone of the entire composition. Noam Cook provided the English translation of the text, which was projected above the stage on the right and left sides of the hall. This encouraged the attentive listener to experience how Brahms’ music reflected on Schiller’s text.

The intermission was followed by a radical shift in rhetoric with the performance of Arvo Pärt’s setting of the Magnificat canticle. Situated on the very left edge of the chorus, soprano Ellen Leslie sang the solo portions of the score. This was the first time the Chorus performed the Pärt composition; and I very much hope that it will not be the last, particularly since my own encounters with Pärt’s vocal music have been very sparse!

Kathleen Ferrier as Orfeo with the “Blessed Spirits” in a performance of Gluck’s opera in the Netherlands on June 23, 1949 (photograph by Daan Noske, made available under the Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication, from Wikimedia Commons)

“Nänie,” which was probably unfamiliar to the audience, was followed by one of the most familiar compositions in the “standard repertoire.” That was Felix Mendelssohn’s Opus 64, his violin concerto in E minor. The soloist was Renaud Capuçon, who has not performed with SFS since 2014. His chemistry with Chan, who dispensed with a baton in favor of “whole-body” conducting, could not have been better. However familiar this music was to much (most?) of the audience, Capuçon quickly and firmly encouraged every listening to sit up and take notice; and, as they say in “show business,” the effort was definitely worth “the price of admission!” His encore was the theme of the “Dance of the Blessed Spirits,” the ballet performed in the second act of Christoph Willibald Gluck’s opera Orfeo ed Euridice.

The program concluded with a three-movement symphony based on the music that John Adams composed for his opera Doctor Atomic. While I remember seeing this opera performed by San Francisco Opera, none of the music triggered any memories. That said, there were some thoroughly engaging passages for solo work for both the trombone and the trumpet. Ironically, these took place during the middle movement entitled “Panic.” I am afraid that little in this music reminded me of the opera, but there was more than enough in the SFS performance to keep me sitting up to take notice!

BARS to Present “Symphonic Shakespeare”

Poster design for the performance being discussed

In a little less than a month’s time, the Bay Area Rainbow Symphony (BARS) will present the second of the four concerts it has prepared for the 2026–2027 season. The full title of the program is Symphonic Shakespeare: In Sweet Music is Such Art. The program will present four compositions by Russian, Italian, and American composers, each based on a different play by William Shakespeare.

The program will begin with the overture composed by Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco, to be performed as a musical introduction to The Taming of the Shrew. This is one of eleven overtures, each associated with a different Shakespeare play. He began this “Shakespeare project” when he was living in Italy; but, with the outbreak of World War II, he fled to the United States as a Jewish refugee, settling in Hollywood. In addition to composing, he taught many familiar American composers, such as John Williams, Nelson Riddle, Henry Mancini, Jerry Goldsmith, and André Previn. The Taming of the Shrew will be followed by Romeo and Juliet with the last of the three suites extracted from Sergei Prokofiev’s ballet score for that play.

The second half of the program will begin in the United States with orchestral selections composed by Cole Porter for the music Kiss Me, Kate. The performance will then conclude with one of the lesser known fantasy overtures by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky. The best-known of those overtures is “Romeo and Juliet.” However, this program will conclude with the less-known “Hamlet” overture.

Like all of this season’s BARS concerts, this program will be performed in the Concert Hall of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music at 50 Oak Street. The performance will begin at 7:30 p.m. on Saturday, November 21. As of this writing, a generous number of seats are available. Tickets may be purchased online through a Tix Web page with prices between $6.50 and $43.50.

Warner: Walter Couples Bruckner with Palestrina

Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina (artist and date unknown, from Wikimedia Commons, public domain)

As I wrote yesterday, in the Bruno Walter: Complete Warner Classics Remastered Edition release, the last of the three CDs of compositions by Gustav Mahler is divided between that composer’s Kindertotenlieder and the pairing of Anton Bruckner with Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina. Those are “strange bedfellows,” to say the least; but they also receive seldom encountered performances. The Bruckner is the WAB 45 setting of the “Te Deum” hymn, composed in the key of C major. The CD then concludes with the “Stabat Mater” motet for double chorus (without instrumentation) by Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina. The choral resources are those of the Vienna State Opera; and the Bruckner setting includes four vocal soloists: soprano Elisabeth Schumann, mezzo Enid Szánthó, tenor Anton Dermota, and bass Alexander Kipnis.

To be fair, Dermota is the only name that is really familiar to me, since that dates back to the long-playing albums I had of operas by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. On the other hand, I am familiar with Alexander Kipnis only as the father of harpsichordist Igor Kipnis! Sadly, my encounters with music by Palestrina have been limited to visits to the Church of the Advent of Christ the King for the Procession and High Mass service, where Director of Music Paul Ellison would arrange that composer’s settings of the Mass performed by his Schola Adventus vocalists.

Personally, I wish that Palestrina would get more attention, particularly since his Wikipedia page describes him as “the leading composer of late 16th-century Europe.” Bruckner has fared somewhat better, since two of his symphonies were included in the recently-released Lorin Maazel: The Complete Warner Edition box set. Perhaps the general listening public regards both of these composers as too “scholarly;” but, as far as I am concerned, both Walter and Maazel were able to make convincing cases for attentive listeners to sit up and take notice!

Warner Releases of Bruno Walter’s Mahler

Photograph of Gustav Mahler (from Wikimedia Commons, public domain)

Given the seven-CD box set of performances conducted by Bruno Walter devoted entirely to compositions by Gustav Mahler released by Sony at the beginning of 2012, the Warner Classics release of only two and a half CDs is, to say the least, skimpy. The other half of the third CD is divided between Anton Bruckner and Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina, which will probably raise more than a few eyebrows! That said, the first half of that third CD is irresistible, since it serves up a performance of contralto Kathleen Ferrier singing the Kindertotenlieder followed by four alternative takes, two for each of the two songs in the cycle.

That vocal side of Mahler also fills the first of the three CDs. Almost all of the album is devoted to a performance of the Das Lied von der Erde song cycle with vocal solos by tenor Charles Kullman and contralto Kerstin Thorborg. This followed by an “encore performance” by Thorberg, singing “Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen” from the five Rückert-Lieder songs.

