French Music at the SF Symphony

Last week's all-French San Francisco Symphony program on Thursday afternoon did not start promisingly. Just as the 51-year-old Swiss conductor Philippe Jordan was waiting for audience silence before the quiet opening of Debussy's 1894 Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune, a cell phone rang. After another pause, somebody emitted an explosive sneeze and the audience started giggling. There were two more cell phone alerts before Jordan finally gave up and embarked on an exquisitely transparent performance of the Prelude.

Rebecca Wishnia at the San Francisco Classical Voice website gave the concert a dismissive review, but I had a different experience and thoroughly enjoyed the afternoon. Part of the reason was that I bought a last-minute rush ticket and was seated in the second row of the orchestra section, smack dab in front of the fabulous French pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet, complete with sparkly jacket.

He was the soloist in the 1896 Piano Concerto No. 5, "Egyptian" by Camille Saint-Saëns, with its evocative slow mvement depicting a journey on the Nile. The concerto has been derided as kitsch over the years, but I loved every minute of it, and Thibaudet gave an awesome performance, modulating his dynamics from delicate to forceful throughout.

For an encore Thibaudet was joined by conductor Jordan for the final movement from Ravel's 1910 Mother Goose Suite, entitled Le jardin féerique: Lent et grave (The Fairy Garden). It could not have been more charming.

After intermission, Jordan led an exciting account of Berlioz's 1830 Symphonie Fantastique. The five-movement work filled with famous tunes is completely eccentric. I heard Michael Tilson Thomas conducting the Symphonie Fantastique a couple of times over the decades, and it was always unsatisfying because he tended to smooth out the strangeness of the work, but that was not the case with Jordan. The concluding two movements, March to the Scaffold and Dream of a Witches' Sabbath were thrilling and weird, just as they should be.

Don Quixote at the SF Ballet

San Francisco Ballet's lavish production of Don Quixote, an 1869 Russian extravaganza that premiered at the Bolshoi, just finished up a successful two-week revival. Nathaniel Remez and Pascal Molat played Don Quixote and Sancho Panza respectively as they bumbled their way through Barcelona, a gypsy camp, a tavern, and a fairy dreamscape. (All production photos are by Lindsay Rallo.)

In truth, the Don and his servant are not the main characters of the narrative, which revolves around a young couple trying to marry while being thwarted by a father wanting a wealthier match for his daughter. The opening night cast featured Sasha de Sola and Francesco Gabriele Frola as Kitri and Basilio, who I did not see, but according to Steven Winn and Rachel Howard, they were fabulous.

Unfortunately, ballet is as strenuous and injury-prone as any professional sport, and the new Italian principal dancer Francesco Gabriele Frola injured himself in the last minutes of the long, three-act ballet, limping off the stage with no word on when or if he would return to action.

On the following Friday, we saw the young Australian dancer Joshua Jack Price in the role of Basilio, and he was pretty fabulous himself. Also worthy of praise is the entire production, particularly the exquisitely colorful costumes by Martin Pakledinaz.

The highlight for me was seeing the Swedish dancer Nikisha Fogo in the major role of Kitri.

Fogo tends to stand out in any performance, with her combination of musicality, speed and angular gestures that are sharper than everyone around her. It was a joy to witness her taking on such an extended, difficult role.

No Kings 3 in San Francisco

The most poignant moment I saw at the No Kings 3 march up Market Street on Saturday afternoon was a lone man holding a sign with a picture of Alex Pretti, the Minneapolis intensive care nurse murdered by federal ICE agents.

Most of the other thousands of Unpaid Protestors were either expressing rage or dark humor or both.

I ran into Jan Adams, my favorite political blogger, and after a hug we shrugged our aged shoulders together in a gesture meaning, "Well, here we are back on Market Street for the umpteenth time."

One of my favorite marchers was the gentleman above who had rigged up a portable sound system playing upbeat music ranging from Aretha Franklin's Respect to Queen and Davie Bowie singing Under Pressure.

There was lots of anger being expressed...

...at having a credibly accused pedophile rapist blowing up the world.

In a nod to conservation, Austin was recycling his homemade sign for the third straight No Kings march.

At the end of the march, many forewent the speeches in Civic Center and went to Hayes Valley for al fresco food and drink, where I spotted the signage, "IF KAMALA HAD WON WE'D BE AT BRUNCH RIGHT NOW".

Clara Bow as IT at The Castro

The San Francisco Silent Film Festival finally returned to its ancestral home at the Castro Theater last Sunday with a showing of the 1927 movie IT.

The huge theater was sold out and the line started forming along the sidewalk two hours before the screening.

There were many objections to Another Planet Entertainment transforming the 1922 Spanish Baroque masterpiece by architect Timothy Pflueger from a seated movie theater to a live pop concert hall, but the multi-year, $41 million makeover has turned out well. The compromise between temporary tiered seating for film showings and a flat dance floor for concerts has become a happy surprise.

Among the many improvements, the old basement bathrooms have now become gender-free and have plenty of stalls so the women's restroom line no longer stretches forever.

The real wonder is the interior restoration, an obvious labor of love, where decades of grime and cigarette smoke were scraped away and the brown ceiling has returned to its original red color with all its baroque illustrations gleaming.

IT was an entertaining bit of fluff comedy where Clara Bow as a shopgirl sets her sights on snagging the handsome young owner of the department store where she works.

Bow plays the personification of the 1920s flapper "IT" Girl who has ineffable sex appeal that can slay anyone, including the handsome Antonio Moreno, a Spaniard who was one of the first Latin lovers of American silent films.

