‘Moby Dick’ a hit despite Absent Whale

‘Moby Dick’ a hit despite Absent Whale

SAN JOSE—A very good American opera becomes a great experience through a highly theatrical production currently at Opera San Jose. This is Jake Heggie’s “Moby Dick” (2010) in a super-charged dramatic concept, thanks to both Kristine McIntyre stage director and Gene Scheer, who wrote the visionary libretto. McIntyre, a master of the art, should be giving boundless master classes to conservatories full of budding directors, even those in major prestige opera houses hard pressed to provide her sort of animation….

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Where There’s Hope, There’s Life

Where There’s Hope, There’s Life

BERKELEY—A great new era was launched here. Now there is Hope for us all. British leader/violin virtuoso Daniel Hope, that is, who is our latest classical-music rock star. He led the most exquisite “Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis” you have ever heard in his debut as artistic director Feb. 8. His New Century Chamber Orchestra produced breath-taking sonorities and perfect tuning in  playing an updating of a 17th-century theme reenkindled a century ago by Ralph Vaughn Williams. A…

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Berkeley Symphony: Equality and Premieres

Berkeley Symphony: Equality and Premieres

BERKELEY, CA—The Berkeley Symphony seeks to carve out a role on the forefront on equality and social-justice issues.  And it is well on the way. Disregarding the Asian players in the orchestra, this week I counted more players of color (two) in the ensemble than in nearly all the professional orchestras around. Furthermore, on Jan. 31 all the guest artists were black: Conductor Joseph Young, actor Michael Asberry, and the English composer Hannah Kendall, 34. And Kendall’s world-premiere opus  was…

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Stunning Ballet, Miscast Music

Stunning Ballet, Miscast Music

If amazing dancing throughout the night is your thing, “Don Quixote” is your ballet. But if plausible music is your driving force, better send Don Q off to joust with  some windmills. The most famous early Spanish novel inspired this classic ballet standard which was launched exactly 150 years ago, in Russia, thanks to an Austrian composer. I think you see where this is headed. If you expect an abundance of jotas, asturias, and flamenco themes and rhythms, muy español, forget it. Composer…

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Salonen Came, Saw, Conquered

Salonen Came, Saw, Conquered

Before we all wax euphoric over the new S.F. Symphony maestro—which the sold-out house did the other night—let’s pause and look at the bigger picture. Esa-Pekka Salonen, who becomes the music director in fall, 2020, got a standing ovation before he had led a single note guesting Jan. 18. He’s dashing and elegant, all right, 60 but looking like 39, and he led a marvelous set of tone poems before an enraptured audience. But no real judgment on a maestro…

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Moderns Take a Raft of Cellos

Moderns Take a Raft of Cellos

With little more than an array of cellos, composer Clarice Assad portrayed the rise and fall of an entire fictional civilization in a fascinating world premiere having, alas, one major defect, emanating from one seat, back around the eighth row. In the space of 22 minutes, her “Lemuria” followed the Lemurians from crude beginnings through cultural evolution, developing humble instruments like ocarinas, chanting in rituals, gorgeous sonorities and even dances, then falling victim to thunderstorms and upheaval. Despite the bizarre…

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The Fresh Festival Brings a “Reckoning”

The Fresh Festival Brings a “Reckoning”

The Fresh Festival, which plays at the Joe Goode Annex in San Francisco every Friday and Saturday evening in January, proposes a series of performances that show a “bold, wild, vulnerable willingness to try something new in front of your eyes, have the power to change your mind, your day, your life,” according Kathleen Hermesdorf, the Festival curator. The Festival is celebrating its tenth anniversary around the theme of “Reckoning,” a political ambition, in which “we are . . ….

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Bruckner Symphonies: Avoid the Wheezes

Bruckner Symphonies: Avoid the Wheezes

Performances of Bruckner symphonies can get reactions ranging from whee to a wheeze. The current stab at Bruckner’s Fifth certainly elicits no whee of delight—Z-z-z-z’s more than whee’s—-but the concert by the S.F. Symphony fortunately offered a first-rate Mozart Clarinet Concerto by way of compensation. As the Mozart soloist, Carey Bell made a strong case for being placed in the league of the top actives in clarinet like New Yorker Anthony McGill. His arpeggios are like waterfalls, his legatos are…

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Dvorak’s Music Eloquent in Ghost Story

Dvorak’s Music Eloquent in Ghost Story

BERKELEY—To revive an excellent but forgotten oratorio by Antonin Dvorak, it took not the professional players, nor the downtown arts centers, but rather a thoroughly committed community orchestra and chorus to present “The Spectre’s Bride” of 1885. Dvorak’s prowess at high drama, compelling orchestration and choral writing as an integral component of story-telling was never more effective than in this evening-length Bohemian-Czech fairy tale about a damsel in distress bedeviled and abducted by a specter in the night. Coming in…

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Berkeley’s Show-stopper Musical

Berkeley’s Show-stopper Musical

BERKELEY, CA—Even in previews, Berkeley Rep’s world premiere production of “Paradise Square” has the feel of a hit Broadway musical. This theatrical exuberance has legs! Set in the Manhattan race riots of the Civil War era, it plays out an unaccustomed harmony of blacks (some of them escaped slaves) and Irish immigrants. It was that great melting pot rarely in a full-melt. All coalescing in that unique mixed-race bar called Paradise Square. The vitality of this show is electric. Imagine the…

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