Having accounted for the first and last CDs, the “middle” is devoted to Mahler’s final completed symphony, the ninth in D major. This is preceded by an “overture of sorts,” the Adagietto (fourth) movement from Mahler’s fifth symphony in C-sharp minor. Those familiar with the symphony know that it is one of Mahler’s stormier undertakings. However, the Adagietto provided the one relief from the storm, scored only for the string section augmented with a harp solo. (Movie goers may recognize the music from Luchino Visconti’s Death in Venice film.)

I have to confess that, on the whole, I am more satisfied with Walter after he made the move to New York than I was with his Viennese days. His Sony box set of Mahler’s music accounts for five of the symphonies (1,2, 4, 5, and 9), Das Lied von der Erde, and a selection of earlier songs that predated Das Lied. On the other hand, I suspect that many attentive listeners will be interested in a “compare and contrast” approach to listening to Walter’s Viennese performances and those in New York.

Bruno Walter: from Brahms to Haydn

I find it interesting that, in the Bruno Walter: Complete Warner Classics Remastered Edition, the CDs of compositions by Joseph Haydn should follow the Brahms albums, rather than “chronologically” preceding them. Like Brahms, Haydn received an incomplete account of his symphonies. However, while those interested in Brahms had to endure the absence of his Opus 73 (second) symphony, Haydn was limited to only four of the 104 numbered symphonies, which were allocated to two of the CDs. Nevertheless, I had to appreciate that, on the first of the CDs, the overture to Carl Maria von Weber’s opera Der Freischütz, served as a “buffer” between Brahms’ Opus 98 (fourth and last) symphony and Haydn’s Hoboken I/92 “Oxford” symphony in G major.

1937 photograph of Bruno Walter (photographer unknown, public domain, from Wikimedia Commons)

That said, I have to remind myself that all of these recordings were made during the first half of the last century, long before musicologists added “historically informed” to their lexicon! Instead, I prefer to take pleasure in the fact that the four Walter recordings of Haydn symphonies were captured in three major European cities. As might be guessed, Vienna was the city for two of the symphonies: Hoboken I/96 (The Miracle) and Hoboken I/100 (Military). The other two were divided between Paris (Orchestre de la Société des Concerts du Conservatoire) and London (London Symphony Orchestra).

Personally I found myself more interested in the second of these two venues. London seems to have been more interested in Walter than Paris was. As a result, as his Wikipedia page observes, he was “chief conductor of the German seasons at Covent Garden in London from 1924 to 1931.” Also, he enjoyed a rich relationship with contralto Kathleen Ferrier, which lasted under her premature death in 1953. Indeed, one of my most treasured albums is Kathleen Ferrier in New York, which includes her contributing to Walter’s performance of Gustav Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde with the New York Philharmonic Orchestra in 1948. (Spoiler alert: Das Lied von der Erde will show up in my next Walter article. As might be guessed, Mahler receives more CDs than Haydn in this collection!)

November Will Require a Second Choice

Some readers may recall that last week concluded with an article about two performances taking place next month on Saturday, November 14. This morning I discovered that a choice will also be necessary for the following Saturday, November 21. Both performances will begin at 7:30 p.m., and the two venues will not be within walking distance of each other. Most likely, readers will make their choices based on instrumentation.

The first alternative will be the second program planned for the Left Coast Chamber Ensemble’s 2006/27 season. The first half of the program will be devoted entirely to Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s K. 581 clarinet quintet in A major. It will be complemented in the second half by a new clarinet quintet composed by Jonathan Russell for Left Coast clarinetist Jerome Simas. These two quintets will be separated by Thea Musgrave’s “Threnody.” The performances will take place at the Noe Valley Ministry, which is located at 1021 Sanchez Street, just south of 23rd Street. A Web page has been created for purchasing tickets.

Ana Vidović with her guitar (from the Omni Foundation Web page for her recital next month)

The second alternative will be a solo guitar recital presented by the Omni Foundation for the Performing Arts. This will be the second program in the 2026–2027 Dynamite Guitars schedule. The soloist will be Croatian guitarist Ana Vidović, who last visited this venue on April 12, 2025. The program will begin with two arrangements, followed by four works explicitly composed for guitar.

The program will begin with Johann Sebastian Bach’s BWV 1003 solo violin sonata in A minor. She will perform an arrangement by Croatian cellist Valter Dešpalj (which, presumably, is conducive to Vidović’s finger work). This will be followed by “Ständchen,” Franz Schubert’s D, 889 lied, originally composed for solo voice and piano and presumably arranged by Vidović herself.

The remainder of the program will be devoted entirely to music composed for guitar. This will include two compositions by Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco, his Opus 87 “Tarantella” and the Opus 77 sonata given the subtitle “Omaggio a Boccherini.” Between these two offerings, Vidović will play Niccolò Paganini’s Opus 39 “Grande Sonata,” composed in the key of A major. The program will conclude with Joaquín Turina’s Opus 61 guitar sonata.

This recital will take place in the Civic Center in Herbst Theatre. Regular readers probably know by now that this venue is located in the Veterans Building at 401 Van Ness Avenue on the southwest corner of McAllister Street. All tickets are available for $20 with a $15 rate for Supermusers. They may be purchased online through a Groupmuse Web page. Ticket sales will close on Wednesday, November 18, at noon.

Bruno Walter’s Limited Account of Brahms

1899 Portrait of Johannes Brahms (from his biography written by C. Brasch, public domain, from Wikimedia Commons)

I was more than a little disappointed that the Bruno Walter: Complete Warner Classics Remastered Edition limited its account of Johannes Brahms to only three of the four symphonies and one of the overtures. Nevertheless, where “vintage” recordings are concerned, one can only take what one gets. So I shall do my best to overlook the fact that my favorite Brahms symphony, Opus 73, the second symphony in D major, was not included in this collection!

All of the recordings were made during the Thirties of the last century. The earliest of these accounted for the last of the four symphonies, Opus 98 in E minor (which, fortunately, is my second favorite), recorded with the BBC Symphony Orchestra in 1934. In chronological order, this is followed by the 1936 recording of the third symphony, Opus 90 in F major, and the 1937 recording of the first symphony, Opus 68 in C minor. The only other Brahms selection included in the collection is the Opus 80 “Academic Festival Overture.” Those wishing a more thorough account are likely to be more satisfied with the five-CD Sony box, which includes all of the symphonies, the Opus 102 “double” concerto for violin and cello, and a generous offering of choral music, all performed by the Columbia Symphony Orchestra.

