New Book on Conductors — Yours for the Looking
Veteran San Francisco music critic Arthur Bloomfield has just published an online study of the great conductors of yesteryear. More Than the Notes is both free and valuable. Best yet, it's illustrated with online music excerpts you can listen to while reading the text.
It is an idiosyncratically personal and insightful collection of essays about conductors born between the middle and the end of the 19th century, covering the range from Sir George Henschel (1850-1934) to Sir Adrian Boult (1889-1983).
The book (or whatever such will be called in the future) includes the universally acclaimed (Toscanini, Stokowski, and Furtwaengler) and the now little-known (Fritz Stiedry, Franco Ghione, Philippe Gaubert, and so on). Apologies if among these latter names is your own favorite conductor.
A Stanford University alumnus, Bloomfield sang in the University Chorus in performances conducted by Bruno Walter and Pierre Monteux. He comes from a musical family, including the pianists Moriz Rosenthal, Fannie Bloomfield Zeisler, and Heinrich Neuhaus. In the 1970s, Bloomfield was music critic for The San Francisco Examiner, and in the 1980s, he wrote for Opera magazine.
His books include The San Francisco Opera 1922-1978 and The Gastronomical Tourist — the latter also available online.
Asked about the list of conductors he covers, Bloomfield said his favorite chapters are Klemperer, Reiner, Boult, and Stokowski; the longest are Toscanini and Furtwaengler. Probably due to Bloomfield's local history, Gaetano Merola — an important figure, but perhaps not a "great conductor" — is included in the list.
The Toscanini chapter is typical of Bloomfield's approach, first challenging "common wisdom" —
Toscanini’s genius is not in doubt, but enough rubbish has been written about him to fill a sizeable ground zero. We must thank profusely such commentators as Harvey Sachs who’ve demolished the clichés as they came flying in our face: that Toscanini always stuck to the precise letter of the score, that his later style was "simpler," that his tempos got faster, that only he had the right key to the lock behind which lay the "correct" sort of interpretation that’s right for us, that like some unimpeachable and beloved precinct cop he was saving us from the indigestion of sentimentality as practiced dangerously and always inappropriately by most of the other well-known conductors in music from several eras.and then providing his own quirky, heartfelt analysis —
... the Toscanini oeuvre is full of performances in as many flavors as that celebrated ice cream merchant with a hyphenated name used to advertise. They come simple and complex, masculine and feminine, peremptory and kindly, dead slow and wildly brisk, spare and rich, very poised or quite erratic, and he can swing from one interpretive branch to another in the twinkling of a baton. He wears us out and we enjoy it! Well, mostly.But it wasn’t always easy for a lot of us: amid all the hype from critics fallen on their knees and all the whirlwind changeability on his assorted podiums many of us suffered pangs in our hi-fi corners, we were thrown into a love-hate listening relationship with the Old Man.
Queen's Recognition for Philharmonia Baroque
Here's the thing about the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire, established by George V in 1917: It's composed of five classes, in decreasing order of seniority:
- * Knight Grand Cross (GBE) or Dame Grand Cross (GBE)
* Knight Commander (KBE) or Dame Commander (DBE)
* Commander (CBE)
* Officer (OBE)
* Member (MBE)
allowing the recipient to use the title "Sir" (male) or "Dame" (female) before his or her first name. Why this contemplation of history and etiquette (or a journalistic misstep called "burying the lead")? So that you'd know it's right and proper to congratulate Nicholas McGegan, but don't call him "Sir Nic."
Over the weekend, the Queen’s Birthday Honors List was published, including an OBE (Officer of the British Empire) for Philharmonia Baroque Music Director Nicholas McGegan, "for services to music overseas," which means many places in Europe, and especially right here in the Bay Area.
McGegan, 60, has spent 25 years with the 30-year-old Philharmonia, gaining worldwide esteem for the group, and enthusiastic support in the Bay Area.
In the United Kingdom, McGegan was principal guest conductor of the Scottish Opera from 1993 to 1998, and he regularly conducts the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, the Northern Sinfonia (with whom he appeared at the London Proms in 2009), the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, and the Royal Scottish National Orchestra. He makes frequent appearances at the Edinburgh Festival.
