half a concert

This week was the Stanford music department's annual chamber music seminar, where visiting and nonpro groups get coaching. Public events included noon concerts, which I didn't get to because weekday parking at Stanford is so difficult, and a Sunday daytime blowout where everybody plays, which I didn't get to because I didn't get going early enough in the day.

But I did get to the Saturday evening showcase concert, though I can't tell you who was playing because they didn't hand out programs, just posted one on a wall. You could photograph it, but my screen would have been too small to read it, so forget it. A group of I think 7 string players, including Paul Wiancko, the new cellist of the Kronos Quartet, played a hypnotic-sounding work of his. And a young string quartet undertook Beethoven's Op. 132, surely the second most challenging quartet in the classical repertoire (Op. 130 is tougher). This was the first time I've heard it without any preparation whatever, but by this time I know it well enough that I didn't feel I needed any. Excellent job, basic interpretation effectively done.

instead of the debate

on tape, you could be watching Jon Stewart's take on it. It begins as a dig at the media hoopla, but it does get into the substance of the debate itself. And it tells the basics a lot more succinctly and without the agony of having to watch the whole thing, plus: Stewart's personality.

concert review: Stella Chen

Next month I'm scheduled to review violinist Stella Chen in the Barber concerto with SFS. I'd heard Chen before - she was in the Music@Menlo chamber music festival last summer - but I thought I could use more exposure to her style, so I attended her SFS-sponsored violin and piano recital (with George Li, pianist) at Davies.

I was quite pleased with the results. Chen seemed to me to be most outstanding in her command of the melodic line and phrasing, especially in lyrical sections. In fast sequences of figurations, she displays the overall shape of the passage without resorting to the overemphasis of key notes. All this gives character to the music within a fairly strict control of tempo and note values.

Her tone is relatively consistent, though it can change between pieces. Mostly it is light and clear, but she doesn't shift around between tone styles to provide character. I'd describe her as a conservative and restrained violinist who relies on her skill and communicative power within those restrictions to convey the meaning and effectiveness of the music with tremendous virtuosity but without flamboyance. I noted at Menlo her ability to take command of a chamber music piece, and even without an ensemble the same surety is there.

The main item on the program was Beethoven's Kreutzer Sonata, a long and rambling piece which, despite taking all the repeats, Chen and Li kept controlled and clearly shaped. It was a most satisfactory performance of a work I usually find difficult to grasp. Schubert's Rondo in B minor seems to me a piece of garrulous fluff, but Chen - who considers Schubert her favorite composer, and she recently issued a CD of his violin music - found the lyricism in it. The third piece was new, No Man's Land Lullaby by Eleanor Alberga, a quiet (and less somber than I was expecting) tribute to the front lines in the World Wars, closing with quotations of fragmentary phrases from the lullaby, the one by Brahms.

Chen is in her early 30s. In speaking to the audience, she expressed delight to be in San Francisco - "I am a Bay Area girl!" she said; she was raised here in Silicon Valley. She gave an excellent if fairly brief show to a gratifyingly large audience.

concert review: San Francisco Symphony

First I was going to go to this concert on Friday. But that was Garden of Memory. Then I switched it to Saturday. But then I decided to attend the Rainbow Symphony. That left the Sunday matinee.

The reason I was so eager to go is that EPS would be conducting Bruckner's Fourth. It turned out to be very worthwhile. He had sure control over the shape and flow of the music, knowing just when to let a pause linger a bit and when to build up the intensity. It wandered a bit on the large scale but was under firm control moment by moment. He found previously unsuspected reservoirs of graciousness in the scherzo's trio section.

Only the sound quality was slightly imperfect. The full-orchestra fortes were overloud and a bit coarse, while the pianissimos could get too quiet. The brass chorales were played ideally enough, but the sound was a bit thin and slightly grainy.

And to fill out the program, Schumann's Piano Concerto played by the frequent visitor Yefim Bronfman, a big bear of a man with a gentle, caressing way at the keyboard. The clarity and beauty of it was a delight.