Fortunately, I am more than satisfied with the BBC account of Opus 98. I sometimes get the impression that Brahms’ approach to composition got more nuanced as he grew older. Walter knew how to account for all of those nuances. Nevertheless, I wish that his European recordings in the Thirties had been a bit more thorough, as they would be after Walter moved to the United States and made recordings with the Columbia Symphony Orchestra!

The Bleeding Edge: 10/26/2026

After a relatively busy month, October will conclude with only two events this week. Both of them will take place at familiar venues. Specifics are as follows with hyperlinks on each of the dates for further details:

Motoko Honda playing the interior of her piano (from her BayImproviser Web page)

Thursday, October 19, 7 p.m. and 8:45 p.m., Mr Tipple’s: Motoko Honda is a concert pianist, composer, and sound artist. Phillip Greenlief has declared that her music “is to mainstream jazz what Brahms’s music was to the neatly packaged forms of the Classical period.” She will lead a quartet, whose other members will be Cory Wright on a diversity of wind instruments, bassist Matt Small, and Jordan Glenn on drums. For those that do not yet know, the venue is located in the Civic Center at 39 Fell Street.

Friday, October 30, 7 p.m., Medicine for Nightmares: Halloween will be celebrated with a spooky program entitled Sound and Visions. The evening will begin with a duo performance of percussionist Jordan Glenn performing with David Michalak on skatchbox. Michalak will remain for the second set as a member of the Ghost Dub duo. Bruce Ackley will perform on his usual diversity of wind instruments. Michalak will continue to perform on his skatchbox but will also play a lap steel guitar and a phantom harp. The program will conclude with a screening of the 1928 silent film The Fall of the House of Usher with live music accompaniment provided by Ghost Dub (appropriately enough). Most readers probably know by now that the venue is a bookstore located in the Mission at 3036 24th Street, between Treat Avenue and Harrison Street. As always, there is no charge for admission, but a donation between $10 and $20 is suggested.

Whose Music?

In going through my news feeds in my “Arts and Letters” category for The Old Reader, I encountered a story by Marina Dunbar about training Artificial Intelligence (AI) models with Elvis Presley songs. The title of this article was “Anthropic sued for allegedly using 274 Elvis Presley songs to train AI models” with the subtitle “Authentic Brands Group says AI company infringed on rights of songs by the King such as Can’t Help Falling in Love.” What amuses me is that this is an interesting case of just what is being infringed.

Jean-Paul-Ègide Martini, composer of the music for “Plaisir d’amour” (source unknown, public domain, from Wikimedia Commons)

Presumably, this as “all about the words.” The music is based on “Plaisir d’amour” (pleasure of love), composed in 1784 by Jean-Paul-Ègide Martini setting words from his contemporary poet Jean-Pierre Claris de Florian. In other words, I doubt that anyone would be able to make a case the Presley’s tune was not public domain! On the other hand, the text for the Presley song was the product of a “committee,” written jointly by Hugo Peretti, Luigi Creatore, and George David Weiss; and it was originally written from the perspective of a woman (“Can't Help Falling in Love with Him”).

As a result, this is only an issue if the copyright for the text was renewed after 28 years; and, if anyone knows about that detail, I would be happy to learn the current status!

Orchestra Symphonique de Montréal at Davies

Rafael Payare leading the Orchestra Symphonique de Montréal (from the SFS Web page for this event)

Yesterday afternoon the San Francisco Symphony (SFS) Great Performers Series hosted a visit in Davies Symphony Hall from the Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal, led by its Music Director and Artistic Director Rafael Payare. The program consisted of only two compositions, a concerto in the first half and a symphony in the second. Both of these were by Russian composers from two successive centuries.

The program began with Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s Opus 35, his only violin concerto, composed in the key of D major. The soloist was Leonidas Kavakos, who last visited Davies a little over a year ago to perform Béla Bartók’s second violin concerto with Jun Märkl on the podium. According to my records, this is the second time this year that the symphony selection was Dmitri Shostakovich’s Opus 93 (tenth) symphony in E minor (the first have taken place this past January in a performance by the SFS Youth Orchestra). Kavakos also performed a solo encore prior to the intermission, the Gavotte en Rondeau movement from Johann Sebastian Bach’s BWV 1006 solo violin partita in E major.

According to my archives, Payare last visited Davies in May of 2023, when he was a guest conductor. He will return to the SFS podium this coming June. He is a very physical conductor, but I would not accuse him of overplaying his hand. The Shostakovich symphony displays a significantly rich instrumentation, including the full resources of the percussion and a seldom-heard solo passage for contrabassoon. The Tchaikovsky concerto, on the other hand, was more familiar; but Payare established his own point of view to make sure that such a familiar offering was not given a “business as usual” treatment! Taken as a whole, the visitors from Montréal provided San Francisco music lovers with an afternoon well spent!

Bruno Walter in London and Paris

While the first two of the twenty CDs in the Bruno Walter: Complete Warner Classics Remastered Edition provided an informative account of the conductor’s early approaches to performing music by Ludwig van Beethoven, it would be fair to say that the third CD in the collection is “all over the map.” Put another way, the album is unevenly divided between the nineteenth and eighteenth centuries (in that order). Each of those centuries couples two composers: Felix Mendelssohn and Hector Berlioz in the first half and Arcangelo Corelli and George Frideric Handel in the second.

The first thing readers should recognize is that the concept of “historically-informed performance” was about half a century in the future of the recordings made of both Corelli and Handel. Both of them are performed by large ensembles: the London Symphony Orchestra and the Orchestre de la Société des Concerts du Conservatoire, which was established in Paris in 1828. (A personal “fun fact” is that Charles Munch became chief conductor of this ensemble in 1938; and, following the end of World War II, he made his debut with the Boston Symphony Orchestra in December of 1946. He would then become its Music Director in 1949.)

One way to approach this particular CD would be as “a tale of two cities.” Walter’s account of the Handel concerto grosso (Opus 6, Number 12) can be coupled with Berlioz’ Opus 14 “Symphonie fantastique” because they both involve the same Parisian ensemble. On the other hand, the rest of the album involves two London-based orchestra. Handel’s concerto grosso, performed by the London Symphony Orchestra, is preceded by the eighth composition in Arcangelo Corelli’s Opus 6 concerti grossi, which was given the inscription “Fatto per la notte di Natal” (made for the night of Christmas). This is often casually known as the “Christmas concerto.”

