Monteverdi Songs from Voices of Music

Laura Heimes, Jennifer Ellis Kampani, and John Taylor Ward singing with the Voices of Music instrumental ensemble, led from an organ keyboard by Hanneke van Proosdij

I had to wait until the end of the week; but, because this past Sundays at Ten video compiled by Voices of Music (VoM) presented songs by Claudio Monteverdi, I was determined to view and listen, even if it was later rather than sooner! Monteverdi was prolific in composing vocal music for both solo and group performances. This week’s video brought together excerpts from six different VoM programs; but I was particularly interested in the selection that featured two sopranos (Laura Heimes and Jennifer Ellis Kampani) and one baritone (John Taylor Ward).

I must confess that the entire program was new to me. (I am more familiar with the collection of Monteverdi’s madrigals.) All three of the vocalists shared only one of the selections on the program, “Cantate Domino.” The source was Monteverdi’s Libro primo de Motetti, which was published by Giulio Cesare Bianchi in 1620. The text itself mines passages from Psalms 95 and 97.

Watching these six videos reminded me of how seldom my encounters with Monteverdi has been in the recent past; but, to be frank, I find that I often feel this way about other composers after viewing other VoM videos!

California Bach Society: Italian Baroque Program

Salamone Rossi (from his Jewish Ceremony Web page)

At the end of next week, California Bach Society will begin its 2024–2025 season under the leadership of Interim Artistic Director Magen Solomon. The title of the program will be Tesori Dorati: Diverse Voices from the Italian Baroque. Four composers will serve as the providers of those “golden treasures” as follows:

1. Domenico Zipoli studied under Alessandro Scarlatti but spent much of his career in South America; his contribution to the program will be the Mass setting Missa Encarnación.
2. Claudio Monteverdi will be represented by selections from his first, second, and sixth books of madrigals.
3. Salamone Rossi’s contribution will be two settings from the Book of Psalms (137 and 126), both in the Hebrew text.
4. Antonio Vivaldi will conclude the program with his RV 610 setting of the Magnificat text.

As is usually the case, the choral ensemble will be accompanied by the Jubilate Baroque Orchestra.

As in the past, the San Francisco performance of this program will take place at St. Mark’s Lutheran Church. The program will begin at 7:30 p.m. (which is a new start time for evening performances) on Friday, October 25. A Web page has been created for all information about ticketing, including season subscriptions as well as individual performances. The basic price for a single ticket is $40; but, as can be expected, there are several alternatives for discounts. Doors will open at 7 p.m.

VoM Releases Video Selections of Thomas Cooley

For those of us that chose not to brave the elements to see tenor Thomas Cooley perform with Voices of Music at St. Mark’s Lutheran Church last night, last week’s Sunday Mornings at Ten video episode served as at least some compensation. That compensation consisted of eight recordings from past performances by Cooley. The first two selections were arias from oratorios by George Frideric Handel. They were followed by two selected movements from works by Claudio Monteverdi, and the remainder of the program was devoted to Henry Purcell.

Tenor Thomas Cooley singing Monteverdi with cellist Elisabeth Reed and David Taylor on theorbo (screenshot from the video being discussed)

The first of the Monteverdi selections was a reminder that I still had a lot to learn. I had casually assumed that it was one of the vocal solos to be found somewhere in the composer’s eight books of madrigals. It wasn’t. After a moderate amount of digging, I found that “Sì dolce è'l tormento” (SV 332 in the Monteverdi catalog) was one of the four pieces in a collection entitled Quarto scherzo delle ariose vaghezze. Google Translate transformed those last to words into “airy vagueness,” leading me to believe that Monteverdi may have been having some fun with his audiences and/or patrons. Nevertheless, Cooley gave an affectionate account, accompanied only by Elisabeth Reed on cello and David Tayler on theorbo.

Fortunately, the second Monteverdi selection was more familiar. This was the first of the four “Concerto” movements (motets) from the Vespro della Beata Vergine (Vespers for the Blessed Virgin), SV 206. The text is taken from the Song of Songs: “I am black, but comely, o ye daughters of Jerusalem.” Cooley gave it a perfectly gender-neutral account, allowing the sensuous Hebrew to be “neutralized” by its delivery in Latin.

The two Handel selections were taken from oratorios that also drew upon the Old Testament. In fact, Esther (HWV 50) is most likely the first oratorio to be written for an English libretto. (To be fair, however, that libretto was based on a drama by Jean Racine.) The libretto for Jephtha (HWV 70), on the other hand, was written by the Reverend Thomas Morell, drawing upon Chapter 11 of the Book of Judges. The Esther selection amounted to a duo for Cooley and oboist Marc Schachman, performing against accompaniment by pizzicato strings, making for a thoroughly engaging listening experience.

Purcell was one of those composers that seemed to enjoy writing music about music. This is most evident in his Z.323 ode Come Ye Sons of Art. Cooley sang the fifth movement, “Strike the viol, touch the lute,” in which the contrast between the two instruments is represented by the string players alternating between bowed and plucked performance. That was the first of the four Purcell selections, complemented by the concluding selection, “Music for a While,” taken from the Z.583 incidental music for Oedipus, for which John Dryden and Nathaniel Lee prepared an English-language libretto based on the play by Sophocles. These offerings served to frame “Now that the sun hath veiled his light” (Z.193, given the title “An Evening Hymn On A Ground”) and the Z.402 song “O! fair Cedaria, hide those eyes.”

