Musical America Blogs

Compiled and annotated by Richard S. Ginell

7 – 8 September, 2011
Davies Symphony Hall, Civic Center Plaza.
San Francisco Symphony. Fanfare for a New Century. Michael Tilson Thomas
The San Francisco Symphony celebrates its centennial season in 2011-12, kicking it off with a combination of high-society pomp and public-spirited populism.  The Opening Gala in Davies Hall – which PBS will air nationally on Great Performances later in the season – indulges in luxury casting with not one but two star soloists, Lang Lang in the Liszt Piano Concerto No. 1, and Itzhak Perlman in the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto.  Michael Tilson Thomas opens the concert with Copland’s all-American Billy the Kid suite and closes with Britten’s round-robin orchestral showpiece The Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra. The next day at noon, MTT, Lang Lang, and the SFS march across Van Ness Ave. and down Grove St. to the outdoor Civic Center Plaza for a free concert in which excerpts from the Opening Gala will be reprised.  All are welcome.

10 – 30 September, 2011
War Memorial Opera House
San Francisco Opera: Heart Of A Soldier
With the tenth anniversary of 9/11 occurring during opening week of the 2011 season, San Francisco Opera commemorates the tragedy with its world-premiere commission of Christopher Theofanidis’ Heart of a Soldier.  The opera is a dramatization of the life of Rick Rescoria, a British-born Vietnam veteran-turned-security chief for a brokerage firm in the World Trade Center who led 2,700 people out of the building on 9/11, only to perish when he went back inside for a final look around.  Baritone Thomas Hampson assumes the role of Rick, his wife Susan is portrayed by soprano Melody Moore (a felicitous name for a singer) and tenor William Burden is Rick’s best friend Daniel J. Hill.  Fresh from the SFO Ring, Francesca Zambello directs; SFO principal guest conductor Patrick Summers conducts.

17 September, 2011
Benaroya Hall, Seattle WA
Seattle Symphony. Ludovic Morlot
Ludovic Morlot, the surprise choice to succeed Gerard Schwarz at the Seattle Symphony, leads the opening night concert and gala.  The menu will be decidedly light – Gershwin’s An American In Paris, Ravel’s Boléro and the weightier but still celebratory Beethoven Consecration of the House Overture.  There is also a provocative novelty on hand, the late pianist/composer/renegade Friedrich Gulda’s Concerto for Cello and Wind Orchestra (with cellist Joshua Roman), which opens with a rock `n’ roll blues and guilelessly sticks it to the avant-garde Establishment. The following week (22-25 September), Morlot promises more novelty with Frank Zappa’s abstract, jaunty Dupree’s Paradise.

17 September – 9 October, 2011
Dorothy Chandler Pavilion
Los Angeles Opera: Eugene Onegin.
Still confining itself to a reduced schedule of six productions as it rebounds from its budget-busting 2010 Ring cycle, Los Angeles Opera opens its season with its first staging of Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin.  The production comes from Covent Garden, directed in L.A. by Francesca Gilpin. Slovakian baritone Dalibor Jenis sings the title role, Ukrainian soprano Oksana Dyka sings Tatiana and Russian tenor Vsevolod Grivnov is Lensky.  All three are young singers making their company debuts – and in the case of Dyka, her American debut.  The indefatigable James Conlon conducts and delivers the pre-concert lectures.

23 September – 11 October, 2011
War Memorial Opera House
San Francisco Opera: Lucrezia Borgia.
Donizetti’s historically fanciful opera about the ruthless Lucrezia Borgia has never been staged by San Francisco Opera before, but that’s probably not the principal lure for this production.  The cast is the real drawing card; Renée Fleming in the treacherous title role, baritone Vitalij Kowaljow, a formidable-voiced Wotan in the Los Angeles Ring, as Lucrezia’s husband Alfonso, and tenor Michael Fabiano as Gennaro.  The production comes from Washington National Opera – in which Fleming gave a highly-charged performance in 2008 – and Riccardo Frizza conducts. “Only subscribers are guaranteed seats for this highly-anticipated production,” warns the SFO website, so out-of-towners are advised to plan early.