Music Galore at Kohl Mansion
The ratio of excellence to budget is extraordinary in the announcement of Music at Kohl Mansion's 28th chamber concert series. Longevity, a superb location, and Patricia Kristof Moy's leadership must overcome limitations of a financially very modest enterprise. Overcome they do: Just consider the caliber of talent and the variety of programs the series marshals.
The season-opener, on Oct. 24, features the Lark Quartet and baritone Stephen Salters, in an unusual, attractive program of selections from Dvořák's Cypresses (have you ever heard it west of the Vltava?), Hidgon's An Exaltation of Larks, Wiprud's American Journal, and Ruehr's Song of the Silkie. Wow.
A Nov. 14 gala with San Francisco Opera artists will have current and past Adler Fellows soprano Leah Crocetto, mezzo Maya Lahyani, tenor Brian Jagde, and baritone Austin Kness. Pianist John Churchwell is the accompanist.
Subscription concerts will feature the Lydian String Quartet and the Harlem Quartet in their local debut, the Aulos Ensemble, and the Miró, Daedalus, and Alexander string quartets.
As always, the series is also attracting audiences with its setting in the Tudor-style estate's Great Hall, affordable ticket prices ($80 for the 7-concert series for those under 30 — how I wish to be Generation Y... or Z!), complimentary postconcert receptions, and the warm atmosphere. Terrific.
DePasquale Wins Klein Award
Violinist Francesca dePasquale won first prize at the 25th annual Irving M. Klein International String Competition during the weekend finals at San Francisco State University. The Colburn School of Music student from Philadelphia, 20, earned the Marvin T. Tepperman Memorial Award, which includes $14,000 and performances with the Peninsula and Santa Cruz symphonies, Chamber Music Tulsa, and Music and the Vineyards, among others.
The award opens opportunities that have well served such previous Klein winners as David Requiro, Jennifer Koh, Mark Kosower, Vadim Gluzman, Alban Gerhardt, Frank Huang, and François Salque. DePasquale's winning performance included movements from Bach's Partita No. 2, Brahms' Sonata No. 1 in G Major, Sibelius' Concerto in D Minor, and Decree, a commissioned work by Dick Hyman.
Girls Just Wanna Have a Great Season
San Francisco Girls Chorus has announced the 2010-2011 season (Oct. 22-June 11), which will feature four home season concerts, with the participation of Tania León, the New Esterházy and Cypress string quartets, Sonos Handbell Ensemble, and others.
Susan McMane, in her 10th season as Artistic Director, will also lead the chorus in its participation with the San Francisco Symphony's programs of Mendelssohn's A Midsummer Night's Dream and John Adams’ El Niño; and in the San Francisco Opera production of Massenet's Werther. The chorus will go on a tour of Cuba next summer.
The 40 members of the professional-level ensemble are 12 to 17 years old and come from all around the Bay Area.
The program for the opening concert in October is typical of the SFGC's adventurous spirit: Valjo Tormis; Spring Sketches, Michael Haydn's Magnificat, Brahms' Psalm 27, Eric Whitacre's Five Hebrew Love Songs; and music by Hildegard von Bingen, Victoria, Jos, R.H. Haydn, and others.
A Latter-Day Walküre
Die Walküre is a marathon for singers and instrumentalists.
The San Francisco Opera, in scheduling its performance of Walküre last Sunday (dress rehearsal), Thursday (premiere), and Sunday (matinee) — while also interspersing performances of Girl of the Golden West (June 9, 12) and Faust (June 5, 8, 11) — went beyond a mere marathon ... or reasonable endurance.
And so what I heard at the Sunday matinee was very much what I had expected in the first place: a competent-to-excellent performance, with voices that well merit repeat hearing. That, of course, was not what we got at Thursday's extraordinary premiere, reflected uniformly in review after review.
Donald Runnicles was still providing admirable musical leadership, but Thursday's amazing woodwinds and — especially — brass weren't as impressive. The luster of strings dimmed a bit.
The opening of Christopher Ventris' Siegmund performance was wondrous in its unforced, beautiful, true heldentenor. By "Winterstürme," the voice weakened; by the end of the act, Ventris struggled. Beyond another great vocal-dramatic performance, Mark Delavan's Wotan too had its issues with durability.
