There's a lot going on in the cruelest month, even with the San Francisco Symphony still on strike. (Apparently the strike ended about the time I hit "publish" on this, so here's one case in which instant obsolescence is good news. I'll probably do an addendum later with the Symphony highlights. Right now I need to stop staring at computer screens. For the record, I supported the musicians all the way.)
First up, there's a new performing ensemble in the area: Curious Flights, the brainchild of clarinetist (and Artistic Director) Brenden Guy, is dedicated to performing new and rare works from the solo, chamber, and orchestral repertoire. The inaugural concert is 26 April at the Community Music Center, 544 Capp Street, in San Francisco. The program features Updike's Science by Brian Holmes, Fantasy Pieces (a world premiere) by Joseph Stillwell, Cafe Music by Paul Schoenfield, Trio for Clarinet, Violin, and Piano by Aram Khachaturian, and Nonet by Arnold Bax. Read more about this new group here.
There's definitely a lot of opera going on for a month when the San Francisco Opera isn't performing:
Opera Parallele presents Bernstein's Trouble in Tahiti along with Barber's A Hand of Bridge 26 - 28 April at Z Space.
Philharmonia Baroque presents Handel's Teseo, with Nicholas McGegan conducting, featuring Amanda Forsythe, Dominique Labelle, Amy Freston, Celine Ricci, Robin Blaze, and Drew Minter, on 10, 11, 13, and 14 April, in their usual various locations. Please note that the evening performances start at 7:30 and the Sunday performance at 4:00.
West Edge Opera presents the American premiere of Fabrizio Carlone's Bonjour M Gauguin at the El Cerritto Performing Arts Theater (conveniently near the El Cerritto BART station) on 6, 12, and 14 April.
This certainly sounds operatic: awesome local chorus Volti joins with the SF Choral Society, the Piedmont East Bay Children's Choir, and the Leah Stein Dance Company to present the west coast premiere of David Lang's Battle Hymns 26-28 April out at Kezar Pavilion; the unusual locale is to accommodate the large forces required for this site-specific commemoration of the Civil War sesquicentennial.
My usual criteria for including things here is (1) it's something I'm going to or (2) it's something I would like to go to, given world enough and time, and though Die Fledermaus doesn't qualify on either count (let me quote myself: watching it is like being clubbed to death with meringues), what does qualify is opera at the San Francisco Conservatory's own theater, rather than off in the inadequate and hard-to-get-to Cowell Theater at Fort Mason. So if the opera in question is acceptable to you, you can see it in the Conservatory's beautiful theater 4 - 7 April; call the Box Office at 415-503-6275 or purchase online (and find more information) at the Conservatory's website.
If you're looking for theater where people speak rather than sing their lines, Cutting Ball has extended The Chairs to 7 April and Shotgun Players continues voyaging through The Coast of Utopia. Then there are some new things starting:
Aurora Theater presents Max Frisch's The Arsonists, translated by Alistair Beaton and directed by Mark Jackson, 5 April to 12 May.
Berkeley Rep presents Pericles, Prince of Tyre, by Shakespeare (mostly), directed by Mark Wing-Davey. The website says the performance is 90 minutes, straight through, so clearly it's a shortened version. I'm intrigued! This is the play that inspired Eliot's Marina ("What seas what shores what grey rocks and what islands / What water lapping the bow / And scent of pine and the woodthrush singing through the fog / What images return / O my daughter").That's 12 April to 26 May on the main stage.
Cal Performances highlights this month include harpsichordist Davitt Moroney playing Bach's Art of the Fugue, 7 April; pianist Simon TrpĨeski playing Schubert and Liszt, 14 April; the return of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, 23 - 29 April; and Boston's Handel and Haydn Society, 26 - 27 April (the 27 April program features my favorite Handel oratorio, Jeptha).
San Francisco Performances highlights include jazz pianist Vijay Iyer, 10 April (Salon at the Rex); pianist Martin Helmchen playing Bach, Webern, Schubert, and Brahms, 14 April; pianist Andras Schiff playing Bach's French Suites, 14 April, and English Suites, 21 April; dancer Shantala Shivalingappa, 16 April; and pianist Till Fellner playing Bach, Mozart, Haydn, and Schumann, 29 April.
New Century Chamber Orchestra presents works by Golijov, Mozart, and Chausson, featuring pianist Anne-Marie McDermott, 3 - 7 April in their usual various locations.
San Francisco Ballet has two different programs running: Program 6, 9 - 20 April, features Raymonda, Act III (choreographer Rudolph Nureyev and composer Alexander Glazunov), Ibsen's House (choreographer Val Caniparoli and composer Anton Dvorak), and Symphonic Dances (choreographer Edwaard Liang and composer Sergei Rachmaninov); and Program 7, 11-21 April, features Criss-Cross (choreographer Helgi Tomasson, composers Scarlatti and Schoenberg), Francesca da Rimini (choreographer Yuri Possokhov and composer Tchaikovsky), and Symphony in Three Movements (choreographer George Balanchine and composer Igor Stravinsky).
The California Bach Society is joined by cornett and sackbut ensemble The Whole Noyse for selections from Heinrich Schutz's Symphoniae Sacrae, 26 - 28 April in their usual various locations.
Highlights at the SF Jazz Center include a mini-festival devoted to the Weimar Republic, featuring Ute Lemper (11 April), Max Raabe & Palast Orchester (12 - 13 April), and Lang's Metropolis with live music by the Club Foot Orchestra (14 April); and also Allen Ginsberg's Kaddish, set by Bill Frisell and with visual design by Ralph Steadman (18 April).
31 March 2013
25 March 2013
Poem of the Week 2013/13
Here's one for Holy Week:
The Heavenly Aeroplane
One of these nights about twelve o'clock
The old world's going to reel and rock,
The sinner's going to tremble and cry for pain
And the Lord will come in his aeroplane.
[Refrain]
O ye thirsty of every tribe
Get your ticket for an aeroplane ride,
Jesus our Savior is a-coming to reign
And take you up to glory in His aeroplane.
Talk about your joy-rides in automobiles,
Talk about your fast time on motor wheels,
We'll break all records as we upward fly
For an aeroplane joy-ride through the sky.
There will be no punctures or muddy roads,
No broken axles from overloads,
No shocks to give trouble or cause delay
As we soon will rapture up the narrow way.
You will have to get ready if you take this ride,
Quit all your sins and humble your pride,
You must furnish a lamp both bright and clean
And a vessel of oil to run the machine.
When our journey is over and we'll all sit down
At the marriage supper with a robe and a crown
We'll blend our voices with the heavenly throng
And praise our Savior as the years roll on.
Anonymous
This anonymous hymn dates from around the mid-1930s, from the Ozark Mountain region of the United States: a time and place in which air travel was no longer experimental, but still glamorous and thrilling and almost as if from another world (so put today's cramped, horrible flights and security-theater shenanigans out of your mind for now). The use of an older form of airplane - the three-syllable aeroplane - helps establish this mental distance (and as in some older English verse, the rhythm won't sound right unless you use the old-fashioned form of the word). The writer deftly and ingeniously combines long-standing Biblical imagery (the vessel of oil, Heaven as a marriage feast) with current, mundane technology (the broken axles, the shocks - I love the offhand pun on that word). It may seem odd to use an airplane/aeroplane in this context, but it's actually a wonderful contemporary equivalent of the fiery chariots that appear in the writings of the Biblical prophets. What was the chariot to the Prophets but a dazzling example of the latest technology available to the rich and powerful? As for the fiery part of the chariot, concepts exist before they are named, and though "totally cool" and "wicked awesome" are not how the prophets would have expressed it, I think that was the underlying feeling behind the flames.