An engraving of Hector Berlioz (from the Historical and Public Figures Collection at the New York Public Library, public domain in the United States, from Wikimedia Commons)

On the other hand, the CD begins with two excerpt performances by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. The first of these is the “Nocturne” taken from Felix Mendelssohn’s Opus 61, music he composed to be performed as part of the staging of William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. This is followed by the “Menuet des follets” from the second part of Hector Berlioz’ Opus 24, La Damnation de Faust.

The good news is that technology now makes it easier to listen to these compositions individually without having to worry about whether or not the entire CD was conceived as a “journey!”

SFCS to Conclude Season in Twentieth Century

Poster design for next month’s SFCS performance (from the Web page for this season’s concerts)

For those that do not yet know, the “season” of the San Francisco Choral Society (SFCS), led by Artistic Director Robert Geary, aligns with the calendar year, rather than beginning in September and concluding the following August. As a result, in a little less than a month’s time, there will be two performances of the penultimate program of the current season. (The year will end with the annual Festival of Carols Concert.) Those performances will take place at 7 p.m. on Saturday, November 21, and at 4 p.m. on Sunday, November 22.

The earliest work on the program was composed on the brink of the twentieth century. Louis Vierne’s “Messe solennelle” was completed in 1899. It was originally written for mixed chorus and two organs, but for this program the organ accompaniment will be provided solely by Zach Ullery. It will be presented as a “response” to the “call” of Arvo Pärt’s “Berliner Messe” Mass setting.

The second half of the program will be devoted entirely to the Boulanger sisters, Nadia and her younger sister Lili. Soprano Jessica House Steward will be the soloist in the performance of Nadia’s “Cantique de sœur Béatrice,” a setting of a text by Maurice Maeterlinck composed in 1909. This will be followed by Lili’s “Les Sirènes,” composed for solo soprano and three-part choir with piano accompaniment. The soprano will again be Steward with Keisuke Nakagoshi at the piano keyboard. Nakagoshi will conclude the program with a solo performance of a prelude in D-flat major, which Lili composed in 1911.

Both performances will take place in Calvary Presbyterian Church, which is located in Pacific Heights at 2515 Fillmore Street at the corner of Jackson Street. Tickets prices range from $35 to $59, with discounts for seniors, students, and those under the age of 30. As of this writing, tickets are being sold through City Box Office; but, for now at least, a password is required to make any purchases! The same appears to be the case for the live stream of the Sunday performance. However, things may change after 10 a.m. tomorrow, which is when all tickets will “officially” go on sale.

Berta Rojas: SFP Guitarist

Berta Rojas and Paquito D’Rivera (from the SFP Web page for their duo performance)

Last night in Herbst Theatre, San Francisco Performances (SFP) began its series of guitar recitals with a performance by guitarist Berta Rojas. This turned out to be a somewhat unconventional offering, since most of the program was devoted to duos joined with clarinetist Paquito D’Rivera. According to the program book, she had planned to begin with a solo performance of Agustín Barrios’ “Un sueño en la floresta” (a dream in the forest); but she replaced this with that composer’s “El último canto” (the last song). I suspect I was not the only member of the audience to be reminded of Francisco Tárrega’s “Recuerdos de la Alhambra!”

D’Rivera also had a single solo opportunity. He called his performance “Tribute to Dizz.” It consisted of his personal reflections of three of Dizzie Gillespie’s most memorable tunes: “Salt Peanuts,” “Con Alma,” and “A Night in Tunisia.” D’Rivera even managed to get the audience to echo “salt peanuts” during the first of those performances.

The duo offerings, all of which were arrangements, were consistently engaging. Barrios accounted for the largest number of selections on the program; and I must confess that I knew next to nothing (if that much) of composers on the program such as Demetrio Ortiz and José Asunción Flores. It did not take me long to realize that the best I could do would be to sit back and just listen without trying to analyze the details! In that context, the overall performance was delightfully engaging, making for a walk home with an extra bounce in my step.

LINES Ballet to Return to Davies Next Month

The Alonzo King LINES Ballet last performed on the stage of Davies Symphony Hall with the San Francisco Symphony (SFS) in June of 2024. The program began with “Ma mère l’Oye” (Mother Goose), which Maurice Ravel composed as music for a one-act ballet with the same title. Choreography was provided by Alonzo King and performed by his Alonzo King LINES Ballet.

Cellist Mstislav Rostropovich on the Warner Classics album cover for Prokofiev’s Opus 125

In a little less than a month’s time, LINES will return to Davies. King has created new staging that will be performed to the suite that Aaron Copland extracted from the music he composed for Martha Graham’s choreography for “Appalachian Spring.” There will also be new choreography for a staging of Claude Debussy’s “Prélude à l’Après-midi d’un faune.” The program will begin with Sergei Prokofiev’s Opus 125, his Symphony-Concerto composed in the key of E minor. The “concerto” instrument for the performance is cello. Prokofiev dedicated this work to Mstislav Rostropovich, who (of course) played the cello part when the composition was premiered. The soloist for this performance will be SFS Principal Cello Rainer Eudeikis.

This program will be given three performances, all beginning at 7:30 p.m. on Thursday, November 19, Friday, November 20, and Saturday, November 21. As most readers probably know by now, Davies is located at 201 Van Ness Avenue on the southwest corner of Grove Street. (The entrance to both the Box Office and the hall itself is on the south side of Grove.) Tickets are available online through a Web page. Ticket prices range from $55 to $185. Note that, because of the staged performances, seating will not be available in the Terraces.

Bruno Walter before the United States

Some readers may recall that, a little over six years ago, I wrote a series of articles about Bruno Walter: The Complete Columbia Album Collection, which concluded with the conductor’s interpretations of symphonic music by Anton Bruckner and Gustav Mahler. Warner Classics has now released a new collection of twenty CDs under the title Bruno Walter: Complete Warner Classics Remastered Edition. All of the Columbia tracks were recorded after Walter had moved to the United States. The Warner release, on the other hand, accounts for a diversity of European ensembles led by Walter.

Portrait of Beethoven by Joseph Willibrord Mähler, probably completed in 1804 (from Wikimedia Commons, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license, public domain in the United States)

The first two CDs are devoted entirely to Ludwig van Beethoven with the second coupling a symphony with a piano concerto. Both of these compositions have “subtitles” by which they are often known. The Opus 68 symphony, in the key of F major, is known as the “Pastoral;” and each of the five movements evokes a pastoral setting. The concerto is Opus 73 in E-flat major, the last of the composer’s five numbered piano concertos. It is usually known as the “Emperor” concerto; but that title definitely did not originate with Beethoven, who staunchly disapproved of imperial authority!