This all amounted to a most pleasant way to appreciate Voices of Music performances while remaining dry!

VoM: Six Seventeenth-Century Sopranos

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

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

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

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

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

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

Philharmonia Baroque Highlights Salamone Rossi

Last night the Philharmonic Baroque Orchestra & Chorale presented the latest installment in its Jews & Music series of performances. The objective of this series was provided in the program book by a single (albeit longwinded) sentence: “Jews & Music (JAM) is a continuous exploration that probes the rich legacies of Jewish composers and performers; non-Jews who worked with Jews or drew inspiration from them; the socio-political milieu they inhabited; and Jewish themes that have emerged across music and visual art over time.” This particular installment focused on the Jewish composer Salamone Rossi, a contemporary of Claudio Monteverdi, included on the program through two selections that provided a compare-and-contrast opportunity.

Most of the selections on the program were vocal, performed by an octet of members of the Philharmonia Chorale, prepared under the direction of Valérie Sainte-Agathe. The group consisted of pairs of sopranos (Michele Kennedy and Helene Zindarsian), altos (Laurel Cameron Porter and Kyle Tingzon), tenors (Jeff Howe and Benjamin Liupaogo), and basses (Joel Chapman and Jim Monios); and the sang in different groupings based on the requirements of the music. Richard Egarr conducted from behind his harpsichord; and the other instrumentalists, when necessary, were violinists Isabelle Seula Lee and Carla Moore, William Skeen on cello, and Kevin Payne on theorbo.

The performance took place in The Green Room of the Veterans Building, a massive space intended for large entertainment events, which could not have been more unsuitable for the intimacy of the music being performed. On the bright side, the audience provided a full house, which should be at least partial compensation for all that was lacking in the acoustics. Less bright was the participation of Scholar in Residence Francesco Spagnolo, who delivered his thoughts on the program as if he had never before used a microphone; and, in the hostile acoustics of The Green Room, that meant that much of what he had to say came across as little more than mush.

The good news is that the music did not require amplification, and there was crystal clarity in the delivery of all of the participating musicians and vocalists. Spagnolo spent more time talking about Venice than about the music, meaning that the music could speak for itself. Ironically, this seems to have been my first encounter with Rossi’s music since the Voices of Music “holiday season” concert in December of 2016; and my only contact with recordings took place during my Examiner.com tenure. Thus, whatever annoyances may have arisen over the course of the evening, the performance of the music itself was decidedly (as P. T. Barnum would have put it) “worth the price of admission!”

SFO Announces 100th Anniversary Concert

1940s photograph of SFO founder Gaetano Merola conducting the SFO Orchestra (from the SFO Archives)

In addition to the three operas that San Francisco Opera (SFO) will present over the course of next month, there will be one final event to celebrate the Centennial Season. The Centennial Celebration concert, which launched the season this past September, will be complemented by a 100th Anniversary Concert, a musical account of SFO’s first century. The program will feature fifteen vocal soloists, the SFO Orchestra and Chorus, and three conductors.

Beginning with the conductors, Caroline H. Hume Music Director Eun Sun Kim will share the podium with former Music Director Donald Runnicles, and former Principal Guest Conductor Patrick Summers. The vocal soloists will be sopranos Karita Mattila, Ailyn Pérez, Patricia Racette, Nina Stemme, Heidi Stober, and Adela Zaharia, mezzo-sopranos Susan Graham and Daniela Mack, tenors Lawrence Brownlee, Michael Fabiano, Brandon Jovanovich, and Russell Thomas, baritones Lucas Meachem and Brian Mulligan, and bass-baritone Christian Van Horn. The current plan for the program (which is subject to change) is as follows:

• Prelude from Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg (Richard Wagner); San Francisco Opera Orchestra; Eun Sun Kim, conductor
• “Amour viens rendre à mon âme” from Orphée et Eurydice (Christoph Willibald Gluck); Daniela Mack; Donald Runnicles, conductor
• “Pur ti miro” from L’Incoronazione di Poppea (Claudio Monteverdi); Heidi Stober and Susan Graham; Patrick Summers, conductor
• “Odi il voto” from Ernani (Giuseppe Verdi); Russell Thomas; San Francisco Opera Chorus; Eun Sun Kim, conductor
• “Pierrot’s Tanzlied” from Die tote Stadt (Erich Wolfgang Korngold); Lucas Meachem; Donald Runnicles, conductor
• “Embroidery” aria from Peter Grimes (Benjamin Britten); Heidi Stober; Donald Runnicles, conductor
• “Vicino a te” from Andrea Chénier (Umberto Giordano); Michael Fabiano and Ailyn Pérez; Eun Sun Kim, conductor
• “Va, pensiero” from Nabucco (Giuseppe Verdi); San Francisco Opera Chorus; Patrick Summers, conductor
• “Ch’ella mi creda” from La Fanciulla del West (Giacomo Puccini); Brandon Jovanovich; Eun Sun Kim, conductor
• Act I finale from Tosca (Giacomo Puccini); Christian Van Horn; San Francisco Opera Chorus; Eun Sun Kim, conductor
• “Entrance of the Guests” from Tannhäuser (Richard Wagner); San Francisco Opera Chorus; Donald Runnicles, conductor
• “Batter my heart” from Doctor Atomic (John Adams); Brian Mulligan; Eun Sun Kim, conductor
• “Co chvila” from Jenůfa (Leoš Janáček); Karita Mattila; Donald Runnicles, conductor
• “Losing my mind” from Follies (Stephen Sondheim); Patricia Racette; Patrick Summers, conductor
• “Ah, je veux vivre” from Roméo et Juliette (Charles Gounod); Adela Zaharia; Eun Sun Kim, conductor
• “Ombra mai fu” from Serse (Xerxes) (George Frideric Handel); Susan Graham; Patrick Summers, conductor
• “Prosti, nebesnoye sozdanye” from Pique Dame (Piotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky); Brandon Jovanovich; 
• Donald Runnicles, conductor
• “Là ci darem la mano” from Don Giovanni (Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart); Heidi Stober and Christian Van Horn; Eun Sun Kim, conductor
• “Cessa di più resistere” from Il Barbiere di Siviglia (Gioachino Rossini); Lawrence Brownlee; San Francisco Opera Chorus; Patrick Summers, conductor
• Liebestod from Tristan und Isolde (Richard Wagner); Nina Stemme; Donald Runnicles, conductor
• “Ave Signor” from Mefistofele (Arrigo Boito); San Francisco Opera Chorus; Eun Sun Kim, conductor