I took this from The New Oxford Book of Christian Verse, compiled by Donald Davie. According to his footnote on this poem, he took it from Volume 4 of Ozark Folksongs, collected and edited by Vance Randolph, and published originally by the State Historical Society of Missouri.
The Heavenly Aeroplane
One of these nights about twelve o'clock
The old world's going to reel and rock,
The sinner's going to tremble and cry for pain
And the Lord will come in his aeroplane.
[Refrain]
O ye thirsty of every tribe
Get your ticket for an aeroplane ride,
Jesus our Savior is a-coming to reign
And take you up to glory in His aeroplane.
Talk about your joy-rides in automobiles,
Talk about your fast time on motor wheels,
We'll break all records as we upward fly
For an aeroplane joy-ride through the sky.
There will be no punctures or muddy roads,
No broken axles from overloads,
No shocks to give trouble or cause delay
As we soon will rapture up the narrow way.
You will have to get ready if you take this ride,
Quit all your sins and humble your pride,
You must furnish a lamp both bright and clean
And a vessel of oil to run the machine.
When our journey is over and we'll all sit down
At the marriage supper with a robe and a crown
We'll blend our voices with the heavenly throng
And praise our Savior as the years roll on.
Anonymous
This anonymous hymn dates from around the mid-1930s, from the Ozark Mountain region of the United States: a time and place in which air travel was no longer experimental, but still glamorous and thrilling and almost as if from another world (so put today's cramped, horrible flights and security-theater shenanigans out of your mind for now). The use of an older form of airplane - the three-syllable aeroplane - helps establish this mental distance (and as in some older English verse, the rhythm won't sound right unless you use the old-fashioned form of the word). The writer deftly and ingeniously combines long-standing Biblical imagery (the vessel of oil, Heaven as a marriage feast) with current, mundane technology (the broken axles, the shocks - I love the offhand pun on that word). It may seem odd to use an airplane/aeroplane in this context, but it's actually a wonderful contemporary equivalent of the fiery chariots that appear in the writings of the Biblical prophets. What was the chariot to the Prophets but a dazzling example of the latest technology available to the rich and powerful? As for the fiery part of the chariot, concepts exist before they are named, and though "totally cool" and "wicked awesome" are not how the prophets would have expressed it, I think that was the underlying feeling behind the flames.
I took this from The New Oxford Book of Christian Verse, compiled by Donald Davie. According to his footnote on this poem, he took it from Volume 4 of Ozark Folksongs, collected and edited by Vance Randolph, and published originally by the State Historical Society of Missouri.
18 March 2013
Poem of the Week 2013/12
Here's another villanelle:
One Art
The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.
Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.
Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.
I lost my mother's watch. And look! My last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.
I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.
-- Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident
the art of losing's not to hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.
Elizabeth Bishop
More and more this has become the Elizabeth Bishop poem, the one people know if they know just one, kind of like Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening is for Frost or This Be the Verse is for Larkin. The title of this poem was even used as the title for a collection of her letters. And it's very characteristic of Bishop in its refined craftsmanship, its unsentimental specificity and clarity, and its sense of something profound and painful handled with strength and grace. Those familiar with Bishop's life could probably link each line to an event in her life, but that's missing the point; it might add some poignancy to realize that the mother whose watch she lost was herself lost to Bishop through mental illness when the future poet was five, but the real meaning of that line comes when you think of something you've lost of your own mother's, or father's, or grandparent's. She starts out with the everyday loss of little things and then moves out to bigger things: the loss of what you meant to do with your life, and your connection to your past (the mother's watch); then she moves from things that are small or intangible to physical locations, again starting small with houses, then cities, then continents - the losses seem larger, but then in the last stanza the dash signals an abrupt change in focus, shifting from large land masses down to one particular individual whom she loves, and that one person seems like a larger loss than any continent or river. But even the loss of that loved one can be survived, though in the final line the parenthetical exhortation as well as the repetition of "like" after it subtly suggests the emotional cost she pays as she steels herself to survive this final loss. The exhortation "(Write it!)" and the "One Art" of the title point out the connection between our inevitable losses and the creation of art as a way of offsetting them: her loss is something we've all experienced (and that's one reason why interpreting a poem like this purely as autobiography is too reductive to be useful). I'm reminded of Heine's magnificent quip, "Out of my great sorrows I make my little songs."
I took this from my copy of The Complete Poems 1927 - 1979, but that appears to be out-of-print and superseded by Poems.
One Art
The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.
Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.
Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.
I lost my mother's watch. And look! My last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.
I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.
-- Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident
the art of losing's not to hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.
Elizabeth Bishop
More and more this has become the Elizabeth Bishop poem, the one people know if they know just one, kind of like Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening is for Frost or This Be the Verse is for Larkin. The title of this poem was even used as the title for a collection of her letters. And it's very characteristic of Bishop in its refined craftsmanship, its unsentimental specificity and clarity, and its sense of something profound and painful handled with strength and grace. Those familiar with Bishop's life could probably link each line to an event in her life, but that's missing the point; it might add some poignancy to realize that the mother whose watch she lost was herself lost to Bishop through mental illness when the future poet was five, but the real meaning of that line comes when you think of something you've lost of your own mother's, or father's, or grandparent's. She starts out with the everyday loss of little things and then moves out to bigger things: the loss of what you meant to do with your life, and your connection to your past (the mother's watch); then she moves from things that are small or intangible to physical locations, again starting small with houses, then cities, then continents - the losses seem larger, but then in the last stanza the dash signals an abrupt change in focus, shifting from large land masses down to one particular individual whom she loves, and that one person seems like a larger loss than any continent or river. But even the loss of that loved one can be survived, though in the final line the parenthetical exhortation as well as the repetition of "like" after it subtly suggests the emotional cost she pays as she steels herself to survive this final loss. The exhortation "(Write it!)" and the "One Art" of the title point out the connection between our inevitable losses and the creation of art as a way of offsetting them: her loss is something we've all experienced (and that's one reason why interpreting a poem like this purely as autobiography is too reductive to be useful). I'm reminded of Heine's magnificent quip, "Out of my great sorrows I make my little songs."
I took this from my copy of The Complete Poems 1927 - 1979, but that appears to be out-of-print and superseded by Poems.
11 March 2013
Poem of the Week 2013/11
Here is a villanelle: that is, a nineteen-line poem (five tercets and a concluding quatrain) that uses only two rhymes throughout and that uses the first and third lines of the first tercet as alternating stanza refrains, bringing them both together in the last two lines of the quatrain. If that sounds confusing, just read the poem and you'll see how it works. This is by Mark Ford, a contemporary British poet.
A few weeks ago, we saw Housman extending a fragment of Sappho into a new poem. This week, Ford also uses the ancient Greek poet, ingeniously incorporating several of her surviving fragments into a modern structure, much as some medieval builders incorporated random blocks from classical ruins to create something new. Housman's and Ford's poems are both openly derived from Sappho, but a subtler version of her influence is built into the DNA of most European-language lyrics (especially love lyrics), even though much of her work, like that of most classical authors, is now lost: her influence on the subsequently influential, particularly such Roman poets as Horace and Catullus, makes her one of the great if sometimes indirect well-springs of world poetry.
