Browsed by
Author: Paul Hertelendy

CABRILLO MUSIC: THE MOUSE THAT ROARS

CABRILLO MUSIC: THE MOUSE THAT ROARS

SANTA CRUZ, CA—–The biggest little festival of all might just be the Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music, which for years has featured living composers’ output exclusively while garnering dozens of ASCAP awards for adventurous programming. Now 62 years old, this cutting-edge orchestral package of national impact performs over two midsummer weekends in music that is complex, audacious and often brand new, with most of the composers present to witness their music from start to finish. This year, there were 16,…

Read More Read More

AN ANACHRONISM, OR RACY MODERN SEXUAL CANDOR?

AN ANACHRONISM, OR RACY MODERN SEXUAL CANDOR?

SANTA FE, NM—-The last of the great romantic-era operas, in all its opulence, is arguably Richard Strauss’ “Der Rosenkavalier,” launched just before that epic, revolutionary “Rite of Spring”—yet with a libertine plot people found offensive, right from the first scene showing a married woman lolling in bed with her lover. A palatial opera so costly that most US troupes can never afford to mount it, it is riding high at the Santa Fe Opera Festival. It is produced to the…

Read More Read More

EXCESS BALLAST ENDANGERS THE TRIM SHIP

EXCESS BALLAST ENDANGERS THE TRIM SHIP

SANTA FE, NM—-The summer-season opera festival came up with a wealth of talent that could sing and act on an international level—-no mean feat, given the eight principals in Mozart’s “Don Giovanni.” Hearing and seeing this drama about the fascinating, rapacious daredevil brightens the week spent in this breath-taking site 7,000 Feet up in the sky. At least until Don Giovanni, who is somewhere between Zorro, Casanova and the Lone Ranger, is ultimately dragged off to judgment and perdition in…

Read More Read More

SOCIAL CRITIQUE THROUGH OUR MODERN LENS IN OPERA

SOCIAL CRITIQUE THROUGH OUR MODERN LENS IN OPERA

SANTA FE, NM—-One of the finest new operas of our era provides an inspiring human drama about our own urban lives, which are flawed (except for yours, of course). This is the world-premiere opus “The Righteous,” which through the genius of librettist Tracy K. Smith airs a catalogue of 15 or so social issues through the lives of nine characters. And what could be more timely than the emergence of women’s roles along with critiquing politicians’ shallow behavior? Somehow, the…

Read More Read More

EXEMPLARY PLAY DESPITE BUDGET CRUNCH AT SYMPHONY

EXEMPLARY PLAY DESPITE BUDGET CRUNCH AT SYMPHONY

I’ll come clean and confess, having at last expected some mediocrity at the S.F. Symphony’s rare “one-of” “Fate” concert July 25, clearly a filler on the schedule featuring a couple of emerging solo artists. Wrong, wrong, wrong. Violinist Stella Chen, originally from the Bay Area, was cool and dazzling in Barber’s less-than-stellar “unplayable” concerto. And the Korean-Canadian guest conductor from the Boston Symphony staff Earl Lee brought hushed admiration in his leading that old “Fate” war-horse, Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 4….

Read More Read More

IBERIAN EAR-OPENERS

IBERIAN EAR-OPENERS

Few soloists of late have made an impact comparable to Pablo Sáinz-Villegas, who played Joaquín Rodrigo’s highly popular “Concierto de Aranjuez” with the SF Symphony at Davies Hall July 11. Much like Mozart in his piano concertos, he showed an inclination to adding ornamentation, taking the familiar Adagio to a new higher level. The all-Spanish program had its flaws, but the centerpiece was golden. The virtuoso master of the guitar brought the audience to its feet more than once in…

Read More Read More

MAHLER’S PASTORAL METROPOLIS

MAHLER’S PASTORAL METROPOLIS

Writing a symphony, composers are like architects designing a new city. But not Gustav Mahler. In his Symphony No. 3, he created a musical metropolis, @ 100 minutes running the length of two or three normal symphonies. The oversize 111-member orchestra, with doubled winds and harps, a paired set of timpani within a seven-member augmented percussion group, plus singers, add up to a bulging score more like four symphonies in one. The extravagance was unprecedented, with no regard for production…

Read More Read More

KRONOS: NO CHALLENGE TOO GREAT

KRONOS: NO CHALLENGE TOO GREAT

Even after 50 years, the unique Kronos Quartet is still plunging headlong into new music, with three world premieres June 20 to open its San Francisco weekend festival. After half a century, it’s safe to say no such ensemble has ever presented more contemporary pieces, with more than 1,000 (mostly living) composers featured. And so many of these are high-intensity virtuoso opuses, wherein the players threaten to saw right through their strings with the vigorous, eye-blurring bowings. No place for…

Read More Read More

VINTAGE RUSSIAN MUSIC AT THE S.F. SYMPHONY

VINTAGE RUSSIAN MUSIC AT THE S.F. SYMPHONY

An enigmatic all-Russian program is winding down the S.F. Symphony season, raising provocative questions while posing as provocative protest pieces. All but a Tchaikovsky selection were written under the strict thought control of the Soviet Union in the 20th century. But, as musicians well knew, when neither literature, news media nor stage works permitted deviation from the party line, music was one viable dissent possibility if threaded skillfully. None fit this elusive mold more than the “Fairytale Poem” composed for…

Read More Read More

A MONODRAMA FOR SCENERY-CHEWING

A MONODRAMA FOR SCENERY-CHEWING

Paying a generous end-of-season dividend, the San Francisco Symphony provided the patrons with a triple bill: Orchestra, a colossal vocal drama and a modern dance troupe, all compressed into a single program. And the vocal part unleashed the most exciting operatic voice heard all year, Mary Elizabeth Williams, acting out the Arnold Schoenberg monodrama “Erwartung” (Expectation) in passionate, semi-coherent detail. Music director Esa-Pekka Salonen carried off this budget-busting cornucopia of musical treats in the last month of his penultimate season,…

Read More Read More