Rafal Blechacz, February 20, 2011

Rafal Blechacz is a 25-year-old pianist from Poland with a long list of awards, and he is particularly known for his Chopin. His recital this afternoon at Herbst Theater, sponsored by Chamber Music San Francisco, had lots of Chopin but started out with the "9 Variations in C Major on Lison dormait" by Mozart, "L'isle joyeuse" by Debussy, and the Sonata No. 1 in C minor, Op. 8, by Karol Szymanowski. The Mozart is a 20-minute work, pretty, but surprisingly lightweight for the 22-year-old Mozart, well into his maturity. Blechascz' playing was crystal clear; if anything, he made it sound too simple for a recital. It reminded me of the time I heard heard Arkdai Volodos play a Schubert piece, a strange choice for someone with keyboard-crushing technique and repertoire.

The Debussy was brilliant, perhaps a tad fast, but a pleasure to hear. The Szymanowski was the major work on the first half. Written when he, too, was 22, the 30-minute work sounded less to me like Chopin (an influence on much of Szymanowsky's music) and more like Godowsky: richly harmonic, and pianistically grand-scale. The opening movement ends with such a flourish that some members of the audience started applauding; Blechacz even acknowledged it by standing and taking a bow, which was unusual. The piece is in C minor; the second movement is in A-flat major, but there are ominous low C's near the end, reminding us of where we came from, and where we will return in the final movement. The cheery third movement alternates between E-flat major and B major, but the fourth movement has us back in C minor, and with a grand, exciting fugue. Near the very end, there's a full-keyboard glissando, leading to a bright conclusion in C major, which is where this recital began. The last few bars are a little odd: trills in both hands slow down the action, when the scale of the piece would seem to demand something simpler, bigger, and louder. But Blechacz did a wonderful job with this unfamiliar piece, and was richly applauded.

The second half began and ended with two of Chopin's four Ballades, in G minor and F Major. In between there were two Polonaises, Op. 26, and four Mazurkas, Op. 41. (The 4th, in A-flat Major, was incorrectly listed as A-flat minor.) I know the Ballades well, but the Polonaises and Mazurkas were new to me. However, they sounded rock-solid, old-hat here, and one understands why this pianist has done so well with Chopin: it's in his blood, of course, but it's also in his head, his hands, and his heart. I actually found the F Major Ballade a little rushed and pedal-heavy for my tastes, and I've seen lesser pianists crack under the strain of this piece. Perhaps Blechacz will approach it differently in ten years' time, when there's less pressure to dazzle with sheer technique and more time to savor the richness of all one zillion notes.

Blechacz played two encores, one by Chopin (I should know which one it was -- it has themes that also appear in one of the Piano Concertos), and one probably not by Chopin (Haydn?). The pianist, who's young, tall, and handsome, was very popular with many of the younger members of the audience, who had to be reminded by the series director not to take photos, to film the entire concert (I've seen that done in Herbst), to send text messages, to watch the Simpsons, "et cetera." From my seat upstairs, I'm also noticing that the ubiquitous smartphones, with their brightly lit little screens, are now joined by iPads, with their brightly lit large screens. Fortunately they were dark during the performance. Unfortunately, there were a couple of ringing phones and a lot of coughing, but the pianist played bravely on.

I look forward to hearing Blechacz again.

Paul Jacobs, Davies Symphony Hall, January 30, 2011

Paul Jacobs returned to Davies Hall to give a recital on the Ruffatti organ. I saw his previous performance here in 2009, and I was amazed at how good he made the instrument sound. It's a tricky organ to play well. The acoustics are fairly dry, so when you're playing big, noisy French Romantic pieces that were composed for echo-y churches, you have to adjust your playing, and linger on some of those chords.

Jacobs started the program with a piece by one of his teachers (Weaver, Fantasia for Organ), and he also played a piece by a pianist-friend at Juilliard (Oquin, Reverie). I wasn't crazy about either piece, but it's not polite to comment on pieces by friends and teachers, so I'll say no more about those, although I do support bringing new pieces to audience's attention.

The program opened with the Weaver, and was followed by Sweelinck Variations on "Mein junges Leben hat ein End." Jacobs got to display lots of the color that this instrument can provide, as he moved from variation to variation. Jacobs requested that there be no applause after that piece, and he segued directly into the Bach Fugue in G Major, BWV 577, the "Gigue" Fugue. He played this at breakneck speed, which showed off his hand-eye-foot coordination but made a total mess of the music. It's the way you play a piece you can't stand (any more) but which you play because the crowd likes anything that's familiar, loud, and fast.