Fragments
When dawn, wearing golden sandals, awoke me,
I began to crawl, burning, shivering, to my uncurtained window;
Migrating birds streamed over the dark sea.
Who can quench the ingenious fires of cruelty?
I was dreaming of white-fetlocked horses conferring in a meadow
When dawn, wearing golden sandals, awoke me.
On my stopped loom, a sort of landscape: icy
Peaks, serrated as daggers, a corpse, and beside it a crow,
And migrating birds streaming over the dark sea.
Fat, autumnal flies alight on my sheets, rainbow-hued, dizzy;
This one on my wrist - its mandibles quiver, its gibbous eyes glow. . .
Then dawn, wearing golden sandals, awoke me.
Merciless daughter of Zeus, immortal Aphrodite,
Come to me, sing to me, low-voiced, in sorrow
Of migrating birds that stream over the dark sea.
Cast aside your spangled headband: in my mirror I see
You beneath these stringy locks, puckered lips, and tear-stained cheeks . . . go,
Migrating birds, stream over the dark sea;
And dawn, wearing golden sandals, awake me.
[Author's] Note: "Fragments" makes use of a number of images from the poetry of Sappho.
Mark Ford
Ford strikingly captures that half-waking, half-dreaming state as we move towards dawn, where one thing slips into another and then back again, and the menaces of the night give way hazily to the menaces of the morning. The repetitions inherent in the structure of a villanelle work brilliantly to bring out the obsessive, circular nature of this state. There is a pervading sense of loss and threat; the migrating birds definitely seem to be fleeing rather than just migrating; strange, surreal landscapes appear, icy, with a corpse and a crow; flies seem lazy and colorful and then as if in close-up we see their horrible jaws and bulging eyes. The appearance towards the end of Aphrodite, who is merciless yet sorrowful and who melds with the poet's haggard image, implies that it's erotic loss and failure haunting these dreams.
This is from the anthology Villanelles, edited by Annie Finch and Marie-Elizabeth Mali, from the Everyman's Library Pocket Poetry series. Amazon has other Mark Ford books here.
A few weeks ago, we saw Housman extending a fragment of Sappho into a new poem. This week, Ford also uses the ancient Greek poet, ingeniously incorporating several of her surviving fragments into a modern structure, much as some medieval builders incorporated random blocks from classical ruins to create something new. Housman's and Ford's poems are both openly derived from Sappho, but a subtler version of her influence is built into the DNA of most European-language lyrics (especially love lyrics), even though much of her work, like that of most classical authors, is now lost: her influence on the subsequently influential, particularly such Roman poets as Horace and Catullus, makes her one of the great if sometimes indirect well-springs of world poetry.
Fragments
When dawn, wearing golden sandals, awoke me,
I began to crawl, burning, shivering, to my uncurtained window;
Migrating birds streamed over the dark sea.
Who can quench the ingenious fires of cruelty?
I was dreaming of white-fetlocked horses conferring in a meadow
When dawn, wearing golden sandals, awoke me.
On my stopped loom, a sort of landscape: icy
Peaks, serrated as daggers, a corpse, and beside it a crow,
And migrating birds streaming over the dark sea.
Fat, autumnal flies alight on my sheets, rainbow-hued, dizzy;
This one on my wrist - its mandibles quiver, its gibbous eyes glow. . .
Then dawn, wearing golden sandals, awoke me.
Merciless daughter of Zeus, immortal Aphrodite,
Come to me, sing to me, low-voiced, in sorrow
Of migrating birds that stream over the dark sea.
Cast aside your spangled headband: in my mirror I see
You beneath these stringy locks, puckered lips, and tear-stained cheeks . . . go,
Migrating birds, stream over the dark sea;
And dawn, wearing golden sandals, awake me.
[Author's] Note: "Fragments" makes use of a number of images from the poetry of Sappho.
Mark Ford
Ford strikingly captures that half-waking, half-dreaming state as we move towards dawn, where one thing slips into another and then back again, and the menaces of the night give way hazily to the menaces of the morning. The repetitions inherent in the structure of a villanelle work brilliantly to bring out the obsessive, circular nature of this state. There is a pervading sense of loss and threat; the migrating birds definitely seem to be fleeing rather than just migrating; strange, surreal landscapes appear, icy, with a corpse and a crow; flies seem lazy and colorful and then as if in close-up we see their horrible jaws and bulging eyes. The appearance towards the end of Aphrodite, who is merciless yet sorrowful and who melds with the poet's haggard image, implies that it's erotic loss and failure haunting these dreams.
This is from the anthology Villanelles, edited by Annie Finch and Marie-Elizabeth Mali, from the Everyman's Library Pocket Poetry series. Amazon has other Mark Ford books here.
04 March 2013
Poem of the Week 2013/10
Goldenrod
On roadsides,
in fall fields,
in rumpy bunches,
saffron and orange and pale gold,
in little towers,
soft as mash,
sneeze-bringers and seed-bearers,
full of bees and yellow beads and perfect flowerlets,
and orange butterflies,
I don't suppose
much notice comes of it, except for honey,
and how it heartens the heart with its
blank blaze.
I don't suppose anything loves it except, perhaps
the rocky voids
filled by its dumb dazzle.
For myself,
I was just passing by, when the wind flared,
and the blossoms rustled,
and the glittering pandemonium
leaned on me.
I was just minding my own business
when I found myself on their straw hillsides,
citron and butter-colored,
and was happy, and why not?
Are not the difficult labors of our lives
full of dark hours?
And what has consciousness come to anyway, so far,
that is better than these light-filled bodies?
All day
on their airy backbones
they toss in the wind,
they bend as though it was natural and godly to bend,
they rise in a stiff sweetness,
in the pure peace of giving
one's gold away.
Mary Oliver
Mary Oliver is a contemporary American poet. And this poem strikes me as a contemporary American version of last week's poem, Wordsworth's I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud. Again we have a solitary walker who suddenly comes across an expanse of common wildflowers brought to golden life by the wind, and the sight enriches the poet inwardly. Both Wordsworth and Oliver carry on a subtle dialogue against their respective time's prevailing emphasis on monetary gain: Wordsworth calls the daffodils "golden" and pointedly describes the inner consolation their memory has brought him as "wealth." (In fact, it's a windfall.) Oliver too is minding "her own business" when she learns from the goldenrod - generally considered a useless and even, for those with allergies, harmful weed - a spiritual lesson in "the pure peace of giving / one's gold away." Both poets find not just consolation but strength and meaning in solitary union with wild nature.
Wordsworth uses regular rhyme and meter, but also a radical simplicity of diction (more apparent and startling in his time than in ours, thanks partly to his influence). Oliver delights in the use of alliteration and wordplay to build her poem and make it memorable: "sneeze-bringers and seed-bearers" the goldenrod "heartens the heart with its blank blaze"; her looser contemporary lines are full of similar examples.
This is from Oliver's New and Selected Poems, which is apparently now Volume 1, though it was a stand-alone volume back when I bought it.
On roadsides,
in fall fields,
in rumpy bunches,
saffron and orange and pale gold,
in little towers,
soft as mash,
sneeze-bringers and seed-bearers,
full of bees and yellow beads and perfect flowerlets,
and orange butterflies,
I don't suppose
much notice comes of it, except for honey,
and how it heartens the heart with its
blank blaze.