Slight amusement value in the lobby beforehand, listening to two ladies seated near me reading the program notes for the Schumann and trying to figure out who Florestan and Eusebius were. (They were personas for the different sides of Schumann's personality whom he invented as mouthpieces for his music reviews, and they're often taken by program-note writers as the composers of the contrasting moods in his own music.)

Slight difficulty getting home. I entered the BART station just after a train had left, but after 15 minutes of the next train being 9 minutes out, I deduced it was not going to arrive, so I left the station - the gate charged me $2.80 for the privilege of not being able to take a train, and that's the senior discount - and took the city bus ($1.25, senior discount), rattle and bang on the badly-paved streets, all the way out to the distant BART station at which I'd parked.

concert review: Bay Area Rainbow Symphony

I sometimes go to concerts by this group ("San Francisco's leading orchestra promoting LGBTQ composers and artists"), and didn't want to miss this one as it was the retirement concert of music director Dawn Harms. She's worn a lot of hats locally as conductor and violinist, so she's a familiar face. Besides, it was a delectable program.

A large audience at Herbst Theater cheered the orchestra on through a program designated as celebrating "Freedom, Equality & Pride": the Boatswain's Mate Overture by Ethel Smyth (the great suffragist composer), Copland's Lincoln Portrait (with local actor Curt Branom as narrator, sometimes drowned out by the music, which isn't supposed to happen), and Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, the one whose "Ode to Joy" finale is taken as an anthem for freedom.

The performances were delightfully crisp and energetic throughout, especially gratifying in the rarely-heard Smyth, but things started to get really interesting in the "Ode to Joy." With Herbst's smallish stage already fully occupied by the not-overlarge orchestra, plus the solo singers in front, the chorus (members of the Masterworks Chorale) had to crowd onto the landings for the side exits next to the stage, women on one side, men on the other. The conductor signaled to them as if semaphoring to a distance.

Harms beefed up the orchestral presentation of the "Ode to Joy" theme by exaggerating the dynamics in both directions, so that it became an even bigger crescendo than Beethoven had written. Then baritone Hadleigh Adams, who fitted this concert in between appearances in Handel's Partenope at the SF Opera at the other end of the same block, brought his operatic acting skills to his part here. When he sang "nicht diese Töne" he looked and sounded genuinely distressed, and when he turned to "Freude" why he seemed joyful.

Big cheerful sound, only slightly blurry towards the end, mighty applause and cheers afterwards.

concert review: Garden of Memory

Owing to the vagaries of the Gregorian calendar, the summer solstice this year actually fell on June 20th, but the annual solstice walk-through concert at the Chapel of the Chimes in Oakland went on as usual on the 21st, but without, so far as I could tell, the customary bell-ringing ceremony at sunset.

Last year they saved money by not printing a map of the labyrinthine venue and the locations of the various artists parked among the chapels, niches, and crypts, and sent out an e-mail telling attendees to download the map from the website in advance. I did, but a number of people missed the announcement and apparently were rather cross, because this year there were plenty of copies of a big glossy 11 x 14 sheet version.

The curious thing is that, although the event opened at 5 p.m. and the artists were, so far as I saw, all in place by then, most of them weren't ready to start yet. Having already been sitting in my car for an hour eating an early dinner, because arriving early is a necessity to find a parking space within reasonable distance, upon entering I made a bee-line for the secret restroom hidden in the basement, the one that was unoccupied then but had a line of ten people in front of it two hours later. Then I went back up to the niche occupied by my favorite of the returning artists, Laura Inserra, who specializes in padding drum sounds. But she wasn't ready. Tinkered with a few of her instruments, then left the room. Some ten minutes later, I and the other person who'd been waiting gave up and left. Meanwhile other people had been wandering into the room and quickly leaving, some of them after scratching their heads at the map trying to figure out where they were.

Some time later when I returned, Laura was apparently playing but the niche, and the niches in front of it, were so full there was no chance of getting in, let alone getting a seat, which is what I'd arrived early for.