The ladies, bless 'em, were not subject to human frailty. Eva-Maria Westbroek's Sieglinde and Nina Stemme's Brünnhilde were consistently powerful and altogether wonderful. Westbroek, in fact, seemed to hold back a bit near the end of her Act 1 duet with Ventris, being a good colleague and discerning artist. (I am sorry management didn't challenge Westbroek to sing Minnie and Marguerite as well — she could have done it in her spare time.)
Once again, the compelling theater of Francesca Zambello's direction supported the production admirably. In all the long duets — often a trial to newcomers to Wagner — there was meaningful action, the singers' body language and interaction providing both an enhancement and subtext to the work.
Otherwise, there are several small mysteries to Zambello's staging, including Brünnhilde's satchel that serves as her armor, at least in references. If you want to dispense with helmet, shield, and so on, invisible armament would make more sense than a bag, carried, thrown, dropped, and flung. If there is symbolism in that, it escaped me.
Next summer's SFO Ring will have a partially different cast from the current Walküre. Runnicles, Delavan, and Stemme stay, with the fascinating additional casting of Anja Kampe and Heidi Melton as Sieglinde, Brandon Jovanovich as Siegmund, Larissa Diadkova as Fricka, and Daniel Sumegi as Hunding. You can only presume the Luftwaffe of the Valkyries will remain mostly the same, although more from that year's Adler Fellows than of this one's.
Philadelphia Orchestra Gets Its Man
Better learn to pronounce Yannick Nézet-Séguin — it's Yah-NEEK nay-ZEH say-GA[N], according to one superbly well-informed source (see below, in the pedagogical section of this item). Or, for an easy out, listen to the man himself.
The 35-year-old Montreal-born conductor, already one of the busiest up-and-coming musicians around, has been named music director of the Philadelphia Orchestra. His seven-year appointment, effective immediately, ends — at least for now — the leadership crisis of years.
After Christoph Eschenbach's unhappy 2003-2008 tenure, Charles Dutoit took over to serve as "artistic bridge" until the selection of the orchestra's eighth music director. The search process this time included the musicians, with the hope that past conflicts will be avoided.
Unlike the historical preference of major American orchestras for more mature maestros, the Philadelphia has a notable record of appointments such as that of Leopold Stokowski at age 30, Eugene Ormandy at 38, and Riccardo Muti at age 39. If Nézet-Séguin does the job right, he may also accrue the others' longevity: Stokowski held the job for 26 years, Ormandy for 44, and Muti for a mere 12.
Nézet-Séguin — who has had a skyrocketing career in recent years — will also remain music director of the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra, principal guest conductor of the London Philharmonic Orchestra, and artistic director and principal conductor of the Orchestre Métropolitain (Montreal).
His future appearances include conducting the Vienna Philharmonic for the 2010 Salzburg Festival production of Don Giovanni; several productions for the Metropolitan Opera; debuts with the Berlin Philharmonic, the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, the Bayerischer Rundfunk Orchestra, and the Chicago Symphony; and first productions for La Scala Milan and London’s Royal Opera House.
About the pronunciation, here's a highly instructive explanation from San Francisco Opera French language coach Patricia Kristof Moy, frustrated by the need to put in writing what should be heard:
The stressed syllable in every word is the last one in French (except in singing, whenever a composer sets a note under a "neutral" final e, in which case it is sung but never stressed). For example, if the final e in the word "innocente" has a note value, the vowel is sung, but the tonic accent is still on the third syllable because in speech, the e would be silent.So it’s Yah-NEEK nay-ZEH say-GA[N] – always stressing the final syllable of each word. However, I find this sort of transliteration dangerous, as it’s precisely what leads singers astray (the diphthongs, which don’t exist in French and are Americanisms, as well as the n in the final nasal, which is not pronounced as an n, but rather, as a nasalized open e.
Ernest Fleischmann
Ernest Fleischmann, who managed the Los Angeles Philharmonic for nearly 30 years, and transformed it into one of the top orchestras in the country, died on Sunday, at age 85.
"As the Philharmonic's visionary manager," says The Los Angeles Times, "he was a famed talent scout who had a hand in every large and small decision concerning the orchestra from 1969 to 1998. He was, as conductor Pierre Boulez once said, 'like an eagle, flying but looking down at the smallest mice,' able to see the big picture but also able to spot talent with the canny eye of both a promoter and a music lover."
Long after his retirement, Fleischmann still had influence in recognizing Gustavo Dudamel's ability as early as 2004, and championing the young Venezuelan, who became the orchestra's music director last year.