I don't suppose anything loves it except, perhaps
the rocky voids
filled by its dumb dazzle.
For myself,
I was just passing by, when the wind flared,
and the blossoms rustled,
and the glittering pandemonium
leaned on me.
I was just minding my own business
when I found myself on their straw hillsides,
citron and butter-colored,
and was happy, and why not?
Are not the difficult labors of our lives
full of dark hours?
And what has consciousness come to anyway, so far,
that is better than these light-filled bodies?
All day
on their airy backbones
they toss in the wind,
they bend as though it was natural and godly to bend,
they rise in a stiff sweetness,
in the pure peace of giving
one's gold away.
Mary Oliver
Mary Oliver is a contemporary American poet. And this poem strikes me as a contemporary American version of last week's poem, Wordsworth's I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud. Again we have a solitary walker who suddenly comes across an expanse of common wildflowers brought to golden life by the wind, and the sight enriches the poet inwardly. Both Wordsworth and Oliver carry on a subtle dialogue against their respective time's prevailing emphasis on monetary gain: Wordsworth calls the daffodils "golden" and pointedly describes the inner consolation their memory has brought him as "wealth." (In fact, it's a windfall.) Oliver too is minding "her own business" when she learns from the goldenrod - generally considered a useless and even, for those with allergies, harmful weed - a spiritual lesson in "the pure peace of giving / one's gold away." Both poets find not just consolation but strength and meaning in solitary union with wild nature.
Wordsworth uses regular rhyme and meter, but also a radical simplicity of diction (more apparent and startling in his time than in ours, thanks partly to his influence). Oliver delights in the use of alliteration and wordplay to build her poem and make it memorable: "sneeze-bringers and seed-bearers" the goldenrod "heartens the heart with its blank blaze"; her looser contemporary lines are full of similar examples.
This is from Oliver's New and Selected Poems, which is apparently now Volume 1, though it was a stand-alone volume back when I bought it.
28 February 2013
March fun stuff etc addendum: the Berkeley Symphony
When I prepared my March preview the other day, I swear I checked my Berkeley Symphony press release and it said their next concert was early April. So I was a little startled to get a press release today saying the concert is 28 March. I should point out I've been having a really terrible time (earlier than usual) with allergies, and they've affected my eyes more than usual. Which is why I started panicking that I was losing my ability to read for comprehension. But I double-checked my season-announcement press release, and it does say the concert is in April, so I guess the date was changed some time after that was sent out last May. There may have been an update since then that I missed, so perhaps I should remain worried about my ability to read for comprehension.
So here's the info:
The Berkeley Symphony, Thursday, 28 March, in Zellerbach Hall, featuring The Stars and the Roses, a world premiere commission song cycle by Steven Stucky, setting the poetry of former Cal Professor (among other things) Czeslaw Milosz. Tenor Noah Stewart is soloist, Joana Carneiro conducts. The other piece on the program is the Bruckner 4.
Check it out here.
So here's the info:
The Berkeley Symphony, Thursday, 28 March, in Zellerbach Hall, featuring The Stars and the Roses, a world premiere commission song cycle by Steven Stucky, setting the poetry of former Cal Professor (among other things) Czeslaw Milosz. Tenor Noah Stewart is soloist, Joana Carneiro conducts. The other piece on the program is the Bruckner 4.
Check it out here.
27 February 2013
anguished German nights, dreamy French afternoons
A few Sundays ago I headed out to Hertz Hall to hear Eric Owens (bass-baritone) and Warren Jones (piano) in recital, presented by Cal Performances. Owens had been scheduled to make his first recital appearance here last season, but had to cancel, which is why at the end of the afternoon he thanked Cal Performances for presenting him "again for the first time." New York City was being buried under snow but it was a balmy beautiful day in Berkeley; we were lucky they made it out, since most flights were being cancelled, and they said smilingly that they were grateful for the weather.
The charming remarks and the smiles came later. For the first, all-German, half, the two artists simply walked out and started. And that half was one of the most remarkable recitals I have experienced. Owens seems like a genial guy but seconds after he walked out he went to a very different place, and stayed there for the next forty-five minutes or so. It may have been a sunny afternoon outside, but it was a dark night of the soul in Hertz Hall. I have never heard a singer who could summon up sonorous nobility so quickly, so fully, and so much as part of himself - and not just nobility, but an inner anguish that comes from generous wisdom. It felt extremely unguarded and intimate, but almost as if I were seeing emotions I wasn't meant to see, that were usually and perhaps best kept hidden. It was like eavesdropping on Wotan when he thinks he's alone. I've heard a lot about (but have not myself seen) Owens's performances as Alberich, and now I can see what the raves were about; his would be an Alberich who truly is Wotan's double.
If you take a look at the repertoire (listed below) you can get a feel for the mood, even if your German is rudimentary: Michelangelo, Prometheus (two heaven-stormers!), Hades, Tartarus, melancholy, heart, soul. The songs bled into each other and created one mood, the mood of a man sleepless during an anguished night, looking deeply inward. I found it emotionally naked, and riveting.
After the intermission the second, all-French, half was enjoyable, but not I thought at the level of intensity of the first half. Look at the French songs below, and you can see the difference, even with rudimentary French: beauty, flowers, romance: soft honeyed hours! I've heard and loved these songs other times, but to me after the first half they felt almost like a cool-down after an exhausting, sweat-soaked, but exhilarating marathon. Ironically, since the first half sounded so much like out-takes from the Ring Cycle, the only actual Wagner piece on the program was a little curiosity he wrote for money during his early, desperate years in Paris. He took a poem by Heine translated into French and hoped its patriotic theme - two grenadiers, returning in defeat from Russia back to France, wish only for the return of their beloved, godlike Emperor - would make him some money. The Heine text also threw me, since I kept expecting an ironic twist or subtle insight and instead got pretty much potboiler patriotism. It was kind of an enjoyable oddity, I guess. If you've ever idly wondered what Wagner would have done on piano with La Marseillaise, you could find out in this song.
There were two encores: Purcell's Music for a while was first. Usually I hear this sung by sopranos or countertenors, so hearing it sung softly in a bass-baritone's upper register created an eerie sort of unearthly mood. The snakes dropped from Alecto's head with soothing, regular plops, like overripe fruit falling. The second encore was the hymn Shall We Gather by the River, which seemed emotionally like the real completion of the first half: a calm-after-the-storm benediction to send us back out into the world.
The German songs:
Hugo Wolf: Drei Lieder nach Gedichten von Michelangelo: Wohl denk ich oft; Alles endet, was entstehet; Fuhlt meine Seele das ersehnte Licht
Robert Schumann: Mein Herz ist schwer; Muttertraum; Der Schatzgraber; Melancholie
Franz Schubert: Prometheus; Fahrt zum Hades; Gruppe aus dem Tartarus
The French songs:
Claude Debussy: Beau Soir; Fleur des Bles; Romance
Maurice Ravel: Don Quichotte a Dulcinee: Chanson romanesque; Chanson epique; Chanson a boire
Richard Wagner (yes, that one): Les Deux Grenadiers
The charming remarks and the smiles came later. For the first, all-German, half, the two artists simply walked out and started. And that half was one of the most remarkable recitals I have experienced. Owens seems like a genial guy but seconds after he walked out he went to a very different place, and stayed there for the next forty-five minutes or so. It may have been a sunny afternoon outside, but it was a dark night of the soul in Hertz Hall. I have never heard a singer who could summon up sonorous nobility so quickly, so fully, and so much as part of himself - and not just nobility, but an inner anguish that comes from generous wisdom. It felt extremely unguarded and intimate, but almost as if I were seeing emotions I wasn't meant to see, that were usually and perhaps best kept hidden. It was like eavesdropping on Wotan when he thinks he's alone. I've heard a lot about (but have not myself seen) Owens's performances as Alberich, and now I can see what the raves were about; his would be an Alberich who truly is Wotan's double.