The entire program should last approximately three hours with one intermission.

This concert will be given only one performance, beginning at 6 p.m. on Friday, June 16. Ticket prices range from $30 to $350; and, depending on location, there is a facility fee of either $2 or $3 per ticket. All tickets may be purchased in the outer lobby of the War Memorial Opera House at 301 Van Ness Avenue or by calling the Box Office at 415-864-3330. Box Office hours are 10 a.m.–5 p.m. on Monday and 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Tuesday through Saturday. In addition, there will be a livestream (no on-demand access) on the entire program; the charge will be $27.50. Web pages are available both for tickets to the Opera House and for the livestream. Finally, those going to the Opera House will have the option of purchasing dinner packages (which will be sold separately from the tickets for the performance). A single Web page has been created with hyperlinks for the different dinner options. Tickets may also again be purchased through the Box Office.

SFRV’s “Choral Renaissance” Continues

Last night at the Most Holy Redeemer Catholic Church in the Castro, San Francisco Renaissance Voices (SFRV) presented a “second installment” of a program performed almost exactly a year ago at the same venue. At that time A Choral Renaissance was presented to highlight many of the significant performances that were given during the first sixteen years of this a cappella ensemble. Last night SFRV presented A Choral Renaissance II, once again reviewing highlights in the overall repertoire.

According to my records, I have not attended an SFRV performance since before the pandemic, more specifically in August of 2019. Much happened since then, including the tragic loss of the ensemble’s former Executive Director J. Jeff Badger. Nevertheless, I did my best to keep readers apprised of the SFRV schedule; and last night my wife and I were able to “get back on the track,” returning to Most Holy Redeemer.

Last night’s program was given the subtitle Passion, perhaps as an acknowledgement that Ash Wednesday will be celebrated three days from today. However, music appropriate for the Lenten season was performed only at the beginning and the conclusion of last night’s program. The evening began with Josquin des Prez’ setting of the “Stabat Mater” hymn and concluded with the “Libera me” portion from the six-voice setting of the Missa pro defunctis by Tomás Luis de Victoria. In other words the entire evening was framed by composers from earlier and later periods in the history of Renaissance music.

The other extended selections were the six-voice Missa Papae Marcelli by Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina and the “Miserere” setting of Psalm 51 by Gregorio Allegri, which is probably best known for the (not necessarily true) story of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart writing out the entire score from memory. Allegri composed the work for two choirs and was performed last night by four soloists in a balcony to the rear of the audience with the remainder of the ensemble in front of the audience accounting for the “primary” choir. There were also performances of three shorter sacred texts by William Byrd, Thomas Tallis, and Thomas Tomkins.

Finally, the Victoria setting was preceded by three selections from Claudio Monteverdi’s third book of madrigals. Two of the texts were by Giovanni Battista Guarini, “O primavera, gioventù de l’anno” and “Occhi, un tempo mia vita.” The set concluded with the first madrigal in the book, “La giovinetta pianta.” I am so used to listening to this music in one-voice-to-a-part settings that I found myself disappointed with the thicker textures of last night’s choral performances. However, that was the only down-side of an otherwise highly stimulating survey of sacred music from the Renaissance period of history.

SFRV to Begin New Season with “Sequel”

This past February, San Francisco Renaissance Voices (SFRV) began its seventeenth season with a program entitled A Choral Renaissance. This was an “anniversary” program, which highlighted sixteen compositions that revisited performances that were given during the ensemble’s first sixteen years. This coming February, SFRV will launch its eighteenth season with a “follow-up” program entitled A Choral Renaissance II.

The program will again feature significant compositions from the SFRV repertoire. These will include Gregorio Allegri’s setting of Psalm 50, usually known simply as “Miserere,”  Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina’s Missa Papae Marcelli setting of the Mass text, and selections from Claudio Monteverdi’s third book of madrigals. The program will also include shorter works by William Byrd, Josquin des Prez, Thomas Tallis, Thomas Tomkins, and Tomás Luis de Victoria. The ensemble will be led by Music Director Don Scott Carpenter.

The sanctuary space of Most Holy Redeemer Catholic Church (from a Photo page on the church’s Facebook site)

This program will take place at 7:30 p.m. on Saturday, February 18. The venue will be the Most Holy Redeemer Catholic Church, located in the Castro at 100 Diamond Street on the southwest corner of Eighteenth Street. Ticket prices will be $40. Tickets may be purchased online through an Eventbrite event page.