The Reger Inferno Fugue at the end of the first half fared no better. After explaining that this was a double fugue, and playing the two subjects, Jacobs launched into the piece, and again, there was so much noise that it was hard to hear anything clearly, even the second theme we have been primed to listen for.

I have a theory: Just as Davies has a reverberation limit, it also has a decibel limit. Beyond a certain volume, you can't make anything louder, or if you try, it's just static. I've heard massive concerts in Davies: Mahler's Eighth, the concert version of Mlada with 200 singers in the Symphony Chorus, a 400-person choir at the Chanticleer Youth Festival in 2010, and others. (I haven't tried anything with serious electronic amplification.) They all seem to top out at some point. The same is true for organ recitals here, and for note-heavy stuff like Reger, it's easy to exceed the limit.

As much as I failed to enjoy the first half of this concert, I was ready to forgive everything in the second half, where Jacobs played one work, the Durufle Suite for Organ, Opus 5. Ah, finally! He slowed down the tempo so that we got to hear all the notes and appreciate how the music developed. The Prelude is, as Jacobs mentioned, very sad, and we got The Full Lament on this one. The middle movement, Sicilienne, was wistful, and the solo stops came in handy. The final movement, Toccata, was brilliant and blaring where needed, but not overdone. This piece was worth the whole concert.

Jacobs played an encore, the Bach A Minor Fugue, BWV 543, which he played because "we hadn't heard enough Bach." Unfortunately, this was like the other Bach: a race to the finish line, seriously accelerating to the end, where he added a jarring A Major chord. All the subtleties of this piece were lost. It's not as if Jacobs were trying to play in the style of Cameron Carpenter, who does outrageous things but with a musical purpose. This was supposed to be legit Bach, even with the bravado suitable for an encore, and it wasn't.

There's one more concert in this year's organ series in Davies, on April 3rd, when Jane Parker-Smith plays Franck, Guilmant, Langlais, and Widor: some of those big, noisy French Romantic pieces. Let's hope she gets enough practice time in the hall to understand that this is not St. Eustache, or even Grace Cathedral.

Chanticleer: Out of This World. September 17, 2010

This was the opening concert in San Francisco for Chanticleer's 33rd season. There are two new singers this year. Casey Breves is a soprano, and just graduated from Yale. I met him at the auditions back in February, and I saw him again in April, at Yale, soon after he had gotten the offer from Chanticleer. Mike Axtell is a new baritone/bass. I met him in 2009 at the "Chanticleer Summer Camp" (officially the Summer Choral Workshop at Sonoma State, where 80 singers get together with Chanticleer, arriving on a Wednesday and performing a concert on Sunday). Anyway, both new singers are excellent, as you might imagine.

The theme for the concert, Out of This World!, provided a convenient excuse to sing anything having to do with stars or heaven, which includes just about everything that Chanticleer is likely to sing. I was expecting a "difficult" concert, but when a concert starts with Palestrina (Mary is assumed into heaven), there's nothing to worry about.

I'd forgotten the music of Francisco Guerrero, so I was unprepared for the beauty of the motet Hail, Queen of Heaven. I really hope they record this piece.

I checked my iTunes collections, and I have two other Guerrero motets there, one of which is the beautiful Virgen sancta, which opens with a soprano solo. I have two recordings of it, one from Chanticleer, recorded in 1990, and one from Clerestory, recorded 19 years later. The soloist is the same in both: the always-wonderful Chris Fritzsche.

Next, they launched into four madrigals, beginning with a pair of Monteverdis: Sfogava con le stelle, a piece that I learned long ago, and Ecco mormorar l'onde. The third madrigal was Fuggi dolor by William Hawley, which I've heard them sing several times recently. The fourth was written by Mason Bates, a well-known local composer and DJ, awash in well-deserved accolades these days. It is part of his Sirens song cycle, commissioned by Chanticleer last year. (He had a larger piece in the second half of the program. More anon.) After Bates' madrigal, they sang Britten's Hymn to Saint Cecilia, a piece I also learned long ago, when I sang with the Pacific Master Chorale down in Orange County. The Britten is a strange and difficult piece. The chords change at the drop of a hat (what key are we in now?), and with notes in the extreme high and low ranges, it's sometimes difficult to know whether the singers are still in tune. The text is by Auden and wanders far afield of Cecilia, the patron saint of music. I liked it, but that's only because I learned it. I think it would be hard to hear this for the first time, even reading the words, and get much out of it. Example: "O law drummed out by hearts against the still / Long winter of our intellectual will." Um, right. Got it.