If you take a look at the repertoire (listed below) you can get a feel for the mood, even if your German is rudimentary: Michelangelo, Prometheus (two heaven-stormers!), Hades, Tartarus, melancholy, heart, soul. The songs bled into each other and created one mood, the mood of a man sleepless during an anguished night, looking deeply inward. I found it emotionally naked, and riveting.
After the intermission the second, all-French, half was enjoyable, but not I thought at the level of intensity of the first half. Look at the French songs below, and you can see the difference, even with rudimentary French: beauty, flowers, romance: soft honeyed hours! I've heard and loved these songs other times, but to me after the first half they felt almost like a cool-down after an exhausting, sweat-soaked, but exhilarating marathon. Ironically, since the first half sounded so much like out-takes from the Ring Cycle, the only actual Wagner piece on the program was a little curiosity he wrote for money during his early, desperate years in Paris. He took a poem by Heine translated into French and hoped its patriotic theme - two grenadiers, returning in defeat from Russia back to France, wish only for the return of their beloved, godlike Emperor - would make him some money. The Heine text also threw me, since I kept expecting an ironic twist or subtle insight and instead got pretty much potboiler patriotism. It was kind of an enjoyable oddity, I guess. If you've ever idly wondered what Wagner would have done on piano with La Marseillaise, you could find out in this song.
There were two encores: Purcell's Music for a while was first. Usually I hear this sung by sopranos or countertenors, so hearing it sung softly in a bass-baritone's upper register created an eerie sort of unearthly mood. The snakes dropped from Alecto's head with soothing, regular plops, like overripe fruit falling. The second encore was the hymn Shall We Gather by the River, which seemed emotionally like the real completion of the first half: a calm-after-the-storm benediction to send us back out into the world.
The German songs:
Hugo Wolf: Drei Lieder nach Gedichten von Michelangelo: Wohl denk ich oft; Alles endet, was entstehet; Fuhlt meine Seele das ersehnte Licht
Robert Schumann: Mein Herz ist schwer; Muttertraum; Der Schatzgraber; Melancholie
Franz Schubert: Prometheus; Fahrt zum Hades; Gruppe aus dem Tartarus
The French songs:
Claude Debussy: Beau Soir; Fleur des Bles; Romance
Maurice Ravel: Don Quichotte a Dulcinee: Chanson romanesque; Chanson epique; Chanson a boire
Richard Wagner (yes, that one): Les Deux Grenadiers
26 February 2013
the troubadour plays his guitar
Last week I went over to Berkeley to hear the young guitarist Milos, presented by Cal Performances. He grew up during the latest round of Balkan strife (I think he's 29 or 30 now) and describes himself as from Montenegro, and even more as from the Mediterranean (his first album was called Mediterraneo). He goes by his first name professionally; I suspect that's because he doesn't want to keep correcting the pronunciation of his last name (Karadaglic). As someone who constantly has to correct people who mispronounce my last name (it rhymes with "jazz"), I sympathize.
I was curious to hear Milos for several reasons. Primarily, I thought I would enjoy hearing him play, but of course that's my primary reason for hearing anyone. I have heard some classical guitar but not a whole lot so I wanted to hear some live and expand my live-music experiences. And the marketing push behind him has taken some interesting forms: last summer I was idly channel surfing one day and came across what seemed to be basically an infomercial: a thirty-minute show in which he was interviewed about his second album and its Latin American theme, intercut with scenes of him playing and shooting a music video. And I saw the album for sale from some unlikely source (could it have been QVC?). By the way, I guess I should make it clear I am not looking askance at these methods; I'm all in favor of creative marketing, and I get exasperated when people announce that certain types of music (for example, almost anything composed in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries) "just won't sell" and I think, well, you're not trying.
But there's always a certain amount of backlash to perceived hype, particularly when the performer is also notably good-looking. So I wasn't quite sure what to expect last week at First Congregational Church. As the place filled up we saw an empty chair in front of the altar, and a white guitar case on the floor to the left of it. The concert started late (seriously, if you're not going to start a weeknight concert until 8:00, then at least start it on time). As the lights dimmed Milos came out, sat down, put his left foot up on the guitar case, and without looking up or speaking started playing Bach's Lute Suite in C minor, BWV 997.
I've realized over the years that I dislike electric guitar, and then I realized why: it seems a violation of the instrument's inherent intimacy: no wonder love serenades all feature acoustic guitar. I had assumed that there would be a microphone in front of the guitar, but there wasn't. The playing felt very pure and direct. When Milos finished the Bach piece, he then looked up and smiled and spoke. He speaks very much to the point, pausing occasionally and smiling. He said he liked to open with Bach, which was good for "clearing the ears." He mentioned how happy he was to be in this beautiful church and he praised the acoustics there several times. First Congregational has always had a very New England look to me; I wonder what associations he brought to it. He gave some historical background on the Bach piece, which was written before there were guitars. Then he talked about playing Latin American music, and how in Europe and also probably in the US there are fairly clear lines between what is "classical" and "popular" music but the lines are blurred in Latin America.
So he played four pieces by Villa-Lobos: Prelude No. 1 in E minor, Etude No 11 in E minor, Valsa-Choro from the Suite Popular Brasileira, and Etude No 12 in A minor. He described the last piece as "a showcase of crazy." Milos is not a large man but his hands look large and his fingers are very long and tapered, moving swiftly over the strings. But what I found most impressive about his performance throughout was not the flash and dazzle, but the inwardness. His interpretations (all evening, not just of these pieces in particular) were very poetic, gossamer and fleeting but with underlying tensile strength, like a spiderweb. If you were wandering in a moonlit garden with a fountain splashing quietly, this is the music that would go with the scene. He's clearly a serious artist and one with integrity, which might be a way of saying he clearly thinks more about his playing than his marketing.
After the intermission he thanked us for coming back: "It's always nice when people come back," which he followed with another quick smile. He played some more pieces, but I think the order was different from that listed in the program. He announced that since he liked the acoustics there so much he would play four pieces. So there was Danza Brasilera by Jorge Morel, Milonga by Jorge Cardoso, Batucada by Isaias Savio, and Un Sueno en la Floresta by Augustin Barrios Mangore (these are among the pieces on his second album). He said that one of them (it might have been Milonga, but I'm not sure) was his mother's favorite, and he liked to play it and think of her since he hadn't seen her in a very long time. He seems to like pieces that transport himself and us to another place. His last piece, Domeniconi's Koyunbaba, was inspired by part of the Turkish coast, and when Milos saw the area, he was immediately reminded of his native Montenegro. So he described it as an inexpensive flight home, and he hoped it would conjure up a similar place for us. The audience was mostly very silent and attentive, but of course it was during the quietest portion of Koyunbaba that some guy behind me started sneezing with a weird high-pitched pew sort of pinging sound. Well, I of all people know that you can't control a sneeze. What was really irritating was that he followed this with the very very slow unwrapping of crinkly plastic around a lozenge. Just rip it off if you must! Better yet, buy the lozenges wrapped in paper! Sometimes people really are hopeless. That aside - that little flaw that throws the beauty of the rest into relief - it was a very impressive and enjoyable evening.