The Remaining Leonhardt Recordings

Only five CDs remain to be accounted for in this series of articles about The New Gustav Leonhardt Edition. These account for French and Italian composers, along with two tracks of anonymous sources. The only vocal music appears on a CD consisting primarily of madrigals by Claudio Monteverdi. These are coupled by the BWV 209 cantata of Johann Sebastian Bach, one of the only two settings of Italian texts by that composer. The title of BWV 209 is Non sa che sia dolore (he knows not what sorrow is). The other Italian CD consists primarily of diverse selections by Girolamo Frescobaldi, along with Leonhardt playing four of Domenico Scarlatti’s keyboard sonatas.

The French CDs serve up a generous assortment of music by Jean Philippe Rameau, including the set of five short collections identified as Pièces de clavecin en concerts. Ironically, the track listing gives no indication of the keys associated with these five compositions, whose movements, for the most part, have programmatic titles. Another CD includes six selections taken from the three Rameau volumes collected under the title Pièces de clavecin. That CD also includes the eight preludes from François Couperin’s L’art de toucher le clavecin. None of compositions in Couperin’s 27 ordres (suites), collected in four published volumes, were included. On the other hand an entire CD is devoted to the Opus 3 of Jean-Joseph de Mondonville, a collection of six three-movement sonatas.

Those familiar with any of the compositions on these five CDs will probably enjoy listening to Leonhardt’s approaches to interpretation; those lacking such familiarity would probably benefit from albums that include booklet texts that would assist orienting the listener.

Cal Bach Explores Vespers Music by Rovetta

Last night at St. Mark’s Lutheran Church, the California Bach Society (Cal Bach) continued its 50th Anniversary season with a program entitled Venetian Vespers. During the seventeenth century St Mark’s Basilica was one of the most significant venues of sacred music. This was the period during which Claudio Monteverdi served as maestro di cappella, one of his major achievements being the composition of the Vespro della Beata Vergine (vespers of the Blessed Virgin).

Rather than undertake a presentation of this composition of epic proportion, Cal Bach Artistic Director Paul Flight chose, instead, to focus on Monteverdi’s successor, Giovanni Rovetta, presenting four of his settings of Vespers texts: “Dixit Dominus,” “Confitebor tibi,” “Lauda Jerusalem,” and “Laudate pueri Dominium.” Monteverdi himself was represented by a “Beatus vir” setting; and the program concluded with a Magnificat setting by Rovetta’s successor, Francesco Cavalli. (Those familiar with that name are more likely to associate it with his keen gift for creating ribald operas for the Venetian Carnival.)

There is a tendency to treat the Monteverdi Vespro as a work of major spectacle, complementing the many ornate details of the Basilica. Cal Bach provided the music in a much more intimate setting, with instrumental support provided by only a handful of musicians. These included two violins (Carla Moore and Cynthia Black), two cornetti (Alexandra Opsahl and Steve Escher), cello (Rocio Lopez Sanchez), theorbo and lute (Jon Mendle), and organ (Yuko Tanaka).

The entire program lasted only about an hour and a quarter, performed without an intermission. That framework further enhanced the intimacy of the occasion. Furthermore, while the emphasis was on the choral performance, “Lauda Jerusalem” was sung entirely by solo vocalists, one of whom was Flight himself. Thus, while the evening may have been modest in duration, it provided an impressively engaging diversity of intimate accounts of the efforts of three successive maestri di cappella: Monteverdi, Rovetta, and Cavalli. This modest lesson in music history could not have sounded better.

Cal Bach to “Visit” Seventeenth-Century Venice

St Mark’s Basilica in Venice, where the pigeons often outnumber the faithful (photograph by Ricardo André Frantz, from Wikimedia Commons, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 Generic license)

Towards the end of this month, the California Bach Society (Cal Bach) will continue its 50th Anniversary season with music from seventeenth-century Venice. The program will focus on Claudio Monteverdi, who served as maestro di cappella at St Mark’s Basilica, one of the major venues for seventeenth-century sacred music. Artistic Director Paul Flight will lead a performance of Monteverdi’s “Beatus vir” setting. The program will also include sacred music by two of Monteverdi’s disciples.

The better known of these is Francesco Cavalli. Much of Cavalli’s reputation came from the operas that he composed, but he was appointed maestro di cappella at St Mark’s in 1668. Cal Bach will sing his setting of the “Magnificat” text.

The other composer is Giovanni Rovetta, who served as maestro di cappella between Monteverdi and Cavalli. His contribution to the program will be a setting of “Dixit Dominus.” Flight will lead both the 30-voice Cal Bach choir and a Baroque instrumental ensemble, which will include Alexandra Opsahl and Steve Escher playing cornetti, violinists Carla Moore and Cynthia Black, cellist Rocio Lopez Sanchez, Jon Mendle on theorbo, and Yuko Tanaka, organ.

The San Francisco performance of this Venetian Vespers program will take place at St. Mark’s Lutheran Church, located at 1111 O’Farrell Street, just west of its intersection with Franklin Street. The performance will begin at 8 p.m. on Friday, February 25. General admission will be $30 with a $25 discount for seniors and $10 admission students and those under 30. A Web page has been created to process all ticket sales, and the alternative will be to call 650-485-1097. Sales should be finalized at least 24 hours before the concert. Sales at the door will be only be available if COVID-19 restrictions allow. Doors will open at 7:30 p.m. All concert-goers must submit proof of vaccination, and masks must be worn at all times.