The first CD begins with the Opus 61 violin concerto in D major with Joseph Szigeti as soloist. The orchestra is identified as the “British Symphony Orchestra,” which has a Wikipedia page which identifies it as a “cover name or pseudonym for the orchestra of the Royal Philharmonic Society.” This is followed by the overture to the Opus 43 ballet The Creatures of Prometheus. Three more overtures account for the remainder of the album. The first two are associated with the Opus 72 opera Fidelio. The first of these is the overture that originally began the opera, but it was subsequently substituted by the overture now known as “Leonore No. 3” (Opus 72a). The CD concludes with the Opus 62 “Coriolan” overture, composed as music for the play of the same title by Heinrich Joseph van Collin.

Another Repetition of History?

Secretary of State Marco Rubio (screenshot from a NewsFeed video released this morning)

It was only a little over a month ago that I found myself again invoking George Santayana’s best-known aphorism, “Those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it.” This time, however, I have a specific individual who has decided to ignore history: Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Here is the full text of the NewsFeed article posted by Al Jazeera this morning:

Secretary of State Marco Rubio has urged Cubans to secretly work with the CIA to topple their government. His appeal followed President Trump’s threat to send warships to Cuba after the Iran war. A 10-month US blockade has led to power outages and water shortages.

To be fair, Rubio was born about ten years after the Bay of Pigs Invasion, one of the most embarrassing undertakings committed under the administration of President Dwight D. Eisenhower. (That President was elected, at least in part, due to his record as one of the heroes of World War II.) I suspect that many of my generation will recall the immortal words of Bullwinkle Moose: “This time fer sure!” They will also remember that things did not go well for Bullwinkle, and I would be surprised if they do not go any better for Rubio!

Mid-November May Require Making a Choice

Some readers may have to make a choice when it comes to attending a concert at 7:30 p.m. on Saturday, November 14. The good news is that one of the alternatives will be the first of four performances, the other three taking place at 3 p.m. on Sunday, November 15, and at 7:30 p.m. on Thursday, November 19, and Saturday, November 21. The other November 14 event will be given only one performance.

The three Volterra Project guitarists with Antigoni Goni flanked by Luca Isolani and Maarten Vandenbemden (from the Groupmuse Web page for the event)

The first of the alternatives will be the last San Francisco Performances offering in November. The Volterra Project Trio brings together three guitarists with a repertoire that ranges across European impressionism, folk melodies, and cinematic scores. In alphabetical order their names are Antigoni Goni, representing Greece, Italian Luca Isolani, and Maarten Vandenbemden from Belgium. The “cinematic side” involves an arrangement of the music Leonard Bernstein composed for West Side Story, which began as a Broadway musical and expanded into (for me at least) an even richer experience when released as a film. Greek composer Manos Hatzidakis also had a “cinematic side” as the composer of “Never on Sunday,” written for the film of the same name; and his rhetoric draws on tropes from folk sources.

That leaves three European impressionists, each with a different stylistic approach. The first of the composers will be Enrique Granados, represented by “Valses Poeticos” in an arrangement for guitar that may be by Lily Afsher, Mel Bay, or someone else. The same can be said for dances from the incidental music that Edvard Grieg composed for Henrik Ibsen’s play Peer Gynt. The final guitar arrangement will be for Maurice Ravel’s Ma mère l'Oye (Mother Goose) suite.

This event will be a Groupmuse Night Out. This will be the one-night-only event, but it will have a Groupmuse Web page for purchasing tickets for only $20 with a $15 rate for Supermusers. Ticket sales will close at noon on Friday, November 13. The performance will take place in Herbst Theatre, which is in the Civic Center on the northwest corner of Van Ness Avenue and McAllister Street.

Opera Parallèle will give its world premiere performance of Salt & Spirit at exactly the same time. The good news, however, is that this will be followed by three more performances during the month of November. The opera was created jointly by Victor Ryan Robertson and Brian Staufenbiel, both of whom were deeply inspired by the Gullah-Geechee musical tradition of the Deep South. Those sources will be augmented by a rare collection of nineteenth-century spirituals.

As was observed above, readers will have a choice among four performances. The event will take place in Z Space, which is located in the Mission District. The venue is located at 450 Florida Street, which is about half a block south of 17th Street.

SFP Art of Song Series Begins with Phan

Last night in Herbst Theatre, San Francisco Performances began its Art of Song series with a recital by tenor Nicholas Phan, accompanied at the piano by Myra Huang. The title of the program was Fellow Citizens, which also appeared in the program booklet in the title for the program notes, “What Home Really Means: Songs of Migration, Belonging, and our Fellow Citizens.” My initial impression was that this would be a “program with a message,” a phrase which almost always triggers the (very) old joke, “If I have a message, I’ll send it by Western Union.”

That said, Phan divided his program into nine sections, each with a title of its own:

1. The Melting Pot
2. The Journey
3. These Strangers
4. The Songs We Carried
5. The Beautiful
6. The Welcome
7. The Journey Part 2
8. Citizens
9. Those Who Migrated

This may have struck many as a massive undertaking. Nevertheless, Phan interleaved the songs with brief narration; and the program, as a whole, proceeded at an engaging clip that never led one to look at one’s watch.

Mind you, I was a bit skeptical to discover that the first of those sections was devoted entirely to Irving Berlin’s best-known song: “God Bless America.” When I was growing up, one of my earliest experiences was watching the Army–McCarthy Hearings on television, part of a demagogic effort to identify and punish anyone who was (or who ever had been) a member of the Communist Party. Watching Joseph McCarthy was my first experience of how politics could be downright brutal. Things seemed to turn around with the election of President John F, Kennedy, but they were kicked back into the gutter when Kennedy was assassinated. In that historical context, my thoughts about Berlin’s song are not particularly sanguine!

Nevertheless, my wife and I now take every election seriously. We review our sample ballots and discuss our choices. When possible, we then take our completed ballots over the City Hall, rather than putting them in the mail. As far as I am concerned, we honor the “nuts and bolts” of governance; but that means that, in that sort of context, I find it difficult not to cringe when listening to “God Bless America!” (I have not yet decided whether that that music is the first or last refuge of a scoundrel!)

The good news last night was that Phan’s delivery of Berlin’s song was decidedly low-key. This was a far cry from the rhetorical stances taken by singers from past decades; but the mood was more meditative, suggesting that this would be a program that took citizenship seriously. This was particularly the case with the West Coast premiere of Shawn Okpebholo’s The Beautiful, a song cycle that had been commissioned by Music Accord, Inc. explicitly for performance by Phan and Huang.