30 September – 2 October, 2011
Walt Disney Concert Hall
Los Angeles Philharmonic, Gustavo Dudamel
Now 30, Gustavo Dudamel is perhaps not quite in the category of wunderkind anymore, but wherever he goes, his presence on the podium still guarantees substantially larger turnouts than most of his colleagues can round up. Dudamel’s opening concert of the L.A. Philharmonic 2011-12 subscription season also demonstrates that he is avidly continuing the Philharmonic’s progressive programming practices, adding a distinct Latin American accent. Here, he serves up John Adams’ Tromba lontana, the U.S. premiere of Rituales Amerindios by Argentina’s Esteban Benzecry, and Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique – the latter of which Dudamel recorded for iTunes at one of his early L.A. appearances.

13 – 20 October, 2011
Cities of Berkeley, Costa Mesa, Northridge, Seattle, WA, Vancouver BC
Mariinsky Orchestra, Valery Gergiev
Valery Gergiev’s famously breakneck schedule takes him up and down the West Coast in October for eight straight concerts without a day off. Does the man sleep, to say nothing of his players? Here’s the rundown … Gergiev and company land in Costa Mesa 13 October for Tchaikovsky Symphonies 2 and 5 in Renée and Henry Segerstrom Concert Hall, travel to Berkeley’s Zellerbach Hall 14-16 October for a complete Tchaikovsky symphony cycle, then double back to Costa Mesa 17 October for Tchaikovsky 3 and 4. On 18 October, they help break in a bright new 1,700-seat concert hall on the campus of Cal State Northridge – the Valley Performing Arts Center – with a splashy program of Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 1, Prokofiev’s Piano Concerto No. 3 (with Alexander Toradze) and Stravinsky’s Firebird Suite (1919). Back on the plane to Seattle’s Benaroya Hall 19 October for Tchaikovsky 6 and a concerto TBA, then to Vancouver’s Orpheum Theatre 20 October for Strauss’s Metamorphosen, Shostakovich’s Piano Concerto No. 1 (with Toradze) and Tchaikovsky’s Serenade for Strings. The next day, it’s off to Eastern Canada for three more! Expect some uneven performances, but also some dazzlers – as is often the Mariinsky way.

17 October, 2011
First Presbyterian Church, Santa Monica
Jacaranda: A Vast Clearing
Always seeking out the unusual and the off-the-beaten-path, Jacaranda opens its season with music by one of the grand old masters of so-called minimalism, Philip Glass, and his rapidly-rising onetime assistant Nico Muhly. Muhly’s contribution is a piece written when he was 22, Clear Music, followed by Glass’s String Quartet No. 5, as played by the Lyris Quartet, and Glass’s early 50-minute-long choral work Another Look at Harmony – Part IV. Of this last, Jacaranda’s website enticingly states, “The organ and chorus weave harmony with rhythm into a rich exalted design as powerful as a psychedelic.” Mark Alan Hilt mans the organ and the Jacaranda Chamber Singers are led by Scott Dunn. Repeats 16 October

20 – 24 October, 2011
Cities of Los Angeles, San Francisco
Los Angeles Philharmonic, Gustavo Dudamel
Dudamel takes the Philharmonic on a pair of long-distance run-out concerts to the City by the Bay, but not before giving Los Angeles audiences first crack at the menu. On 20-21 October at Walt Disney Concert Hall, the Venezuelan maestro leads the world premiere of Mexican composer Enrico Chapela’s Magnetar, a concerto for electric cello as operated by Johannes Moser, along with John Adams’ Short Ride in a Fast Machine and Prokofiev’s ever-propulsive Symphony No. 5. Then Dudamel takes this program north to Davies Symphony Hall on 23 October, and the next day conducts Adams’ Tromba lontana (the less-flamboyant companion to Short Ride), Benzecry’s Rituales Amerindios and Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique. The San Francisco concerts are part the San Francisco Symphony’s centennial parade of guest orchestras.

28 – 30 October, 2011
REDCAT, Los Angeles
Southwest Chamber Music: Ten Freedom Summers
Wadada Leo Smith is a jazz trumpeter, avant-garde composer, educator at CalArts, and a longtime friend of Southwest Chamber Music, which starts its 25th-anniversary season by presenting the first performance of Smith’s magnum opus, Ten Freedom Summers, over the course of three evenings. The ten summers refer to the years 1954 through 1964 – from the start to the high-water mark of the Civil Rights Movement. Usually such works are accompanied by spoken words from the period, but Smith will be using strictly musical means to convey psychological and spiritual resonances reaching back as far as the Dred Scott decision of 1857 and forward as far as 9/11. With Jeff von der Schmidt directing, Southwest Chamber Music will be joined by Smith’s jazz group, the Golden Quartet.