Another SoundBox with Disappointing Video

This morning the San Francisco Symphony launched the final video-streamed SoundBox before the beginning of the 2021–22 Season. Once again, the program title consisted of a single word, Delirium. The curator was pianist Jeremy Denk, whose introductory remarks suggested that the program would consist of musical reflections on illness. The program was divided into three parts, entitled “The Mind,” “The Heart,” and “The Soul;” but it was very unclear just how these titles related to much (most?) of the music that was performed.

Most disconcerting was that one of the selections that was specifically composed as a reflection on a serious illness was never acknowledged as such. Violinist Leor Maltinski, violist Katie Kadarauch, and cellist David Goldblatt performed the opening Part of Arnold Schoenberg’s Opus 45 string quartet. Schoenberg had suffered a violent heart attack on August 2, 1946; and, were it not for injecting a stimulus directly to the heart, he probably would not have survived. Less than three weeks after his recovery, he began work on Opus 45 as his own reflective documentation of the experience. If ever there were music that reflected explicitly on “The Heart,” this would be it; but in Denk’s overall organization, the performance took place, instead, in the final part of the overall program.

Nevertheless, there was much to appreciate in Denk’s performances and his engagement with others when he was not playing solo. Most interesting was his accompaniment of tenor Nicholas Phan singing Orfeo’s lament over the death of Euridice, “Tu se’ morta” (Are you dead?) from the second act of Claudio Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo opera. Denk played the bass line on a single-keyboard organ with his right hand while filling out the continuo on harpsichord with his left:

courtesy of the San Francisco Symphony

The good news is that the musical performances were consistently satisfying over the course of the hour’s duration of the video. Indeed, listening to the performance of Schoenberg’s Opus 45 made me wish I could listen to those musicians given an account of the entire trio. However, the underlying concept of SoundBox involves what one sees in conjunction with the listening experience. Sadly, the video direction for Delirium was again by Clyde Scott. Readers may recall that, in discussing his direction of Nico Muhly’s SoundBox program, the article about that program, Focus, concluded that Scott’s efforts had undermined the listening experience. This time around the distractions came from the large portion of projections that were irrelevant and/or confusing and camera angles that almost never presented the musicians in ways that would guide the listening.

Video can be an informative medium when conceived in conjunction with an understanding of the music. Scott did not seem to understand either the music or the overall theme of Denk’s Delirium programming. Attentive listeners (and, for that matter, attentive performers) need to be shown more respect.

Chanticleer’s San Francisco Opening Plans

The War Memorial Green Room (courtesy of Chanticleer)

Readers may recall that Chanticleer will launch its 2021–22 season with a program entitled Awakenings, which will serve as a metaphor for the return to “the usual” concert conditions. The San Francisco performances of this program will take place in the Green Room. They will differ from the opening concerts in Sacramento and Santa Clara by using the Green Room space in an imaginative way. Details have not been released, other than to say that the performance will provide “an intimate way to experience Chanticleer up close and in surround sound.”

As was previously announced, the program will feature new works by Ayanna Woods and Steven Sametz created through commissions. The Sametz composition will be based on birdsongs, meaning that it is likely to be one of the offerings that will exploit the spatial affordances of the Green Room. This may also be the case for the ensemble’s presentation of some of Claudio Monteverdi’s more raucous approaches to polyphony. The program will also include “Renaissance dreamscapes” by Orlande de Lassus.

This program will be given two performances, both at 7:30 p.m. on Saturday evenings, September 25 and October 2. Ticket prices are $62 with a $57 rate for seniors over the age of 65 and students. Tickets may be purchased on line through separate City Box Office Web pages for September 25 and October 2. Tickets may also be purchased by calling City Box Office at 415-392-4400. The Green Room is located on the second floor of the Veterans Building at 401 Van Ness Avenue, located on the southwest corner of McAllister Street. The venue is excellent for public transportation, since that corner has Muni bus stops for both north-south and east-west travel.

Chanticleer has formulated its policy for performing under the current pandemic conditions as follows:

• Everyone in attendance will be required to provide proof of vaccination.
• You and your guests must be fully vaccinated to attend; proof of vaccination is required upon arrival. Full vaccination is defined as completion of the two-dose regimen of Pfizer or Moderna vaccines or one dose of Johnson & Johnson vaccine administered two weeks or more in advance of the event.
• Given these precautions, all performances will be seated at full capacity.
• Unfortunately, due to vaccination status, children under the age of 12 will not be able to attend Chanticleer concerts at this time.

SHCS to Host Recorder Recital by Tabea Debus

Recorder virtuoso Tabea Debus (photograph by Ben Ealovega, from the SHCS event page)

The Spring 2021 Virtual Season of the Shriver Hall Concert Series (SHCS) will continue tomorrow afternoon with a recorder recital by Tabea Debus. This performance will be her “virtual” Baltimore debut. (Scare quotes have been used because that performance has been pre-recorded at the Lauderdale House in London.) Her accompanist will be Alon Sariel, alternating between lute and mandolin.

The title of the program being presented is Ohrworm (earworm). The selections will explore how tunes and dances migrated across many aspects of composition and performance in Europe during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Debus will begin the performance by demonstrating a chaconne theme that can be found in compositions by Antonio Bertali, Tarquinio Merula, and Claudio Monteverdi. A more contemporary perspective will be provided by “Diaries of the Early Worm” by the contemporary British composer Gareth Moorcraft. Other composers from the earlier centuries whose music will be performed will be Johann Sebastian Bach, John Schop, Georg Philipp Telemann, and Pierre-Francisque Carroubel.