African-American poet Paul Laurence Dunbar, best known for the words “I know why the caged bird sings” (artist unknown, published in White Side of a Black Subject, by Norman B. Wood in 1897, public domain, from Wikimedia Commons)

What particularly struck me was Phan’s approach to interleaving past and present. Over the course of the performance, three songs by Franz Schubert (“Der Wanderer,” D. 649, “Pilgerweise,” D. 789.” and “Der Wanderer an den Mond,” D. 870) interleaved among far more recent compositions. In that context, I found myself most drawn to the final selection on the program, Florence Price’s “Sympathy,” setting a poem by Paul Laurence Dunbar best known for the opening of the third stanza: “I know why the caged bird sings.”

That said, I have accounted for only a modest portion of Phan’s entire recital. Mind  you, nothing about last night’s performance felt as if things were going on for too long. However, I would prefer if readers did not feel that way about my efforts to account for the occasion!

Whelan to Bring More Handel to PBO Season

Banner design for next month’s PBO performance

Next month Peter Whelan will continue his first season as Music Director of the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra & Chorale (PBO) with the United States premiere of the 1742 Dublin version of George Frideric Handel’s HWV 75 ode, Alexander’s Feast. This was the composer’s second revision of the score, which received its first performance in February of 1736. The title of the program will be The Power of Music, which happens to be the subtitle of the oratorio. According to my archives, this was last performed by PBO when Nicholas McGegan conducted it in April of 2012.

Whelan will conduct PBO, and the Chorale will be prepared by its Director, Valérie Sainte-Agathe. There will be three vocal soloists: soprano Sherezade Panthaki, mezzo Rachael Wilson, and tenor James Way. As most readers probably already  know, the performance will take place on Friday, November 13, at 7:30 p.m. in Herbst Theatre, located at 401 Van Ness Avenue on the southwest corner of McAllister Street. Tickets may be purchased online through a City Box Office Web page, which shows where seats are available and at what prices.

Volti Returns to SF State to Begin 48th Season

Robert Geary with members of the Volti vocal ensemble

The Volti vocal ensemble will begin its 48th season with a return to Knuth Hall, which is in the Creative Arts Building on the campus of San Francisco State University. Artistic Director Robert Geary has prepared a program entitled We Belong. The title will reflect a composition by Eric Tuan situated at the center of the program, “We Belong: Choral Reflections on Citizenship.”

The text was provided by Chinese-American poet and author Emily Jiang, and it is based on a biographical episode in the life of Wong Kim Ark. At the end of the nineteenth century, the citizenship of those of Chinese ancestry was often questioned; but, in this case it was resolved by the Supreme Court based on the principle of birthright citizenship. The program will also present selections from Trace the Sky, composed by Jens Ibsen during the COVID-19 pandemic.

This will be the latest event in Morrison’s LCA Live series, which is supported by the College of Liberal & Creative Arts. As usual, the performance will take place at Knuth Hall, which is in the Creative Arts Building on the SFSU campus, north of Holloway Avenue and to the west of 19th Avenue (which is accessible to public transportation). There will be no charge for admission. However, tickets are recommended, and a Web page has been created for acquiring them. The performance will begin at 7 p.m. on Thursday evening, November 12.

“Musical Chairs” to Receive Second Performance

Pianist and vocalist Shuo Zhai prepared a program entitled Musical Chairs on Willard Street for the afternoon of Saturday, October 24. This was arranged as a groupmuse event and quickly sold out. As a result, the pianist prepared a second performance, which will begin at 5 p.m. on the same date, preceded by a half-hour reception.

Zhai will perform with another pianist, Taide Ding, and cellist Summer Hu. The first two works on the program will be duets for cello and piano: Robert Schumann’s Opus 70 coupling of Adagio and Allegro movements, originally scored for horn and piano,  and Ludwig van Beethoven’s Opus 69 (third) sonata for cello and piano. Zhai and Ding will then conclude the program with Ding’s four-hand arrangement of Ralph Vaughan Williams’ English Folk Song Suite.

Groupmuse has created a second Web page for this second event. Reservations will be $5, and those arriving without a reservation will be charged $30 at the venue. A map showing the venue location, near the campus of the University of San Francisco, is included on that Web page. As of this writing, only four of the 25 spots are still available. Both alcoholic and non-alcoholic drinks will be served; and some readers may wish to know that dogs live at the venue. More importantly, the venue will not be able to allow wheelchair access.

Maazel’s Final Warner Opera Disappoints

Cover of the Warner Classics album of Thaïs

Some readers may recall that this month began with my venture into the CDs collected in Lorin Maazel: The Complete Warner Edition. The very fact that the first of those two CDs accounted for symphonies by Anton Bruckner was enough to get my juices flowing! This morning I concluded the journey with the last of the three operas in the collection, Jules Massenet’s Thaïs. Ironically, this listening experience took place very shortly after I had seen another Massenet opera, Manon, performed by San Francisco Opera at the War Memorial Opera House. Sadly, the title of my article about that performance was “Not the Best Afternoon at the Opera!”

To be fair, I am sure there are many opera lovers that would be eager to attend Massenet offerings and would avoid any opportunity to listen to a Bruckner symphony in Davies Symphony Hall! Put another way, attentive listening is subjective, rather than objective; and subjectivity is, of course, a matter of personal taste. In my case listening to Maazel’s performance of Thaïs was much more of an ordeal than listening to his interpretations of Bruckner symphonies!

That said, Maazel brought together some of the best-known opera vocalists for his Thaïs recording. That began with soprano Beverly Sills in the title role. Athanaël, the Cenobite monk that tries to convert Thaïs to Christianity is performed by baritone Sherrill Milnes, and one could not ask for a more solid delivery. The same can be said of tenor Nicolai Gedda in the role of the nobleman Nicias, who is Thaïs’ current lover. The roles have the makings for an engaging plot; but the music for that plot unfolds over the course of two and one-half hours (not including the intermission between the two acts when the opera is performed).

These days vocalists such as Sills, Gedda, and Milnes are all but forgotten, even by collectors of recordings. My personal regret is that I almost never had an opportunity to see any of them perform, simply because I was never in the right place at the right time. Indeed, I think my only encounter with Gedda took place when I saw him in a performance of La Traviata at the Metropolitan Opera; and, as I put it at that time, he was “too far past his prime” and only looked silly. Milnes, on the other hand, I have only known through recordings.