The first half concluded with a Schumann piece for double chorus and what may be Chanticleer's new signature piece, Mahler's Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen. This is one of the Rückertlieder, arranged for chorus by Clytus Gottwald. It is a slow, luscious piece, with the richest of harmonies. It's very sad (roughly, I've had enough of the world). It's very difficult to sing well. Those rich sonorities come at a price: miss one little half step, or tuning, and we're off the rails. I've heard Chanticleer sing this piece many times. The first time was with Frederika von Stade as a soloist, accompanied, as it were, by Chanticleer. The original version was for solo and piano, but most people know it in the arrangement for soloist and orchestra. It was a signature piece for Janet Baker. Von Stade's performance was wonderful, and I remember that before she took her bow, she acknowledged the singers, particularly the sopranos, who were singing notes far above hers. Such a gracious lady.

The second half of the concert took a more literal view of being out of this world, starting with Kirke Mechem's Island in Space, which starts and ends with Dona nobis pacem, surrounding a text by an astronaut, Russell Schweichart, and another, far less interesting text, by Archibald Macleish. Schweichart observes that from his viewpoint aboard Apollo 9, there are no borders on the Earth, just a small, beautiful planet. The best line: "You realize that on that small spot is everything that means anything to you: all history, all poetry, all music, all art, death, birth, love, tears, all games, all joy -- all on that small spot."

Then we heard a large-scale piece by Mason Bates, Observer in the Magellanic Cloud. This was, in some ways, the centerpiece for the concert. The "observer" of the title is not a person but a satellite that sees, from a zillion miles away, Maori tribesmen, who are chanting to the satellite's own galaxy. The piece starts with electronic beeping, the sound of the satellite, which sets the pulse for the piece. The singing alternates between the satellite and the Maori tribesmen. In the middle, there's a tribal "dance," where the guys walk around in a circle. Shades of A Village Wedding. Let's just say that dance is not their forte. Indeed, walking is not their forte.

 I liked the Bates piece very much, and it was a polished performance, although the singers told me that it was fiendishly difficult to learn. They spent about 16 hours rehearsing it before recording it earlier this summer.

The last section of the concert had four "popular" pieces, starting with Steve Barnett's arrangment of a Harold Arlen song, Out of this world, followed by Gene Puerling's arrangement of Kurt Weill's Lost in the Stars, both of which Chanticleer has performed before. Then came the surprise: a piece billed as "indie rock." It was Cells Planets by Erika Lloyd, whose original performance with her group, Little Grey Girlfriend, you can hear on the Web. I listened to that, and it reminded me of Joni Mitchell, not my favorite stuff. But this arrangement, by Vince Peterson, was completely different. The backup band was replaced by voices, obviously, and the solo was given to the new soprano, Casey Breves, who has a perfect pop sound (albeit a couple of octaves up). He was clearly in his element, and I can just imagine that he must have been in this situation many times: a soloist surrounded by a chorus of really good male singers, namely, the Whiffenpoofs, Yale's most famous all-male singing group, and now the eleven other singers of Chanticleer. It was a star turn, and it brought the house down. The last piece, called Change the World, featured tenor Ben Jones. I don't remember hearing him sing a solo before. He has a very nice voice, perhaps a little too sotto voce for the situation, especially following bravura Breves, and the song is nothing to write home about, but I hope we get to hear more of Ben. In his pre-Chanticleer life, Ben was a featured singer in Beach Blanket Babylon, so he, too, should be comfortable in a solo spot.

There was an encore, of course: Joe Jennings' arrangement of Walk in Jerusalem. Matt Curtis had the first solo, but Brian Hinman took all the others -- by storm. Brian has a trumpet of a voice, loud when he needs it, but always clear and distinct, even in quiet passages. He has a long, plaintive solo at the beginning of Michael McGlynn's Agnus Dei, from two years ago, and that's one of my favorite bits from all their recordings. The piece itself is way too long; it should stop about one minute after the solo is done. It gets lost in pretty chords, alas, after the edgy beginning. Brian's solo is stunning because he brings out a sadness in the words that I had not understood before: Lamb of God, who takest away the sins of the world, have mercy on us. But think of it this way: O God, I'm so sorry for making such a mess of my life. Have mercy on me.