This performance will take place tomorrow, Saturday, April 24, beginning at noon (Pacific time). There will be no fee for admission, but reservations are required. SHCS has set up an event page for making reservations, along with several other useful hyperlinks, including program notes. Once the reservation has been processed, a hyperlink for viewing the performance will be made available and will be valid for additional visits until the end of the day of Saturday, May 1.

Ars Minerva Announces Annual Visit to IIC

Bowl with the image of Minerva, probably dating from the first century BC (photograph by Andreas Praefcke, from Wikimedia Commons, public domain)

[updated 3/10, 7:45 a.m.: This event has been postponed. The new date has not yet been set. The necessary information will be provided when it becomes available.]

For several years the Italian Cultural Institute (Istituto Italiano de Cultura, IIC) has hosted an annual visit by mezzo Céline Ricci. Regular readers probably know by now that Ricci is the founder and Artistic Director of Ars Minerva, which has established itself as a producer of historically-informed staged performances of operas that pre-date the Classical period. This year she will make her visit on the first day of the week-long Etruscan festival Quinquatria. Appropriately enough, this festival was dedicated to Minerva, celebrating rites of women’s rebirth in conjunction with the spring equinox.

As usual, Ricci will use her visit to discuss Ars Minerva’s future projects. As in the past, this will include performances of vocal music, featuring soprano Aura Veruni and mezzo Kindra Scharich accompanied at the harpsichord by Kelly Savage. The composers to be featured will be Claudio Monteverdi, Antonia Bembo, and Élisabeth Jacquet de la Guerre. Lisa C. Pieraccini will provide historical context for Quinquatria. Artist Entropy will also be on hand to discuss future plans for Ars Minerva set designs.

This presentation will begin at 6:30 p.m. on Thursday, March 19. It will probably last for about two hours. IIC is located in the Civic Center at 601 Van Ness Avenue, Suite F. Admission is free, but registration is required to assure having a place. IIC has created a registration page specific for this event. Anyone who registers may also add the names of a maximum of two additional guests. Those wishing further information may call IIC at 415-788-7142.

Albany Concert Brings Monteverdi to Noontime Concerts

This afternoon the Albany Consort returned to the Noontime Concerts series hosted by Old Saint Mary’s Cathedral in Chinatown. In the past the Albany Consort founders, Jonathan Salzedo and his wife Marion Rubinstein, timed their visits to coincide with birthday celebrations for Johann Sebastian Bach. This time the focus was on the sacred and secular vocal music of Claudio Monteverdi.

This required adding vocalists to the Albany instrumentalists, and they were the section leaders in the choir for St. Bede’s Episcopal Church in Menlo Park. Furthermore, additional instrumentation was provided by The Whole Noyse, whose members are Stephen Escher on cornetto, Richard van Hessel and Michael Cushing on sackbuts, and Herb Meyers doubling between dulcian and viola. The full complement of instrumentalists also performed compositions by Giovanni Gabrieli, Girolamo Frescobaldi, and Giovanni Picchi.

Taken as a whole, this made for a promising program. Even the secular vocal selections offered up their own unique take on symmetry. Both were taken from Monteverdi’s eighth book of madrigals, which is divided into two sections, one about war and the other about love. Each begins with the text of a “sonnet of opposition:” “Let others sing of Mars/Cupid; I sing of Love/War.” The music follows the conventional Italian coupling of an octave (eight lines) with a sestet (six lines). The octave, in turn, has two four-line sections with the same rhyme scheme: ABAB. The sestet is similarly divided into two three-line sections; but, in this case, the rhyme scheme seems to evoke Dante Alighieri’s terza rima (third rhyme) scheme: CDC DCD.

Monteverdi’s structure tends to respect the structure of these two texts. However, he embellishes that structure with a fair amount of richly embellished polyphony; and therein lies the difficulty with this afternoon’s performance. The acoustics of Old Saint Mary’s blurred that polyphony to such an extent that even the most attentive listener would have felt frustrated. Ultimately, this was a failure of judgement on Salzedo’s part. During the last Albany visit, the music of Bach’s BWV 988 set of 30 (“Goldberg”) variations on an aria theme drew upon elements of both homophony and polyphony; and Salzedo’s instrumental arrangement knew how to get the most out of both techniques.

To be fair, Monteverdi knew how to exercise the same balance. The Vespro della Beata Vergine (Vespers for the Blessed Virgin) of 1610 can probably manage quite well in the cavernous space of St Mark's Basilica in Venice; but madrigals were never written to be sung in that space. The two sacred selections from Selva morale e spirituale (moral and spiritual forest), “Beatus Vir” (blessed is the man) and “Confiteor tibi” (thanks to thee), fared somewhat better; but even they had to count for more blurring in the church’s acoustics than one would have desired. Ultimately, the instrumental selections fared best, not only because of amplitude but also due to attack profiles that sharply defined the onset of each note.

Nevertheless, it was clear that every contributing performer was solidly committed to giving a clear account of his/her part; and it would be delightful to listen to the entire program a second time in a more acoustically conducive space.