So I wandered around and heard other things. What I liked best, and was able to find a seat for half hour sets of, were people who did vocalizations over what I'd best describe as landscapes of electronic sound. Briana Marela sang fragmentary lyrics above soft shifting sounds, and someone named SoRIAH performed Tuvan throat singing over throbbing beats of unutterably deep darkness. It didn't have the harshness you'd expect of rock-type music of that description, it was just firmly enveloping of the listener. A little like Dead Can Dance, actually, but much stronger and darker.

I heard various odd blurring sounds from other performers as I wandered about, but spent the most other amount of time at the atypical for this venue, but Garden of Memory regulars, the Orchestra Nostalgico, a ten-or-so-piece sax-and-clarinet-led band that does vaguely jazzy stuff, of which some Henry Mancini was the only thing I recognized.

Then I left early, which I hadn't done before. It was getting too crowded, the elevators were malfunctioning, and I didn't think I was missing anything I really wanted to hear.

opera review: Innocence

A year ago, after I attended a semi-staged production of Kaija Saariaho's Adriana Mater at the SF Symphony and was impressed by it both dramatically and musically, a couple commenters suggested that in that case I really ought to attend when SF Opera was putting on Saariaho's Innocence the next spring.

So I signed up and last night (5th of 6 performances) was it.

I have to say, this is a powerful piece. I'd known it concerned the aftermath of a (fictional) school shooting and, especially after learning that one of the production sponsors was an anti-gun-violence group, I feared that it would be a polemic designed to berate the audience with the fervor of its righteousness. I've seen too many contemporary stage plays like that. I should have trusted the nuanced approach that Saariaho and her collaborators took to the topic of revenge in Adriana Mater. This was nothing like a polemic.

The topical theme for the bulk of the opera was the psychological trauma that surviving a mass shooting (either personally or by being the relative of a victim) imposes on the survivors. This was reflected both in the text (by Finnish novelist Sofi Oksanen, adapted by dramaturg Aleksi Barrière) and the music. Characters change singing style when under severe stress: a baritone rises to a falsetto keening, a woman nearly chokes on her words in Sprechstimme style, another woman sings in a piercing nasal folk style from rural Finland. Though the principal action is sung in English, another sign of stress is for characters to revert to their native languages. Along with the student survivors being from an international school and speaking - more than singing - in their native languages, the text was in nine different European languages. (Double supertitling rendered both the originals and translations.)

That being the case, I felt that this theme was rather undercut towards the end, partly by the students embarking on facile self-healing (the writeups deny any such thing happens, but it does) but more by the emergence of the real theme, reflecting the title, of breaking down the distinction between guilt and innocence. Some of the innocent turn out to be guilty also, in ways the audience is intended not to be expecting, and not just in the sense of having enabled the shooter by failing to intervene (though that comes up too). On the one hand, this reveals that the distinction between guilt and innocence can hang on a thread, which is a valuable point; but it also distracts from either the psychological damage theme or the process of healing from it, and while one principal character (Tereza) does begin that healing process, by a striking scene of her mental image of her dead daughter telling her to let her go, the other principals are left shattered and there's no resolution.

I can't say more without spoiling the plot (there was a warning on the synopsis in the program book, which I'm glad I didn't read in advance). Despite the sense that this is two pieces welded together, it was both powerful and effective. The music was clattery and anxious, giving a sense of dread even to opening scenes which are supposed to be calm and normal; the singing was chromatic and drama-oriented. The set was a two-story Bauhaus-modernist cube, whose rooms, with exterior walls of glass, were intended to represent multiple buildings at different times; it was constantly rotating to shift the viewer's attention from scene to scene. The first round of applause at the end went to the stagehands.

I haven't forgotten Adriana Mater and I won't forget this either.

ouch

I have been slowly reading my way through Richard Taruskin's epic Oxford History of Western Music, and have reached the chapter on Handel. Taruskin makes no excuses for Handel's plagiarism, which he says was not - as defenders sometimes claim - normal for the time; instead he quotes contemporaries citing how Handel was notorious for it.

Handel also borrowed from himself, and Taruskin mentions one that I was curious enough to go and look up. It appears that "For Unto Us a Child Is Born", my favorite number from Messiah (and you'll forgive me the arrangement I chose to link to) was reworked from an erotic Italian duet that goes like this. Fascinating.