Milos went to the lobby afterwards and signed CDs and programs. (That's where the photos are from.) He was very genial and gracious and very tactfully kept the line moving.
I was curious to hear Milos for several reasons. Primarily, I thought I would enjoy hearing him play, but of course that's my primary reason for hearing anyone. I have heard some classical guitar but not a whole lot so I wanted to hear some live and expand my live-music experiences. And the marketing push behind him has taken some interesting forms: last summer I was idly channel surfing one day and came across what seemed to be basically an infomercial: a thirty-minute show in which he was interviewed about his second album and its Latin American theme, intercut with scenes of him playing and shooting a music video. And I saw the album for sale from some unlikely source (could it have been QVC?). By the way, I guess I should make it clear I am not looking askance at these methods; I'm all in favor of creative marketing, and I get exasperated when people announce that certain types of music (for example, almost anything composed in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries) "just won't sell" and I think, well, you're not trying.
But there's always a certain amount of backlash to perceived hype, particularly when the performer is also notably good-looking. So I wasn't quite sure what to expect last week at First Congregational Church. As the place filled up we saw an empty chair in front of the altar, and a white guitar case on the floor to the left of it. The concert started late (seriously, if you're not going to start a weeknight concert until 8:00, then at least start it on time). As the lights dimmed Milos came out, sat down, put his left foot up on the guitar case, and without looking up or speaking started playing Bach's Lute Suite in C minor, BWV 997.
I've realized over the years that I dislike electric guitar, and then I realized why: it seems a violation of the instrument's inherent intimacy: no wonder love serenades all feature acoustic guitar. I had assumed that there would be a microphone in front of the guitar, but there wasn't. The playing felt very pure and direct. When Milos finished the Bach piece, he then looked up and smiled and spoke. He speaks very much to the point, pausing occasionally and smiling. He said he liked to open with Bach, which was good for "clearing the ears." He mentioned how happy he was to be in this beautiful church and he praised the acoustics there several times. First Congregational has always had a very New England look to me; I wonder what associations he brought to it. He gave some historical background on the Bach piece, which was written before there were guitars. Then he talked about playing Latin American music, and how in Europe and also probably in the US there are fairly clear lines between what is "classical" and "popular" music but the lines are blurred in Latin America.
So he played four pieces by Villa-Lobos: Prelude No. 1 in E minor, Etude No 11 in E minor, Valsa-Choro from the Suite Popular Brasileira, and Etude No 12 in A minor. He described the last piece as "a showcase of crazy." Milos is not a large man but his hands look large and his fingers are very long and tapered, moving swiftly over the strings. But what I found most impressive about his performance throughout was not the flash and dazzle, but the inwardness. His interpretations (all evening, not just of these pieces in particular) were very poetic, gossamer and fleeting but with underlying tensile strength, like a spiderweb. If you were wandering in a moonlit garden with a fountain splashing quietly, this is the music that would go with the scene. He's clearly a serious artist and one with integrity, which might be a way of saying he clearly thinks more about his playing than his marketing.
After the intermission he thanked us for coming back: "It's always nice when people come back," which he followed with another quick smile. He played some more pieces, but I think the order was different from that listed in the program. He announced that since he liked the acoustics there so much he would play four pieces. So there was Danza Brasilera by Jorge Morel, Milonga by Jorge Cardoso, Batucada by Isaias Savio, and Un Sueno en la Floresta by Augustin Barrios Mangore (these are among the pieces on his second album). He said that one of them (it might have been Milonga, but I'm not sure) was his mother's favorite, and he liked to play it and think of her since he hadn't seen her in a very long time. He seems to like pieces that transport himself and us to another place. His last piece, Domeniconi's Koyunbaba, was inspired by part of the Turkish coast, and when Milos saw the area, he was immediately reminded of his native Montenegro. So he described it as an inexpensive flight home, and he hoped it would conjure up a similar place for us. The audience was mostly very silent and attentive, but of course it was during the quietest portion of Koyunbaba that some guy behind me started sneezing with a weird high-pitched pew sort of pinging sound. Well, I of all people know that you can't control a sneeze. What was really irritating was that he followed this with the very very slow unwrapping of crinkly plastic around a lozenge. Just rip it off if you must! Better yet, buy the lozenges wrapped in paper! Sometimes people really are hopeless. That aside - that little flaw that throws the beauty of the rest into relief - it was a very impressive and enjoyable evening.
Milos went to the lobby afterwards and signed CDs and programs. (That's where the photos are from.) He was very genial and gracious and very tactfully kept the line moving.
25 February 2013
fun stuff I may or may not get to: March 2013
Other Minds presents its annual festival 28 February - 2 March at the Jewish Community Center in San Francisco.
Awesome local chorus Volti sings new music by Dan Visconti, Harold Meltzer, Mark Winges, Kirsten Broberg, and Huang Ruo, 1 -3 March (with a San Francisco performance sandwiched in between two Berkeley outings).
American Bach Soloists present music by Handel (Dixit Dominus), Bach (Concerto for Oboe d'amore), and Vivaldi (Beatus vir and Concerto for Viola d'amore), 1 - 4 March, in their usual various locations.
Violinist Rachel Podger joins Philharmonia Baroque for a program of, not surprisingly, baroque violin music, featuring Corelli, Vivaldi, Mossi, Pergolesi, and Locatelli; 15 - 17 and 20 March, in the usual various locations.
At the Conservatory of Music, new-music ensemble BluePrint, conducted by Nicole Paiement, performs the world premiere of Ian Dicke's Grand Central, along with Lou Harrison's Tandy's Tango, Leo Brouwer's String Quartet No 4, and Armando Luna's Graffiti, on 2 March. For some reason the Conservatory website is not set up with links to individual events, but if you click here you will get the performance calendar for the current month and it's easy enough to slide over to March and then down to BluePrint - check out their other offerings along the way!
Cutting Ball Theater presents Ionesco's The Chairs, in a new translation by Cutting Ball Artistic Director Rob Melrose, directed by Annie Elias, 1 - 31 March.
Shotgun Players continues through Tom Stoppard's Coast of Utopia trilogy with Part 2, Shipwreck, 22 March - 21 April (they are also presenting Part 1, Voyage, 6 April - 4 May, in case you missed it last year).
Earplay performs music by Yao Chen, Tiffany Sevilla, Mikel Kuehn, Arnold Schoenberg, and Peter Josheff, on 18 March (7:30 at ODC Theater).
The Oakland East Bay Symphony performs Handel's Music for the Royal Fireworks (Michael Morgan conducting), Britten's Four Sea Interludes and Passacaglia from Peter Grimes (Bryan Nies conducting), and Faure's Requiem (Lynne Morrow conducting, with soloists Carrie Hennessey and Zachary Gordin), on 15 March at the Paramount.