Albany Consort to Return to Noontime Concerts

The members of the Albany Consort with insets of The Whole Noyse (above left) and the St Bede’s choir (above right) (from the Noontime Concerts event page for this program)

According to my records, I have not written about the Albany Consort since March of 2018. On that occasion they brought a highly innovative instrumental version of Johann Sebastian of Bach’s BWV 988 set of 30 (“Goldberg”) variations on an aria theme to Noontime Concerts. That offering was impressive enough to land the March entry in my “Memorable Concerts of 2018” article.

Later this month the Albany Consort will return to Noontime Concerts to present a program featuring the music of Claudio Monteverdi. The group was co-founded by Jonathan Salzedo and his wife Marion Rubinstein in 1974. Salzedo plays harpsichord, and Rubinstein doubles between organ and recorder. They will be joined by Laura Rubinstein-Salzedo (their daughter) and Rachel Hurwitz on violin and Roy Whelden on gamba.

There will also be six vocal soloists, all section leaders in the choir for St. Bede’s Episcopal Church in Menlo Park, led by alto Katherine McKee. The other vocalists will be sopranos Katina Mitchell and Naomi Braun, tenors Dan Stanley and Colby Roberts, and bass Chris Filipowicz. Finally, additional instrumentation will be provided by The Whole Noyse, whose members are Stephen Escher on cornetto, Richard van Hessel and Michael Cushing on sackbuts, and Herb Meyers doubling between dulcian and viola.

The program will combine two secular offerings from Monteverdi’s eighth book of madrigals, “Altri canti d’Amor” (let others sing of Cupid) and “Altri canti di Marte” (let others sing of Mars). (The eighth book combined madrigals about war with those about love.) These will be complemented by two sacred selections from Selva morale e spirituale (moral and spiritual forest), “Beatus Vir” (blessed is the man) and “Confiteor tibi” (thanks to thee). In addition there will be instrumental selections by Girolamo Frescobaldi, Giovanni Gabrieli, and Salamone Rossi.

Like all events in the Noontime Concerts series, the performance will take place in the sanctuary of Old Saint Mary’s beginning at 12:30 p.m. on a Tuesday, January 14. The cathedral is located at 660 California Street, on the northeast corner of Grant Street. There is no charge for admission, but this concert series relies heavily on donations to continue offering its weekly programs.

Voices of Music Continues Women in Music Project

Last night at St. Mark’s Lutheran Church, Voices of Music presented its first concert in San Francisco in its 2019–2020 season. The title of the program was Concerto delle Donne (consort of women), named after an ensemble of women singers that Alfonso d’Este, Duke of Ferrara, assembled to perform for his court in July of 1584. That occasion was honored as part of the Voices of Music Women in Music Project, presenting the works of Italian composers active during the seventeenth century.

Consistent with the occasion, last night’s performers were almost entirely female, the one exception being co-director David Tayler alternating between archlute and guitar. The other performers included Tayler’s co-director Hanneke van Proosdij, both playing recorder and providing continuo on harpsichord and organ, Elisabeth Reed, rounding out continuo on gamba, violinists Elizabeth Blumenstock and Alana Youssefian, and sopranos Sophie Junker and Sherezade Panthaki. Over the course of the evening, these musicians joined together in a diversity of combinations.

The program was organized in four sets, only the last of which focused on a single composer, Claudio Monteverdi. The only female composer of the evening was Barbara Strozzi, three of whose songs were framed by instrumental selections by Marco Uccellini. Similarly, the opening set alternated the instrumental music of Salomone Rossi with vocal selections by Luzzasco Luzzaschi, two arias and one duet. The third set focused entirely on instrumental works by Giovanni Battista Fontana and Dario Castello.

Peter Paul Rubens’ portrait of Vincenzo Gonzaga, Duke of Mantua, whose support enabled one of last night’s Monteverdi selections (from the Villa Perdomini collection, from Wikimedia Commons, public domain)

My guess is that most, if not all, of the selections were unfamiliar to most of the audience. Those familiar with Monteverdi madrigals may have recognized the final selection, “Chiome d’oro” (golden tresses), from the seventh book of madrigals. Those interested in his earlier efforts might have recognized “Damigella tutta bella” (pretty woman) from the Scherzi musicali, which may have been composed for the entertainment of guests when Monteverdi was the service of the Duke of Mantua at the time, Vincenzo I. Both of these were vocal duets performed at the very end of the evening by the entire ensemble. Both Junker and Panthaki served up a lively account of the text, volleying their own intimate exchanges within the rich context of the instrumental ensemble. These selections were preceded by Panthaki’s solo account of the “Laudate Dominum” Psalm setting from Monteverdi’s Selva morale e spirituale (moral and spiritual forest) collection, presenting the sacred side of Monteverdi in Venice before indulging in secular Mantua.

Those familiar with Ottorino Respighi’s three Ancient Airs and Dances suites would probably also have recognized the “Bergamasca” tune, whose 1650 arrangement by Bernardo Gianoncelli concluded the second of the suites. This was presented in the version taken from Uccellini’s Opus 3 collection Sonate, arie et correnti. Uccellini’s version was one of the several offerings composed for two violins, allowing for a generous serving of playful give-and-take between Blumenstock and Youssefian. Even more engaging were the exchanges that emerged when these violinists performed a sonata selection by Castello, a composer distinguished by the fact that we know almost nothing about him (as Robert Mealy once put it during a master class at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music).

Thus, lack of familiarity did not make any of last night’s selections less engaging. All of the performances were consistently rich and expressive, with continuo support that always attentively followed every mood shift. As a whole the program was a generous serving, lasting over two hours; but the engagement was so consistently riveting that clock time rarely signified to the attentive listener.