A second encore was required for this eager Friday-night audience, and we got Straight Street, with little solos from Eric Alatorre and Cortez Mitchell, about three octaves apart.

I went back and heard the Sunday performance. Some years ago, when I lived in the South Bay, I decided that I would never see another Chanticleer concert just once. They usually do two Bay Area performances, so it wasn't difficult to hear them twice. When I moved to San Francisco two years ago, I stopped going to their South Bay performances, so I did hear some concerts only once, but I've returned to my senses. The reason I like hearing it twice is that they may sing something that is unfamiliar, not recorded (by them, at least), and unlikely to show up at another local concert, anytime soon. That first Mahler performance, with von Stade, echoed in my head for, what?, six years until they finally started doing it again, sans soloist. The Guerrero piece in this program may vanish, too, so it was good to catch it a second time. At the Sunday performance, they replaced the two Monteverdi madrigals with a pair by Marenzio, and we got to hear a different quartet sing them, including the new baritone, Mike Axtell.

All in all, I thought this was an auspicious beginning for the 33rd season. Sometimes the opening concert is a little rocky, especially when there are new singers on board. But not this time. This group is solid. Go hear them. Twice, even.

Oregon Shakespeare Festival, August 10-14, 2010

Every year, I go with friends to see plays at the Shakespeare Festival in Ashland, Oregon. There are two performances a day, a matinee at 1:30 pm and an evening performance at 8 pm. There are three theaters, one of which, the outdoor Elizabethan stage, has performances only in the evening. The cast and the audience would melt at a matinee; it can get very hot here in the summer.

About half the plays are by Shakespeare. Some of the rest are world premieres. Some of those will probably not be seen again. Some, like the drawing-room comedies, are hardy perennials.

In any given week, there are usually 9 plays on the boards. We arrive on Tuesday afternoon, after a 6-hour drive from San Francisco, and we see 8 plays, back to back, which takes us through the Saturday matinee. We have a big blowout dinner on Saturday night and then drive back on Sunday.

Since we can't see all 9 plays, we have to choose which one to skip. That's often hard, and sometimes we make the wrong choice. Two summers ago, we chose Our Town at the Elizabethan Theater instead of A Midsummer Night's Dream at the larger indoor theater, the Bowmer Theater. It was the wrong choice because we all disliked Our Town, and seriously wondered why this play is ever done at all. And we heard that Midsummer was fabulous. I came back in October, on a day where I could see my favorite Shakespeare play from that summer, Coriolanus, at a matinee, and Midsummer in the evening. It was indeed fabulous, literally and figuratively.

Here are notes on the plays we saw this summer (written as the week went on).

Tuesday night:
Henry IV, Part 1 (or as I like to say, Henry 4.1, to be followed by 4.2 and 5.0). I liked this play; my friends mostly didn't. With rare exception, the acting is always outstanding here, but sometimes the production, or direction, or even the play itself, leave something to be desired. John Tufts plays Prince  Henry (to become 5.0), or Hal as he is called here. In Act I, he's the prodigal son, hanging out with low-lifes, indeed, some truly revolting low-lifes, much to the chagrin of his father (4.1). I like Tufts, a CMU graduate. For one thing, he's tall, dark, and handsome (well, that's three things), and that helps but it's not nearly enough to get you lead roles here. While he often plays leads in some plays, he, like everyone else, plays bit parts in other plays. I first remember his as Romeo at the Elizabethan, which Christine Albright as Juliet. Both talented young actors, they made the young lovers seem entirely credible, and the bedroom scene was steamy indeed. He played one forest Fairies in that fabulous performance I returned to see. The production was done in 80's disco version, complete with singing, and an incredibly enthusiatic audience, decades younger, on average, than the crowd that shows up in August.