San Francisco Ballet presents three programs: The first features the world premiere of Yuri Possokhov's version of The Rite of Spring, as well as Beaux (choreographed by Mark Morris* to music by Martinu), and Guide to Strange Places (choreographed by Ashley Page to music by John Adams); that's Program 3, 26 February to 10 March. The second features the world premiere of From Foreign Lands (Alexei Ratmansky choreographer; no composer is listed), as well as Within the Golden Hour (Christopher Wheeldon to music by Ezio Bosso), and Scotch Symphony (George Balanchine to Mendelssohn); that's Program 4, 1 - 9 March. The third features the return of Onegin, by John Cranko to music by Tchaikovsky (but not from his Onegin opera); that's Program 5, 21 - 28 March.
* Mark Morris's own new version of The Rite of Spring will be coming to Cal Performances in June as part of Ojai North.
Speaking of Cal Performances, they have another busy month in March. Here are some highlights: The Secret Garden, a new opera (co-presented with the San Francisco Opera) by Nolan Gasser (music) and Carey Harrison (libretto) based on the beloved childhood classic, 1 - 10 March; the Brentano String Quartet, playing Haydn, Purcell, Bartok, and Beethoven, 3 March; baritone Nathan Gunn, accompanied by Julie Gunn, will sing Schubert, Schumann (Dichterliebe), Barber, Ives, and Bolcom, 9 March; pianist Jeffrey Kahane playing Chopin, Liszt transcriptions of Bach and Schumann and Schubert, Pavel Haas, and Gabriel Kahane (his son), 10 March; Trisha Brown Dance Company, 15 March; the Afiara String Quartet playing Haydn, Beethoven, and a new work by Brett AbigaƱa, 17 March. Check here for a full listing, though be advised that Wynton Marsalis and the Tallis Scholars (those are separate concerts, which is really too bad) are sold out.
[UPDATE: The Jeffrey Kahane concert has been cancelled due to injury.]
San Francisco Performances presents violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter and pianist Lambert Orkis playing Mozart, Schubert, Lutoslawski, and Saint-Saens, 4 March; mezzo-soprano Isabel Leonard and pianist Vlad Iftinca, singing and playing many different things, 17 March; pianist Jonathan Biss completing his four-concert series on Schumann and his influences with a solo concert on 17 March featuring Janacek and Berg as well as Schumann and then a concert with the Elias String Quartet on 29 March featuring Schumann, Purcell, and a new work by Timothy Andres (Andres is a pianist as well as composer and will present a "musical self-portrait" on 27 March at one of SFP's Wednesday 6:30 Salon at the Rex concerts); and violinist Midori playing all of Bach's sonatas and partitas for solo violin in two concerts, 23 and 24 March.
Over at the San Francisco Symphony, Michael Tilson Thomas conducts selections from Mozart's Zaide with soprano Nadine Sierra along with Bruckner's gorgeous 7th Symphony, 28 February - 2 March; he is joined by dazzling pianist Yuja Wang for Beethoven's Piano Concerto No 4, along with the Brahms 1 and Samuel Carl Adams's Drift and Providence, 6 - 9 March (be advised that the Thursday 7 March concert is up in Sonoma); and then he conducts the Mahler 9 on 14-17 March.
The Exit Theater presents Behind the Curtain, a mini-festival of "dramatic readings" of three backstage dramas by three local playwrights: In the Wings by Meghan O'Connor (28 March), The Rose of Youth by Marissa Skudlarek (29 March), and Pastorella by Stuart Bousel (30 March).
Normally I don't list Los Angeles performances here, since I don't live down there, but I received a press release that included the magic words "inspired by American novelist Nathaniel Hawthorne's short story, The Artist of the Beautiful" so here it is: The Ghost Road Company presents The Bargain and the Butterfly, 26 March - 7 April, at Artworks Theater on Santa Monica Boulevard. Ghost Road has also been influenced by Jerzy Grotowski, so they're just full of magic words for me. More information here.
Awesome local chorus Volti sings new music by Dan Visconti, Harold Meltzer, Mark Winges, Kirsten Broberg, and Huang Ruo, 1 -3 March (with a San Francisco performance sandwiched in between two Berkeley outings).
American Bach Soloists present music by Handel (Dixit Dominus), Bach (Concerto for Oboe d'amore), and Vivaldi (Beatus vir and Concerto for Viola d'amore), 1 - 4 March, in their usual various locations.
Violinist Rachel Podger joins Philharmonia Baroque for a program of, not surprisingly, baroque violin music, featuring Corelli, Vivaldi, Mossi, Pergolesi, and Locatelli; 15 - 17 and 20 March, in the usual various locations.
At the Conservatory of Music, new-music ensemble BluePrint, conducted by Nicole Paiement, performs the world premiere of Ian Dicke's Grand Central, along with Lou Harrison's Tandy's Tango, Leo Brouwer's String Quartet No 4, and Armando Luna's Graffiti, on 2 March. For some reason the Conservatory website is not set up with links to individual events, but if you click here you will get the performance calendar for the current month and it's easy enough to slide over to March and then down to BluePrint - check out their other offerings along the way!
Cutting Ball Theater presents Ionesco's The Chairs, in a new translation by Cutting Ball Artistic Director Rob Melrose, directed by Annie Elias, 1 - 31 March.
Shotgun Players continues through Tom Stoppard's Coast of Utopia trilogy with Part 2, Shipwreck, 22 March - 21 April (they are also presenting Part 1, Voyage, 6 April - 4 May, in case you missed it last year).
Earplay performs music by Yao Chen, Tiffany Sevilla, Mikel Kuehn, Arnold Schoenberg, and Peter Josheff, on 18 March (7:30 at ODC Theater).
The Oakland East Bay Symphony performs Handel's Music for the Royal Fireworks (Michael Morgan conducting), Britten's Four Sea Interludes and Passacaglia from Peter Grimes (Bryan Nies conducting), and Faure's Requiem (Lynne Morrow conducting, with soloists Carrie Hennessey and Zachary Gordin), on 15 March at the Paramount.
San Francisco Ballet presents three programs: The first features the world premiere of Yuri Possokhov's version of The Rite of Spring, as well as Beaux (choreographed by Mark Morris* to music by Martinu), and Guide to Strange Places (choreographed by Ashley Page to music by John Adams); that's Program 3, 26 February to 10 March. The second features the world premiere of From Foreign Lands (Alexei Ratmansky choreographer; no composer is listed), as well as Within the Golden Hour (Christopher Wheeldon to music by Ezio Bosso), and Scotch Symphony (George Balanchine to Mendelssohn); that's Program 4, 1 - 9 March. The third features the return of Onegin, by John Cranko to music by Tchaikovsky (but not from his Onegin opera); that's Program 5, 21 - 28 March.
* Mark Morris's own new version of The Rite of Spring will be coming to Cal Performances in June as part of Ojai North.
Speaking of Cal Performances, they have another busy month in March. Here are some highlights: The Secret Garden, a new opera (co-presented with the San Francisco Opera) by Nolan Gasser (music) and Carey Harrison (libretto) based on the beloved childhood classic, 1 - 10 March; the Brentano String Quartet, playing Haydn, Purcell, Bartok, and Beethoven, 3 March; baritone Nathan Gunn, accompanied by Julie Gunn, will sing Schubert, Schumann (Dichterliebe), Barber, Ives, and Bolcom, 9 March; pianist Jeffrey Kahane playing Chopin, Liszt transcriptions of Bach and Schumann and Schubert, Pavel Haas, and Gabriel Kahane (his son), 10 March; Trisha Brown Dance Company, 15 March; the Afiara String Quartet playing Haydn, Beethoven, and a new work by Brett AbigaƱa, 17 March. Check here for a full listing, though be advised that Wynton Marsalis and the Tallis Scholars (those are separate concerts, which is really too bad) are sold out.