Things being what they are, Thaïs is likely to be the least-visited recording in my personal collection of the Maazel anthology!

The Bleeding Edge: 10/19/2026

Last week’s Bleeding Edge was decidedly limited compared to what will be coming this week. Last week the events did not begin until Thursday. This week they will begin tomorrow! To be fair four of the events have already been reported as follows:

• The Center for New Music will host events on both days of the weekend. Saturday will see this month’s G|O|D|W|A|F|F|L|E|N|O|I|S|E|P|A|N|C|A|K|E|S event, which will take place, as always, at noon. This will be followed on Sunday with the duo performance by bassist H. Carr accompanied at the piano by Unpil Baek.
• The Lab will present the final two concerts of the month. The Tricky FM project will be presented on Thursday, October 22, at 8 p.m. Saturday, October 24, will see Tyondai Braxton will perform music from his latest album, Splayed Werks.
• SF Music Day will fill six hours on Sunday.

All of those events will take place after the other performances taking place this week between Tuesday and Friday:

Tuesday, October 20, 7 p.m., Make-Out Room: This month Jazz at the Make-Out Room will present three sets offered by familiar and unfamiliar performers. Sean Keenan and Abe Gibson will begin the evening with a duo performance. Unless I am mistaken, both of them will be playing a variety of instruments (not yet identified). This will be followed by Dave Thomas’s New Cycle, a quartet with the instruments involved identified! Leader Thomas plays guitar, joined by Chris Hall on a diversity of wind instruments, bassist Mark Collins, and Zach Berend on drums. In the final set, vocalist Lorin Benedict will be accompanied by two saxophonists, Kasey Knudsen and Beth Schenck. For those that do not yet know, the Make-Out Room is located in the Mission at 3225 22nd Street. Doors will open at 6 p.m.

A group portrait of NO(w) Beauty (from the BayImproviser Web page for their performance)

Thursday, October 22, Friday, October 23, Saturday, October 24, and Sunday, October 25 7 p.m., Thursday, October 22, and Sunday, October 25, 9:15 p.m., and Friday, October 23, and Saturday, October 24, 9:30 p.m., Black Cat Jazz Supper Club: The venue will host NO(w) Beauty, a French-American quartet with trumpeter Hermon Mehari on the front line. Rhythm will be provided by pianist Enzo Carniel, Damien Varaillon on double bass, and drummer Stéphane Adsuar. They will probably play selections from their latest album (un)Seen. The supper club is located in the Civic Center at 400 Eddy Street.

Friday, October 23, 6 p.m. and 7:30 p.m., Mr Tipple’s: Saxophonist Dan White will lead a quartet with Scott Amendola on drums. The other performers will be keyboardist Adam Klipple and Kai Lyons on guitar.The venue is located at 39 Fell Street.

Friday, October 23, 7 p.m., Medicine for Nightmares: “Boohaabian multi reed player extraordinaire David Boyce” will again curate an Other Dimensions in Sound performance. This will be another “double dose of sonic sustenance,” meaning that it will again be a two-set program! The first set will be a solo jazz-fusion performance by Rigo. The second set will be a trio with Darren Johnston on trumpet joined by Boyce and Carolina Chubb. (As of this writing, there is no information about how Chubb will contribute to the performance!) Once again, many (if not most) readers already know the drill: the venue is located in the Mission at 3036 24th Street, between Treat Avenue and Harrison Street. As always, there is no charge for admission, presumably to encourage visitors to consider buying a book.

Maazel’s Second Opera: Carmen

Album cover of the recording of Carmen available through Amazon.com

The second of the three operas in the Lorin Maazel: The Complete Warner Edition is probably the most popular, Georges Bizet’s Carmen. The title role was sung by mezzo Julia Migenes Johnson; and the two significant men in her life, so to speak, are the soldier Don José (tenor Placido Domingo) and the bullfighter Escamillo (Ruggero Raimondi). Considering the number of recordings of this opera that have been released, it would be fair to say that, in this case, the cast makes the album worth the price of admission! Also, those that are attentive to all of the details will probably appreciate that the spoken texts are included! Thus, while this opera “is what it is” to just about all readers, its inclusion on the Maazel collection is likely to be a welcome one for opera lovers.

Not the Best Afternoon at the Opera

Yesterday afternoon my wife and I returned to the War Memorial Opera House to use the next round in our San Francisco Opera (SFO) subscription tickets. The performance presented the five-act opera by Jules Massenet, Manon. The libretto by Henri Meilhac and Philippe Gille was based on a novel by the Abbé Prévost whose full title was L’histoire du chevalier des Grieux et de Manon Lescaut. (Those that know that “histoire” is French for “story” should have no trouble translating the title!)

The libretto is a narrative fraught with misfortune. In contemporary language, the title character may be described as a “free spirit.” Indeed, in the staging by Vincent Boussard, one gets the impression that she believes that everyone she meets is smitten with her. Sadly, however, I came away feeling that Massenet’s music was not particularly conducive to most (if not all) of the narrative. Mind you, this was an opera that required a fair amount of intense delivery by many of the vocalists; and I found it disappointing the set designs by Vincent Lemaire tended to undermine the vocal delivery.

Pene Pati as the Chevalier des Grieux in one of his more intimate moments with Manon (Amina Edris) (photograph by Cory Weaver, courtesy of SFO)

The leading vocalists were soprano Amina Edris in the title role and tenor Pene Pati as the hapless Chevalier des Grieux. Both of them delivered dynamite performances, regardless of the impact of the set designs. Their command of the many challenges in Massenet’s score were always “on the money.” Nevertheless, the narrative is just not a particularly engaging one; and, in many respects, the visual experience tended to be more compelling than the musical delivery.

The good news is that conductor Eun Sun Kim was “in full command” of that musical delivery. As usual, her command of the SFO Orchestra was a solid one, which was particularly engaging when the music tended to “take charge” of the narrative with more expressiveness than the vocal work! That said, Kim’s chemistry with the vocalists on stage was as solid as her direction of the instrumentalists. Nevertheless, there was little she could do when the music came across as “out of step” with the narrative. Apparently, Massenet’s relationship with Meilhac and Gille was not a particularly conducive one!