Wednesday matinee:
Hamlet. The title role is played by Don Donohue, who is a brilliant actor and perhaps the most popular actor in Ashland. The performance begins while the audience is still noisily filing in, with a scene just after the funeral of Hamlet's father: a casket, many rows of chairs, and only one person left: Hamlet. As the other chairs are all put away, only one is left. Then Hamlet leaves, the lights dim, and the play begins. This is done in modern dress; Hamlet wears a jacket, a skinny tie, and sunglasses.

The play-proper begins on the walls of the castle. The guards are in camouflage, with lights attached to their automatic weaons. There are security cameras on the walls, blinking, turning, producing a Big Brother effect. The Ghost of Hamlet's father is barely visible in a flickering lighting effect, but he gradually becomes more corporeal. The one aspect of this production that I disliked was the use of Howie Seago, an actor who is deaf, as the Ghost. He and his family communicate using American Sign Language. In fact, the family use ASL even when talking to each about the dead king. In his conversations with the Ghost, Hamlet speaks most of the Ghost's lines, translating for us. But he doesn't translate everything, and there are long sections where they are conversing, but we, the audience, are left wondering what they're talking about. For me, this derails the action of the play, the same way it would have if the Ghost had been delivering his lines in, say, Danish. I think this choice is hyper-politically correct, and they've done this in other plays, again with Mr. Seago. The worst was in Our Town last year, where everything stopped dead when Seago had lines to deliver.

But that was the only failing in an otherwise terrific performance. The fatuous king, his queen (whose motivation seemed unclear here), and a terrific trio of Polonius and his kids. His famous lecture to them before Laertes goes back to college ("Neither a borrower nor a lender be...") was moving and funny. Just before Laertes can escape, his loquatious father has yet one more thing to say. His words of advice are well known to the kids; they recite it with him in perfect teenage exasperation. Richard Elmore, who has "bluster" down pat, has found a perfect role in Polonius. More surprising was Susannah Flood as Ophelia: energetic, bright, and lots of fun, unlike your typical spaced-out depressive, so that when she does her mad scene, standing on chairs, removing bits of clothing, we are as astonished as the family.

Hamlet has all the best lines, of course. Donohue makes the most of the wit and sarcasm. I'd forgotten how funny this part of the play can be, with barbs and puns a-flying. And no one can deliver those lines better than Donohue. The physical part of his acting is also flawless and inspiring at the same time. Although this portrayal is unlike any I'd seen before, it seemed so natural that I can't imagine it being in any other way. I'd seen Hamlet done here years ago, and all I remember was that it seemed interminable and I couldn't wait for it to end. To be fair, that performace was in the outdoor theater, and they may have not cut as much, if any, from the script as they did here (two small scenes, I heard); also, I may have been cold. This Hamlet was in the chronically over-air-conditioned but otherwise comfortable Bowmer Theater. (In the sweltering heat of Ashland in August, you see crowds in shorts, T-shirts, and sandals, but many of them are carrying coats that they will don for the theaters.)

I came up to Ashland back in February and saw this Hamlet (you can't see this production too many times), Pride and Prejudice (which I saw again this time), and A Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, in which Act II is the long dialog between Brick and Big Daddy. The scenes in Brick and Maggy's bedroom, especially the opening where Brick starts out in the shower, may have been the most visually arresting, but it was the argument of Act II that made this piece truly memorable. Two actors, Danforth Cummins as the hunky, broken son, and Michael Winters as the angry, blustery father who loves him, made you forget the fancy set. It's for moments like this, and almost any scene with Dan Donohue, that we come to Ashland, year after year.

(Here's the rest of the schedule. I hope to have time to add comments about these, too.)


Wednesday night, at the Elizabethan Theater:
The Merchant of Venice.

Thursday matinee, at the New Theater.
Ruined.

Thursday evening, at the Bowmer Theater:
Throne of Blood.

Friday matinee, at the Bowmer.
Pride and Prejudice.

Friday evening, at the Bowmer:
She Loves Me (a musical).

Saturday matinee, at the New Theater:
American Night.

Nemorino. Check. Check.

Tonight, we heard from both of the tenors singing Nemorino in this summer's Merola Opera, L'Elisir d'Amore, with four performances, two casts. I have a ticket for one of the performances, but I might just have to buy one for the other cast. Our two Nemorinos (Nemorini?), Alexander Lewis and Daniel Montenegro, have very different voices, but each sounded great tonight.