But! Taruskin (or, possibly, the scholarly source he's quoting, but I doubt it) commits a horrible historical error in the same chapter: not related directly to music, so it's not his field but that's no excuse. He's quoting a reprint of a rapturous review of one of Handel's earliest oratorios, which speaks of "a crowded Audience of the first Quality of a Nation, headed by the Heir apparent of their Sovereign's Crown." At which point there is inserted a bracketed identification of that last person, "[the future George III]."

Wait a minute, I thought. When was this? I checked: April 1739. In 1739, the future George III was a babe in arms, being about ten months old at the time, and unlikely to be heading a concert audience. Nor was he the heir apparent, that position being occupied by his father, Frederick Prince of Wales, who was 32. Though "poor Fred / who was alive and is dead" did not live to occupy the throne, he was certainly alive in 1739. You really ought to check this stuff up before you go around serenely announcing who is who.

two concerts

1. Cambrian Symphony. Conductor Scott Krijnen ran on stage, leapt up to the podium, and instantly launched the orchestra into Glinka's Ruslan and Ludmilla Overture, one of the fastest and most energetic works in the repertoire. Jennifer Higdon's blue cathedral and Debussy's La Mer which followed were likewise quite good, and the Hammer Theatre acoustics cooperated gratifyingly well.
However, one of the pieces in the second half was to be a concerto for electric cello, and the electric cellist was practicing on stage during intermission. Much of what was played sounded like hard rock electric guitar. I did not wish to hear that, so I just left.

2. San Francisco Symphony Chamber Musicians. It's worth traveling up to Davies to hear these concerts, if they're playing something you want to hear, because the SFS musicians are just so incredibly good: polished and sublimely skilled. They also have the advantage of being able to play odd works rarely heard because of the instrumentation: like Dohnanyi's Sextet (string trio, clarinet, horn, piano). Clarinet and horn are hard to find on the chamber music circuit, but in an orchestra they've got 'em.
The Sextet was a bit turgidly Brahmsian, but a marcato episode in the slow movement was particularly excellent, and I liked the way the coda of the finale suddenly changed keys in the last bar.
Also good was Kodaly's Serenade for 2 violins and viola, and Shostakovich's Piano Trio No. 2 brilliantly conveyed the existential horror of being a Russian citizen in the middle of WW2. Shostakovich does better expanses of gloomy Russian music than anyone else, if the players catch it accurately. Here they did.

ETA3. A third concert: My review of the Masterworks Chorale one held a week ago.

Wisconsin in July

Thursday was Take Your Felon to Work Day (descriptor courtesy of Senator-elect-to-be Adam Schiff), and the felon in question is reported to have told his fellow Republicans, "Milwaukee, where we are having our convention, is a horrible city."

Naturally, the ones from the area were upset by this, and claimed he was talking about the crime rate or the election results or something, but the most remarkable response was from Rep. Bryan Steil, who twitted, "I was in the room. President Trump did not say this. There is no better place than Wisconsin in July."

No better place ... The last time I was in Wisconsin in July (I've been back 3 or 4 times since, but not in July) was for the 1999 Mythcon, which was marked by a heat wave comparable to what's hitting the East (but not Wisconsin) this week. Here's an actual quote from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, taken from my B's con report: "The temperature peaked at 99 in Milwaukee, but just after 1 p.m. a record high dew point of 82 created a heat index of 119, a level considered dangerous to human health."

Mythcon was held in a conference center just south of Milwaukee. In what is now Rep. Steil's congressional district, by the way. It was right across the road from the shore of Lake Michigan, but that fact allowed us no relief, nor did the end of daytime. There was little air conditioning in the building, and after suffering through no sleep one night, B. and I decamped to an air-conditioned hotel room.

We arrived on Thursday. The weather finally broke on Saturday, and by Sunday morning the temperature was fine. Sunday was August 1st. No longer July. I didn't realize it would take 25 years to do it, but I think the weather was trying to tell Rep. Steil something.