Among Fleischmann's greatest accomplishments: the hiring of two great conductors in the post-Zubin Mehta era: Carlo Maria Giulini and Esa-Pekka Salonen, whom Fleischmann identified as a major talent while Salonen was still in his 20s; and the commissioning, financing, and completion of Frank Gehry's Walt Disney Concert Hall in 2003. He championed contemporary music, even against a majority conservative subscriber base.
Fleischmann was born in Frankfurt, Germany, and emigrated to South Africa in 1936 and then to England in 1959. When he arrived in Los Angeles in 1969, the orchestra's annual budget was $5 million; it is now $66 million — with corresponding growth in all aspects of the Philharmonic.
S.F. Opera: The Long View From the Top
Opera fans who fantasize about running an opera house covet the power to select repertory and give
San Francisco Opera General Director David Gockley, one of the country's longest-serving and most successful opera bosses, speaks candidly about the challenging part of what is other people's dream job. Gockley's column in the current SFO program makes for somber reading:
San Francisco opera has many challenges to face if it is to go forward in what is surely now a new socioeconomic reality. The "Great Recession" has given us a wake-up call that business-as-usual will lead to no-business-at-all.Those assumptions are on the optimistic side, so Gockley's point is that even under favorable circumstances, the long-range economic health of the Opera looks iffy or worse.The Company's projected expense growth over the next decade — assuming no corrective action is taken — cannot be covered by even the most optimistic of income estimates. [Graphics] show the revenue shortfall reaching $11 million by fiscal year 2015 and a whopping $20 million by 2020!
This projection assumes that endowment income will grow healthily, that ticket prices will increase at 2.5 percent per year, that we sell 85 percent of our seats, and that annual fund-raising continues to grow even with the passing of a generation of mega-donors.
His battle plan:
1. Renewed focus on building the endowment.
2. Consolidating activities and facilities on the "War Memorial campus," including a new facility on the west side of the to-be-reconstructed War Memorial Building.
3. Installing automated, motorized line-sets in the opera house to reduce stage injuries and maximize efficiencies.
4. Consider restructuring the season to ease congestion.
5. "Discipline ourselves to use and/or create scenic productions that fit the limited confines of a 1930s opera house, including those that make creative use of the latest projection technologies."
6. "Work with all departments (administrative and union alike) to ensure maximum efficiency ... and recalibrate benefit programs to be fair, equitable, and sensible by today's standards."
Gockley adds:
In advocating these changes, you'll notice that I did not recommend any compromise whatsoever in vocal and musical standards. In fact, if we make the changes I've suggested we will ensure that our artistic value system is honored and perpetuated. Please support me as we structure an artistically vital, economically stable company for the next 50 years.
A Violetta Overcoming Real Illness
Heidi Moss' blog about her preparation for singing the title role with Pocket Opera's upcoming La traviata (July 10-18) describes how Violetta's fictional tuberculosis is integrated with Moss' real, chronic Bell's Palsy.
I know, most people don't look at a bacterial infection as a motivational factor, but for me, it meant a direct connection from Violetta to me. One of my greatest challenges in the past three years has been to emerge as a convincing interpreter despite my facial paralysis. I have been lucky in some spheres, unlucky in others. But here, in my lap, was a character who could conceivably have had Bell's Palsy. TB is a known cause. Now I know the director may not even use this idea, but for me, it at least gives me an internal line to her from which I can derive a true interpretation. No matter what I am told, I will imagine she has palsy. That is my ticket. Now I have no fear.Read more about a singer's preparation for a big role, a patient dealing constructively and imaginatively with her illness.I know it seems a very superficial way to personally relate to a character. But for Violetta, vanity is part of the equation. After years of not thinking about her beauty (nor true love-instant parallel there), and resting on its laurels, she is faced with losing it in her illness (no pun intended). Subsequently, she must confront the age-old romanticized questions: "What is important?," "Will someone love me for me? If so, how can I truly believe it?," "Should I live for now or live for later?," etc. (hello, "Sempre Libera").
Although we can all relate to these ideas internally, my desire to find common ground in Violetta's TB, giving her palsy, makes these ideas more direct, more poignant, and easily, more obvious. By giving us this connection, I can see more lucidly into her soul.