This was the "Merola Auditions for the General Director," which always sounds like someone's auditioning for that job. But this is auditioning in front of the General Director, as well as the music staff and some lucky audience members. Each of the 19 singers came out on stage, and with piano accompaniment, sang one 5-minute aria. There was a 15-minute break, and then some were asked back to sing a second aria. In some years, it seems that the director just wanted to hear certain singers sing something different, and this sometimes produces revelations, as it did with Nathaniel Peake two years ago. He sang La donna è mobile for his first aria. It was a fine, jolly piece, and the high B at the end was firmly in place, but when he was asked to sing again, he sang an aria from Faust that was astonishing.

This year, though, I thought that the seven singers who were asked back were the best of the crop, which is saying something, because this is a terrific bunch of singers, and it's going to be fun listening to them in master classes, in the Schwabacher concert, in the opera, and in the Grand Finale.

I won't comment on all of them, but here are some of my favorite moments.

Baritone Sidney Outlaw was the second singer of the evening, and he sang an aria from Rinaldo. There were several other baritones to follow, but when Outlaw was asked back and sang a piece from I Puritani, I decided I liked his voice more than the other baritones. Smooth and agile (for a baritone :-), he's just a tad showy, hanging on to a few notes a bit longer than necessary, but he also has great breath control. He sang one set of runs that was so long, I ran out of air just listening to him. At an event on Friday, "Meet the Merolini," we heard a few words from each of the artists, and Outlaw said he liked Handel and Bellini "because they make me sound glorious." No lack of self-confidence here.

Alexander Lewis sang a piece from Gounod's Roméo et Juliette. At the Friday event, he talked about sports and had everyone in stitches, explaining his interest in "jumping off things" (e.g., bungee jumping from bridges), but his speaking voice left me unprepared for his singing voice. Talk about glorious!

Nadine Sierra sang Caro nome with wonderful high notes, and returned to sing a piece from Roméo et Juliette. I can't wait to hear her sing Adina in L'Elisir.

Kevin Ray is this year's Wagnerian tenor. He started with Winterstürme (which we heard just last week at the Summer Opera). That was good, but he was really impressive in his second aria, from Britten's Peter Grimes. This is a long, difficult, and dramatic piece, and is sung mostly without accompaniment. How he kept track of the key, I'll never know. Towards the end, a few of the high notes weren't there, but that hardly mattered. You won't be able to miss his voice at the Schwabacher concert.

Speaking of Britten, baritone Benjamin Covey sang a piece from The Rape of Lucretia that also revealed dramatic chops. Soprano Hye Jung Lee had the highest and most pitch-perfect notes of the evening; she sang Zerbinetta's aria from Ariadne auf Naxos and made it look easy. She's been studying in Germany, so her choices of Mozart and Strauss made sense. Eleazar Rodriguez, here for his second year, was practically a home-town favorite, with high notes that we watched Jane Eaglen teach him to sing last summer.

As good as these singers were, there was one who stood out. Way, way out. Tenor Daniel Montenegro sang Una furtiva lagrima and would have brought the house down if we had been allowed to applaud. (They allow only one round of applause, for the entire group, at the end.) I saw him at the event last Friday, where he said that his inspiration to become a singer started the day when someone took him to the LA Opera and he heard Placido Domingo for the first time. Well, he's been paying attention. This is an Italian tenor with a spectacular voice. He's at ease on stage, and it's hard to believe he's a newcomer. The top notes rang out clearly, seemingly without effort. One of the best parts of the Merola Opera program, which I actually enjoy more than the parent SF Opera, is that you occasionally come across someone like Montenegro and you think how lucky you are to have seen the beginning of what promises to be a great career in opera.

SF Symphony Chorus. April 11, 2010

The always-wonderful SF Symphony Chorus gave their annual "just us" concert this afternoon. The first half was all Swedish music, probably unknown to 99% of the audience; the second half had some of the Rachmaninoff Vespers and Bernstein's Chichester Psalms, probably familiar to 99% of the audience, especially anyone who ever sang in a big chorus. Interesting extremes.

The opening piece, Let There Be, a creation formula for mixed choir and percussion, was written by Frederik Sixten, who was in the audience. I always applaud living composers, even when I'm not crazy about their pieces. This was the world premiere. The percussionist was Jack Van Geem, one of the SF Symphony's percussionists. He was kept quite busy, and did quite well, even though he was on crutches.