[UPDATE: The Jeffrey Kahane concert has been cancelled due to injury.]
San Francisco Performances presents violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter and pianist Lambert Orkis playing Mozart, Schubert, Lutoslawski, and Saint-Saens, 4 March; mezzo-soprano Isabel Leonard and pianist Vlad Iftinca, singing and playing many different things, 17 March; pianist Jonathan Biss completing his four-concert series on Schumann and his influences with a solo concert on 17 March featuring Janacek and Berg as well as Schumann and then a concert with the Elias String Quartet on 29 March featuring Schumann, Purcell, and a new work by Timothy Andres (Andres is a pianist as well as composer and will present a "musical self-portrait" on 27 March at one of SFP's Wednesday 6:30 Salon at the Rex concerts); and violinist Midori playing all of Bach's sonatas and partitas for solo violin in two concerts, 23 and 24 March.
Over at the San Francisco Symphony, Michael Tilson Thomas conducts selections from Mozart's Zaide with soprano Nadine Sierra along with Bruckner's gorgeous 7th Symphony, 28 February - 2 March; he is joined by dazzling pianist Yuja Wang for Beethoven's Piano Concerto No 4, along with the Brahms 1 and Samuel Carl Adams's Drift and Providence, 6 - 9 March (be advised that the Thursday 7 March concert is up in Sonoma); and then he conducts the Mahler 9 on 14-17 March.
The Exit Theater presents Behind the Curtain, a mini-festival of "dramatic readings" of three backstage dramas by three local playwrights: In the Wings by Meghan O'Connor (28 March), The Rose of Youth by Marissa Skudlarek (29 March), and Pastorella by Stuart Bousel (30 March).
Normally I don't list Los Angeles performances here, since I don't live down there, but I received a press release that included the magic words "inspired by American novelist Nathaniel Hawthorne's short story, The Artist of the Beautiful" so here it is: The Ghost Road Company presents The Bargain and the Butterfly, 26 March - 7 April, at Artworks Theater on Santa Monica Boulevard. Ghost Road has also been influenced by Jerzy Grotowski, so they're just full of magic words for me. More information here.
Poem of the Week 2013/9
I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.
Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay;
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.
The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee;
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company;
I gazed - and gazed - but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought;
For oft, when on my couch I lie
in vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.
William Wordsworth
It's late February in California, which means spring is well on its way, manifested not only in the watery (or dry) itchy eyes and running noses and sneezes and bad headaches of allergy attacks, but also in happier signs of the changing season; years ago I planted some daffodils in my backyard, and though I've done nothing with them since but look at them when they bloom around this time of year, and though there are fewer than there once were, they still spring up faithfully and dance in the breeze, just as Wordsworth said they did. I always think of this poem when I see them, though I have neither a crowd nor a host of daffodils.
I can hear the boys next door playing basketball, and the children on the other side will no doubt soon be out screaming again, and the people behind me are chain-sawing down a tree. Solitude is very important to this poem; the speaker discovers the flowers while out wandering alone - actually, while lonely. He typifies himself as a cloud, not a man, and we don't know exactly where he is when he sees "a crowd, a host" - there's a sense of being in Nature, but that's only because he's brought a cloud floating high into our minds; that might have been an emotional metaphor, and there's nothing to prevent this from being in a city, and the crowd being one of people, or the host being armies on a plain. It's a dazzling surprise when we suddenly come across the wild spread of the daffodils (I can sense some of the same broad golden effect when I look at the oxalis that has taken over various portions of my yard).
The man is a cloud and the daffodils are personified as a crowd, but at least it's a dancing crowd. The dancing effect is mentioned twice in the first two stanzas, and the nearby waves are also said to dance, though not to such striking effect as the flowers; but the mention of the waves and the bay and the earlier mention of the stars brings a lot of the natural world into conjunction with this glimpse of spring flowers. But it's in memory that the sight has the most power, and in memory that the wanderer also comes into conjunction with the world around him; later, his loneliness turned to solitude, he discovers bliss when the vanished moment returns inwardly to him, and his spirit joins with the remembered daffodils in dance: the lonely man finds company united with the splendors of undisturbed nature.
Wordsworth of course wrote during the beginnings of the Industrial Revolution that would remake the world's landscape and climate. I wonder if his bayside stretch of daffodils is still around, possibly saved only as a marketing possibility for Lake Country tours, or if development has taken over such a desirable spot. (Now my neighbors behind me are playing their crappy music too loudly.) If I ever moved to another house I would plant some daffodils there too, and wait for spring despite its attendant allergies.
I took this poem from the Penguin edition of the poems, Volume 1, which appears to be out of print, but it's one of his greatest hits and would be in most Wordsworth collections, including this one from Penguin.
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.
Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay;
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.
The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee;
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company;
I gazed - and gazed - but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought;
For oft, when on my couch I lie
in vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.
William Wordsworth
It's late February in California, which means spring is well on its way, manifested not only in the watery (or dry) itchy eyes and running noses and sneezes and bad headaches of allergy attacks, but also in happier signs of the changing season; years ago I planted some daffodils in my backyard, and though I've done nothing with them since but look at them when they bloom around this time of year, and though there are fewer than there once were, they still spring up faithfully and dance in the breeze, just as Wordsworth said they did. I always think of this poem when I see them, though I have neither a crowd nor a host of daffodils.
I can hear the boys next door playing basketball, and the children on the other side will no doubt soon be out screaming again, and the people behind me are chain-sawing down a tree. Solitude is very important to this poem; the speaker discovers the flowers while out wandering alone - actually, while lonely. He typifies himself as a cloud, not a man, and we don't know exactly where he is when he sees "a crowd, a host" - there's a sense of being in Nature, but that's only because he's brought a cloud floating high into our minds; that might have been an emotional metaphor, and there's nothing to prevent this from being in a city, and the crowd being one of people, or the host being armies on a plain. It's a dazzling surprise when we suddenly come across the wild spread of the daffodils (I can sense some of the same broad golden effect when I look at the oxalis that has taken over various portions of my yard).
The man is a cloud and the daffodils are personified as a crowd, but at least it's a dancing crowd. The dancing effect is mentioned twice in the first two stanzas, and the nearby waves are also said to dance, though not to such striking effect as the flowers; but the mention of the waves and the bay and the earlier mention of the stars brings a lot of the natural world into conjunction with this glimpse of spring flowers. But it's in memory that the sight has the most power, and in memory that the wanderer also comes into conjunction with the world around him; later, his loneliness turned to solitude, he discovers bliss when the vanished moment returns inwardly to him, and his spirit joins with the remembered daffodils in dance: the lonely man finds company united with the splendors of undisturbed nature.
Wordsworth of course wrote during the beginnings of the Industrial Revolution that would remake the world's landscape and climate. I wonder if his bayside stretch of daffodils is still around, possibly saved only as a marketing possibility for Lake Country tours, or if development has taken over such a desirable spot. (Now my neighbors behind me are playing their crappy music too loudly.) If I ever moved to another house I would plant some daffodils there too, and wait for spring despite its attendant allergies.
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