Céline Ricci Revisits Pre-Classical Operatic Roles

Last night at the 906.World Cultural Center, mezzo Céline Ricci, Artistic Director of Ars Minerva, revisited her Women of the Mediterranean, which she had presented at the Italian Cultural Institute at the end of March in 2018. She was joined by the two vocalists that had performed last year, soprano Aura Veruni and mezzo Kindra Scharich. Instrumental accompaniment was provided by Kelly Savage at the harpsichord.

Once again the program began with an introduction to Ars Minerva itself and its mission to engage new audiences for the vast repertoire of Baroque operas, many of which were forgotten after their first performance. She made her case by reviewing the innovative approaches her productions have taken to the four operas presented thus far, La Cleopatra by Daniele da Castrovillari, Carlo Pallavicino’s Le amazoni nell’isole fortunate (the amazons in the fortunate isles), Pietro Andrea Ziani’s La Circe, and Giovanni Porta’s Ifigenia in Aulide. Arias from the last three of these operas were included in the recital that followed the introduction.

The recital selections balanced these rarities that have established Ars Minerva productions as valuable insights regarding pre-Classical opera with selections by three more familiar composers, Francesco Cavalli, Claudio Monteverdi, and George Frideric Handel (who was represented by three selections). Particularly interesting was the fact that many of the composers that Ars Minerva has “revived” (along with both Cavalli and Monteverdi) created operas to be performed during pre-Lenten Carnival festivities, primarily in Venice but in other cities as well. Thus, even when the underlying narrative was tragic, the Carnival spirit would be satisfied by low comedy. This meant that the singers themselves frequently had to deal with significant shifts in character, sometimes within a single aria.

Ricci seems to be consistently and imaginatively aware of this delicate balance of emotional dispositions. It has been evident in her full length productions, and it was just as evident in the delivery of the solo arias presented in last night’s program. Each aria was preceded by a brief (first-person) monologue describing the character delivering the song. Those introductions were so well-conceived that I found that I could set aside the English translations in the program book, preferring to focus on how the character embodied in the music was being established through minimal staging techniques.

The result was a highly satisfying evening that balanced well-conceived musicianship with imaginative approaches to staging in a minimal setting, affirming the impressive results encountered in Ars Minerva fulfilling its intended mission.

William Christie Brings Monteverdi to Salzburg

courtesy of PIAS

This Friday harmonia mundi will release an “Anniversary Edition” package of Claudio Monteverdi’s opera L'incoronazione di Poppea (the coronation of Poppea), the last of his three surviving operas and one of his last compositions. The recording was made during a performance at the 2018 Salzburg Festival, and the package consists of three CDs of audio and a DVD of what was happening on stage. As may be expected, Amazon.com is currently taking pre-orders for this release.

I should begin with a cautionary disclaimer. I have never been to Salzburg. As a result, my only knowledge of the annual festival there is based on streaming video. In the context of those experience, where a composer such as Monteverdi is concerned, my first thoughts are whether “star power” will take priority over “subject matter experts.”

The good news is that one could not hope for a better subject matter expert than William Christie, who conducts his own instrumental ensemble, Les Arts Florissants. (2019 marks the 40th anniversary of this group, hence the “Anniversary Edition” designation of the release.) On the other hand I was not quite sure what to make of the photographs of the staging in the accompanying booklet, so I decided that I would focus strictly on the audio portion of the release. Even there, however, I must confess to having some doubts about soprano Sonya Yoncheva in the title role, given that all previous knowledge of her came from Metropolitan Opera video documents of her performances of nineteenth-century selections.

Still, we must remember that this opera was composed for performance at a Venice Carnival pre-Lenten celebration. This was an occasion for indulging in vulgarity to get it “out of one’s system” during the solemn honoring of Lent. That point of view tends to prioritize purveyors of spectacle over subject matter experts, and that priority is richly honored by Giovanni Francesco Busenello’s libretto. The opening Prologue, sung by the allegorical figures of Fortune (soprano Tamara Benjesevic), Virtue (soprano Ana Quintans), and Love (mezzo Lea Desandre), makes it clear from the outset that Virtue has not got a chance. The power of Love will bias Fortune in favor of vice over virtue.

For those who do not already know the story, the basic narrative involves how the Roman Emperor Nerone (Nero, mezzo Kate Lindsey) gets rid of his Empress Ottavia (mezzo Stéphanie d’Oustrac) so that he can marry his mistress Poppea. In the midst of all this unbridled passion, the philosopher Seneca (baritone Renato Dolcini), Nero’s former tutor, tries to sway the Emperor to follow a more virtuous course. His failure to do so results in his taking his own life. As a result, Poppea’s path to the Imperial Throne is a grotesquely bloody one. Nevertheless, at the end of the opera, she and Nero sing what may well be the most ravishing duet in the pre-Classical repertoire, “Pur ti miro, Pur ti godo” (I gaze at you, I possess you).

From a musical point of view, Christie’s direction could not be more satisfying. There is a clarity and expressiveness that is maintained consistently by all contributing vocalists. For all of its underlying irony, the account of “Pur ti miro” is a loving one; and Yoncheva could not fit better into the seventeenth-century context that Christie established. Listeners can also enjoy the full extent of the vulgarity that countertenor Dominique Visse brings to the role of Arnalta, Poppea’s aged nurse, most of whose contributions to the libretto are all about “looking out for number one.”