The piece has lots of tone-clusters, where the choir might be singing C, C#, D, D#, and E all at the same time. It's easy to lose your way as a listener and, I fear, as a singer. There were moments where the pitch was so uncertain, I thought the choir had aimed and missed. It wasn't microtonal, e.g., with pitches halfway between C and C#. Or perhaps it was, but they didn't sound very confident about it. Of course, this was "wet ink" music, so one expects a certain amount of struggling. Oddly, or maybe not so oddly, only half the chorus sang the piece.

The next piece was Easy Listenin' compared to the first. It was Jorden oro viker by Ludvig Norman. Very pretty, with some moments that reminded me of Brahms.

While the chorus reshuffled themselves for the third time (was that really necessary?), Ragnar Bohlin, the director of the Chorus, told us what he liked about the next piece, called ... a riveder le stelle, by Ingvar Lindholm. I'm afraid I didn't like this piece at all. There's forte, and then there's just plain loud, and this had a lot of loud singing. The chorus was divided in 16 parts, and there was a lot more of this half-step-apart music that sounded like a disagreement about pitches. There was a solo part near the end, sung beautifully by Pamela Sebastian, but in some key unrelated to what the chorus was singing. Bohlin warned us that this piece was polytonal, but to pull that off, whether in a string quartet or a full-stage orchestra, you have to have nerves of steel and exude confidence. I didn't sense that here.

There were two more pieces on the first half, ending with a folksong that was supposed to be funny, perhaps a drinking song. It had a tenor soloist, Keith Perry, who was quite good but was so serious, we weren't sure whether the song really was funny. Some people just don't tell jokes very well.

After intermission, we heard six movements from the Rachmaninoff Vespers. The first one, Come, Let Us Worship (sung in Russian), restored our faith in humanity, tonality, and choral unity. Things went astray after that, however. Again, only a part of the choir sang. I wonder why; choirs love to sing this music, and I'll bet that everyone in the SF Symphony Chorus has sung the piece several times before. The sound was certainly in no danger of being too big, not in Davies. The mezzo soloist for this second movement was not up to the task. Fortunately, the tenor soloist in the fourth movement, Kevin Gibb, was terrific. The basses, or some of them at least, managed the incredible low B-flat at the end of the fifth movement, Lord, Now Lettest Thou Thy Servant Depart.

Two things bothered me about this performance of the Rachmaninoff. First, the chorus had their noses in their books. I can understand that for the Swedish pieces, but not for the Vespers. The Russian is not easy to learn, but the notes are. I was sitting upstairs; they were all looking down; the result was a muffled sound. 96 singers exclaiming Rejoice, O Virgin! should rock the hall. Second, I think the tempos were simply too fast. Many of the subtle chord shifts got lost. I know Davies doesn't have much reverberation, so you can't use the hall in the way you could use a big ol' stone church, but Bohlin could have done a lot more with tempo and dynamics. As you might guess, I've sung this piece several times, and I remember every note, so I really missed all those great crunchy passing notes and the occasional floor-shaking bass lines.

We got some floor-shaking in the last piece, Chichester Psalms, courtesy of Robert Huw Morgan at the Ruffatti organ. I've never heard this arrangement (with organ instead of orchestra), but it started with a bang, lots of reeds in the Pedal, very exciting. Morgan, who is the organist at Stanford, is a fine musician, but after the first few measures, I feared he would drown out the Chorus. My fears came true. He had interesting registrations (choices of organ stops), but he simply overpowered the chorus, especially the basses, who are no match for a 16' Diapason, let alone a Bombarde. (The name says it all.) All I can imagine is that they had only one rehearsal, it sounded good on stage, and they didn't send anyone out into the hall to check the balance.

In the blazing-fast, tongue-twisting Lamah rag'shu, the synchronization suffered. The percussionist was back, but he was at center stage, surrounded by singers. The pipes, however, are way up above everyone, and it just takes a while for sound to move. An organist will play a little ahead of the beat to compensate, but at this speed, and with all the reeds Morgan was using (they "speak" more slowly), it was a race (who's ahead now?). Believe it or not, there was a harpist on stage. Organ versus harp? No contest! She could have been practicing scales for all we knew.