Hélène Grimaud will “Return to the Classics”

Pianist Hélène Grimaud (from the San Francisco Symphony Web page for her recital)

Hélène Grimaud is an impressively diverse pianist. At the beginning of San Francisco Symphony’s last season, she was the piano soloist in the performance of George Gershwin’s three-movement “Concerto in F,” written in 1925 the year after his best-known “Rhapsody in Blue.” This season she will return to Davies Symphony Hall to perform a solo piano recital. This will be a “back to the classics” program consisting of only two piano sonatas from the Classical period.

Both of these will be “last sonatas.” The program will begin with Ludwig van Beethoven’s Opus 111 sonata in C minor. The intermission will be followed by Franz Schubert’s D. 960 in B-flat major. It would not be understatement to call this a “monumental” program, leaving me to wonder whether Grimaud will have any energy left for one or more encores!

This program will be given only one performance in Davies Symphony Hall, beginning at 7:30 p.m. on Tuesday, November 10. Tickets may be purchased through the Web page for this event, and the Box Office can be reached by calling 415-864-6000. As usual, tickets may also be acquired at the Box Office, which is at the entrance to Davies on the south side of Grove Street, between Van Ness Avenue and Franklin Street.

DSO Live-Streams a Second Program This Month

Yesterday evening saw the second live-stream performance by the Detroit Symphony Orchestra to be presented the month. The first was last week’s Bernstein & Appalachian Spring program conducted by Peter Oundjian. Yesterday saw the return of Music Director Jader Bignamini to present a program entitled Fountains & Pines of Rome. Most readers probably know that the title refers to the two best-known tone poems by Ottorino Respighi, and they accounted for the second half of the program.

The first half was “something completely different.” It began with “Emerge” by Michael Abels, who is primarily a film composer. The best description of the genre would probably be “maximal minimalism.” The minimalist thematic content unfolds through a gradual introduction to account for all of the instruments in the ensemble. The climax emerges with all the performers going at it with full force; but, from my vantage point, I felt that the score took far to much time to leave anything for the impact of the climax.

This “overture” was followed by a three-movement piano concerto by Leokadiya Kashperova. The soloist was Alexandra Dariescu, who, according to the notes available to me, had rescued this “cinematic” composition from obscurity. Sadly, the keyboard work for this composition could not have been more heavy-handed; and the music itself recalled that all-too-familiar trope from Amadeus about “too many notes.”

Fortunately, things improved when Dariescu returned for her encore. She was joined by Concertmaster Robyn Bollinger for the arrangement of Béla Bartók’s Sz. 68 “Romanian Folkdances for small orchestra.” I must confess a fondness for this music, since I played the solo clarinet part with a community orchestra in my student days. As far as I was concerned, that brief duo encore was far more satisfying than the three-movement concerto. However, during the intermission, the video feed screened a previous recording from 2025 of Dariescu playing the second movement of Maurice Ravel’s G major piano concerto, which was far more engaging than Kashperova’s efforts.

The pine trees in the Villa Borghese gardens of the Piazza di Siena (photograph by Howard Hudson, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 Generic license, attributed to Howardhudson at English Wikipedia)

The second half of the program accounted for the overall title, including the order in which the two tone poems were performed. This was the proper ordering, because the “Pines” score is the one with a final movement that builds to a thundering climax. The movement is a Tempo de marcia; and, every now and then, I run into comments suggesting that this was the march of Benito Mussolini’s troops! That said, this is music that makes the best of the full forces of an ensemble. When I last listened to it in Davies Symphony Hall, it was clear that the audience was having just as much fun as the musicians!

Classic Clifford Jordan Album to be Reissued

I must confess that my knowledge of tenor saxophonist Clifford Jordan has been limited to his acquaintance with Charles Mingus. More specifically, he played in a European tour that Mingus arranged in April of 1964, which would eventually lead to the release of the album Charles Mingus Live in ’64. As a result, when I learned that Time Traveler Recordings would release a live album of a quartet led by Jordan, my curiosity got the better of me!

Album cover for Night of the Mark VII

The title of the album is Night of the Mark VII, and it documents a live performance of Jordan’s quartet in Paris (France) on March 26, 1975. The other members of the quartet on that occasion were pianist Cedar Walton, Sam Jones on bass, and drummer Billy Higgins. This is very much a “jazz from the last century” album, and I was delighted to encounter its reissue. The release date is this coming Friday (October 23); but the above hyperlink leads to an Amazon.com Web page that is processing pre-orders.

There are five tracks, only one of which, “Highest Mountain,” is by Jordan. There are also compositions by Walton (“Midnight Waltz”) and Jones (“One for Amos”). That leaves two other tracks, the better known being Thelonious Monk’s “Blue Monk.” The album begins with “John Coltrane,” composed by Bill Lee.

Personally, I always have a preference for Monk originals. That said, Jordan brings a sassiness to “Blue Monk” that is better expressed on saxophone than on a piano keyboard. On the other hand, the opening track composed by Bill Lee is titled “John Coltrane.” This struck me as an evocation that clearly honored “the master;” but I would have been more satisfied with a track of one of Coltrane’s compositions! On the other hand, I was a bit frustrated in listening to “One For Amos” because I hadn’t a clue who “Amos” was!

Nevertheless, I continue to have nostalgia for jazz from the last quarter of the last century; and there is more than enough on the five tracks of this album to satisfy that nostalgia!

Scarfe-Tolling Duo Returning to Century Club

Violinist Mads Tolling and pianist Ian Scarfe (from the Groupmuse Web page for next month’s recital)

As was the case last year, next month will see the return to the Century Club of California by the duo of pianist Ian Scarfe and violinist Mads Tolling. They will perform Antonín Dvořák’s Opus 100, his four-movement sonatina in G major, which was a high point in last year’s recital. Also George Gershwin will again lead off the second half of the program with his three solo piano preludes and selections from the opera Porgy and Bess, both arranged for violin and piano, most likely by violinist Jascha Heifetz.

The program will begin with selections from Edvard Grieg’s Opus 35 Norwegian Dances collection. This will be followed by a selection of Viennese dances by Fritz Kreisler, which do not appear to be included in the Wikipedia Web page that lists all of the composer’s compositions! Tolling will also perform works of his own composition.

This performance will begin at 2 p.m. on Sunday, November 8. For those that do not already know, the Century Club is located at 1355 Franklin Street, between Post Street and Sutter Street. However, all arrangements must be made through a Groupmuse Web page. Ticket prices are $30, with a discounted price of $24 for “Supermusers.” Doors will open at 1:30 p.m. Drinks will be provided (both with and without alcohol). However, the club itself is not wheelchair accessible.