30 October – 19 November, 2011
War Memorial Opera House
San Francisco Opera: Xerxes
San Francisco Opera takes its first crack at Handel’s Xerxes, nominally an opera seria but also loaded with comic elements that undercut the usual rituals of the form and, perhaps, anticipate the comic operas of Mozart and beyond. The Nicholas Hytner production – said to be uncut (four hours, including two intermissions) – is a famous import from English National Opera that dates back to the 1985 Handel Tercentennial. Here, Michael Walling is the director, and he has a couple of bona fide stars in the cast – mezzo-soprano Susan Graham as Xerxes and über-countertenor David Daniels as Arsamenes. Patrick Summers conducts. Although early editions of the ENO production were sung in Hytner’s English translation, this one will be sung in the original Italian.

4 November, 2011
Copley Symphony Hall, San Diego
San Diego Symphony, Stephen Hough, Jahja Ling
All-Liszt symphonic concerts remain a rarity, even in the composer’s bicentennial year, but the San Diego Symphony will tread where others dare not. The fearless pianist Stephen Hough will perform both of Liszt’s piano concertos in one evening – which despite the concertos’ compact length, is not often attempted; playing only one is usually tough enough on pianists. In addition, Jahja Ling has programmed the now-seldom-performed symphonic poem Orpheus and the even rarer, at-times-delicately-scored orchestral version of Two Legends of St. Francis – whose manuscript was only uncovered in 1975. Repeats 5, 6 November.

6 – 26 November, 2011
Dorothy Chandler Pavilion
Los Angeles Opera: Romeo et Juliette
Los Angeles Opera’s 2005 staging of Gounod’s somewhat saccharine adaptation of the Shakespeare play was anything but bland, as the newly-minted Anna Netrebko/Rolando Villazón team heated up the Chandler Pavilion with vocal heroics and a nude love scene. The company is hoping lightning will strike again with the latest pair of fast-rising stars in the title roles – soprano Nino Machaidze and tenor Vittorio Grigolo. Ian Judge’s busy, urban, Erector-set-like production – which looked like a clever tribute to West Side Story (itself a knock-off of R&J) – will be back. Bass-baritone Vitalij Kowaljow sings Frère Laurent, Museop Kim is Mercutio, and baritone Vladimir Chernov is Count Capulet. And in an additional dash of star power, Plácido Domingo conducts.

11 November, 2011
Davies Symphony Hall
San Francisco Symphony, Michael Tilson Thomas
Michael Tilson Thomas manages to combine several of his passions – Schubert, Mahler, innovative programming – in this highly-unusual, all-embracing, all-Schubert lineup. The program starts with the overture to one of Schubert’s rarely-performed operas Alfonso und Estrella, then MTT and the SFS give way to pianist Juho Pohjonen and a chamber group drawn from the orchestra which plays the Trout Quintet. MTT and the SFS strings then offer the Death and the Maiden Quartet in Mahler’s now-well-known transcription for string orchestra. Repeats 12-13 November.

17 November, 2011
Davies Symphony Hall
San Francisco Symphony and Chorus, Michael Tilson Thomas
A new, as-yet-untitled work from Sofia Gubaidulina receives its U.S. premiere at the hands of the San Francisco Symphony, co-commissioned by the orchestra in honor of her 80th birthday. As in Los Angeles last May, where a different Gubaidulina U.S. premiere shared a program with Brahms, so do San Francisco as Michael Tilson Thomas fill out the concert with Ein Deutsches Requiem, with soprano Jane Archibald, baritone Kyle Ketelsen and the SFS Chorus. Repeats 18-20 November

25 November, 2011
Walt Disney Concert Hall
Los Angeles Philharmonic, Los Angeles Master Chorale, Esa-Pekka Salonen
The LA Phil’s conductor laureate makes his second annual Thanksgiving season visit to his old stomping grounds for two weeks – and Salonen will make even more news this time than last. In the first program, Salonen distracts shoppers from the wearisome rituals of Black Friday with the world premiere of a new work by Anders Hillborg for chorus, vocal soloists (one of whom is a longtime Salonen collaborator, mezzo-soprano Anne-Sofie van Otter) and orchestra. Beethoven’s Leonore Overture No. 2 and Piano Concerto No. 2, with Emanuel Ax doing the solo honors, rounds out the evening. Repeats 26-27 November.