The singing, the singing... The Chorus was fine. A few false entrances (here and elsewhere in the concert), but they projected the fun of a quick, vintage-Bernstein 7/8 meter near the beginning, and the practically Hawaiian slow 5/8 near the end. Zachary Weisberg was the boy soprano, a little rough around the edges, in the affected style that is now so popular with this role. The final movement is an a cappella chorale, and it was really nice to hear the chorus sing all by themselves for a few moments, lingering over those major-sevenths Bernstein loved so much. (His Mass ends in the same way.) The very last few bars are accompanied, alas, and even then, the organ was too loud.

There is probably an arrangement for piano instead of orchestra (or organ), and I think that would have worked much better. Earlier in the evening, we heard the Chorus' own pianist, Matthew Edwards, doing a great job with the rich accompaniment for Sven-Eric Johanson's Fancies II. I'm sure he would have done a great job with this piece, too: nicely percussive and quick, an occasional booming chord, but all in all, a better match. And we would have heard the harpist.

Stunning Shostakovich, SF Symphony. Friday, April 2, 2010

Shostakovich wrote the most beautiful miserable music in all of the 20th century. His Symphony No. 8 in C minor, Op. 65 (1943), was the major event of the evening. The San Francisco Symphony has never sounded better, and Vasily Petrenko, 34, was the finest guest conductor I think I've ever heard in Davies Hall.

Like many of Shostakovich's symphonies, this one is a long and winding journey through dissonance and stress, to moments of quiet beauty, to explosions of sound. It starts like the famous Fifth, with cellos versus violins, and if you missed the sense of foreboding in the opening of the first movement, you can't miss it in the ending: drum rolls, like distant thunder, warn us of the storm to come, and when it hits, we are swept into it.

When it comes to Shostakovich, the San Francisco Symphony has a secret weapon: Catherine Payne, the piccolo player. Just when you think the storm is in full fury, the piccolo enters, loud and very, very high, kicking it up a notch. When this movement ends, everyone, including the audience, is out of breath.

Not limited to special effects, Ms. Payne played a difficult but dazzling solo in the second movement. I'm sure it's a piccolo player's dream -- or nightmare -- but she played it perfectly, confidently. The other long solo was in the English horn, beautifully played by Russ deLuna. Pick your favorite depressing image: a cold, winter sunset; a lone, lost soldier; post-war grief. This is not tug-at-your-heartstrings sad, this is end-of-the-world sad.

For the music-theory fans, this piece has everything, including a passacaglia and a great fugue in the last movement. There were other solos, too: French horn (Nicole Cash), violin (concertmaster Alexander Barantshik), clarinet (Carey Bell), flute (Tim Day), and a spectacular moment -- and workout -- for the tympanist (David Herbert).

But the star of the performance was the conductor, who was in total control, yet let the players shine. He owns Shostakovich, in the same way that Michael Tilson Thomas owns Mahler, or Herbert Blomstedt owns Bruckner. Now, I've never seen this guy before, and for all I know, he actually prefers conducting Haydn, or Ravel. But from now on, when I think of Shostakovich, I will remember Vasily Petrenko and this night.

There's one more performance left. I might go back, if I can bear it.

The concert opened with the Grieg Piano Concerto in A minor, with Simon Trpčeski as the soloist. This piece is so familiar that no one ever listens to it. I wore out an LP with this and the Rachmaninoff Paganini Variations when I was in high school. (The pianist was the late, great Leonard Pennario.) It's been easily a decade since I heard it live. Too bad, because even though I thought I remembered every note from that recording, I'd apparently forgotten a few. This was a thoughtful performance, not flashy.

At many spots in this piece, Grieg writes giant, two-fisted chords that also include booming octaves in the bass, which you have to play a split second before the beat, ka-boom, ka-boom, ka-boom. The trouble is that you really want that bass note to be loud, since the whole chord is built on it, but playing those notes with the left hand and then zipping over to play the left fist of the two-fisted chord is hard if you want both power and accuracy. Trpčeski played with accuracy but with less power than I wanted. The performance was a crowd-pleaser, as expected.

The pianist took rather long bows, and for an encore, he played a short piece (also by Grieg, I think) that he said he learned when he was 7 years old. I suspect most piano students don't master this piece until they're, oh, 10 or 11. I thought it was inappropriate fluff.

I have to wonder how many people came to hear the short, "easy" Grieg and were not prepared for the long, "difficult" Shostakovich. (What the heck was that?) But maybe there were some converts who came for the appetizer but were very happy they stayed for the main course.