2 December, 2011
Walt Disney Concert Hall
Los Angeles Philharmonic, Los Angeles Master Chorale: Orango
For their second program, Esa-Pekka Salonen and the Philharmonic deliver a much-publicized coup, hosting the world premiere of a hitherto-unknown, recently-discovered 40-minute prologue to an abandoned, three-act, Shostakovich opera, Orango (1932), as orchestrated from the composer’s piano sketches by Shostakovich expert Gerald McBurney. Uncovered during a musicological dig in 2004, Orango was supposed to be a satire about a hybrid half-ape/half-man who rises to fame and power as a corrupt journalist and staunch anti-communist. Salonen’s perennial co-conspirator Peter Sellars will direct – and probably will offer some apocalyptic preliminary pronouncements about it. Salonen appropriately tops off these concerts with Shostakovich’s coruscating Symphony No. 4 from that period. Repeats 3-4 December

2 – 6 December, 2011
Cities of San Francisco, Berkeley, Palo Alto
Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra and Chorale, Nicholas McGegan
Ever the jolly elf of early music, Nicholas McGegan rings in the holiday season with four performances of J.S. Bach’s mighty B-Minor Mass with the forces of his Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra. The tempos will be lively, the style will be period-performance but not pedantically so, the spirits should be high. The soloists include soprano Sherezade Panthaki, countertenor Daniel Taylor, tenor Thomas Cooley and baritone Nathaniel Watson. The run of performances starts at San Francisco’s Herbst Theatre 2 December, moves over to Berkeley’s First Congregational Church for 3-4 December, and wraps up in Palo Alto’s First United Methodist Church on 6 December.

6 – 10 December, 2011
Cities of San Francisco, Santa Barbara, Palm Desert, Los Angeles
Boston Symphony Orchestra, Ludovic Morlot
Next in the series of major American orchestras to commemorate the San Francisco Symphony’s centennial is the fabled, if now leaderless Boston Symphony. James Levine had been penciled in to make the trek, but in the wake of his resignation as BSO music director last March and recent health problems, Seattle Symphony Music Director Ludovic Morlot steps in for him. The San Francisco programs still bear Levine’s stamp, though. The 6 December Davies Symphony Hall event features Elliott Carter’s recent Flute Concerto (with BSO principal flutist Elizabeth Rowe), along with Berlioz’s Roman Carnival Overture, Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 25 (with Richard Goode) and Bartók’s Miraculous Mandarin Suite. Concert the next day, also in Davies, starts with John Harbison’s Symphony No. 4, continues with an old BSO showpiece Ravel’s Daphnis et Chloe Suite No. 2, and concludes with Mahler’s Symphony No. 1. For Santa Barbara’s Granada Theatre 8 December, Morlot deletes Carter and adds Wagner’s Prelude and Liebestod from Tristan und Isolde, while in Palm Desert’s McCallum Theatre 9 December, Morlot swaps Harbison for Roman Carnival. The mini-tour winds up in Los Angeles’ Walt Disney Concert Hall 10 December, where Morlot combines Harbison and Ravel and adds Gil Shaham playing the Brahms Violin Concerto.

11 December, 2011
Walt Disney Concert Hall
Los Angeles Master Chorale, Grant Gershon: Rejoice! A Classical Christmas
Leave it to the innovative Grant Gershon to come up with a thoroughly unhackneyed program of Christmas concert music as an alternative to the usual popular carols and Messiahs on the Master Chorale’s holiday agenda elsewhere. The program contains Poulenc’s Four Christmas Motets, the sadly short-lived Hugo Distler’s Christmas Story (based upon the carol “Lo, How A Rose E’re Blooming”), A Festival Of Carols by Frank Ferko, and finally, a specialty of the house that swept the world after being done first by the Master Chorale, Morten Lauridsen’s gorgeous O Magnum Mysterium.