The film was accompanied by a beefed-up Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra, a music ensemble from Colorado that specializes in silent movies.

They will also be accompanying films, along with a roster of other musical artists, at the upcoming San Francisco Silent Film Festival, which will be returning to the Castro from May 6 to 10. There's no place like home.

Mozart and Dvorak at the SF Symphony

After conducting the San Francisco Symphony on Saturday evening in a zippy rendition of Carl Maria von Weber's 1823 Overture to Euryanthe, Andrés Orozco-Estrada grabbed a microphone and gave an antic lecture about the musical program and the excellence of San Francisco's symphony. The 48-year-old Colombia-born, Austria-based conductor was filling time while a grand piano was slowly wheeled onstage from the wings because the basement elevator which usually transports the instrument is currently broken.

The piano was for a performance of Mozart's 1777 Piano Concerto No. 9, his first adult masterpiece in the genre. The soloist was the 30-year-old Canadian Jan Lisiecki, who was signed to a recording contract as a young phenom at age 15 with Deutsche Grammophon.

He seems to have been performing around the world ever since, and if his Facebook page is any indication, his schedule looks something like The Amazing Race. (The photo above is Lisiecki enjoying San Francisco's Ocean Beach during last week's heat wave.)

Lisiecki is a technical wizard, and the first movement of the Mozart concerto was thrilling, but in the gorgeous andante middle movement, he reminded me of Víkingur Ólafsson's eccentric rendition of Mozart and Haydn, making the music sound Romantic and effortful rather than Classical and effortless. Still, there was nothing dry or dreary about the performance, and it was a pleasure to encounter Liesecki for the first time, including his encore featuring a wildly idiosyncratic rendition of Brahms's Waltz in A flat major.

We had prime orchestra seats but a pair of young women arrived at the last minute next to us and one of them promptly started recording the concert on her phone. After gently waving a finger at her to stop, she proceeded to spend the rest of the concert scrolling through her social media. Instead of making a scene or committing murder, we repaired to a top tier balcony for the second half of the program for Dvořák's 1885 Symphony No. 7.

By the composer's usual standards, it's a dark piece and one I had never heard live before. Orozco-Estrada has made a specialty of the work with many of the orchestras he's conducted over the years, recording it with Houston and videotaping it with the Frankfurt Radio Symphony, which you can see on YouTube. The San Francisco Symphony, particularly the heavily featured woodwind section, shone in a wonderful performance.

New Century Chamber Orchestra Luminaries

The New Century Chamber Orchestra presented a very mixed bag of music last Saturday at the Presidio Theatre. The concert was highlighted by two commissions from local composers Jake Heggie and Nathaniel Stookey, seen above talking to Gordon Getty, the oil industry billionaire and composer who has been donating huge amounts of money to Bay Area music organizations for decades.

The opener was a short Overture by Jake Heggie, written for the string orchestra's 30th anniversary in 2022. The music was pleasant, but vanished from my consciousness as soon as it was over. The next piece was the wildly virtuosic 1775 violin concerto by the recently rediscovered Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges. The piece sounded a bit like Mozart meets Paganini, and was thoroughly enjoyable. The cadenza in the third, final movement was so crazed that the audience laughed when Music Director Daniel Hope finished sawing away, allowing the orchestra to rejoin him for the finale.

Daniel Hope's playing was fabulous, and so was the support he received from associate concertmaster Dawn Harms and principal violist Anna Kruger.

Nathaniel Stookey introduced his world premiere piece, Bubble Chamber, with a gracious speech praising Getty. Proclaiming himself a native San Franciscan, Stookey noted that every musical organization with which he's been associated, from childhood to middle age, has been supported on some level by Getty. His introduction to Bubble Chamber noted that champagne bubbles were his initial inspiration along with Richard Strauss's Metamorphosen with its many individuated parts for string orchestra. I was expecting something frothy but instead the ten-minute work was a dense, fascinating, swirling journey that ended in mysterious pizzicatos and transparent textures. I loved it and wished they had played it all over again immediately.

Instead, the final piece was a string orchestra version of Tchaikovsky's 1890 Souvenir de Florence, which was originally written for a sextet of two violins, two violas, and two cellos. I am not a big fan of beefed up arrangements of chamber music because the clear voices tend to turn into mush with more instruments, and this was no exception. Still, it was very well played, and the profusion of pretty tunes made everyone happy.

Handel's Hercules in Berkeley

Artists, have hope! Sometimes it only takes three centuries for your failures to turn into successes. Such is the case with Hercules, Handel's 1744 oratorio that bombed at its London premiere and then was revived to wondrous acclaim in the 20th century. On Sunday afternoon at UC Berkeley's Zellerbach Hall, Cal Performances hosted the beginning of The English Concert's short U.S. tour with the three-hour Hercules, which was a magnificent dramatic and musical success. (All production photos, unless noted, are by Kristen Loken.)

The English Concert is an early instrument chamber orchestra formed in London by Trevor Pinnock in 1972. In 2007 Harry Bicket took over as Music Director, and his interest in Handel's music has led to a recent series of global tours with the composer's Italian operas and English oratorios. Last year's Cal Performances visit featured the opera Giulio Cesare in Egitto, and everyone I know who attended raved about the experience. You can now add me to the bandwagon.

One element of the pleasure was the excellence of the chamber orchestra, anchored by keen conducting from Harry Bicket. He also played the harpsichord continuo during the many dramatic recitatives along with Sergio Bucheli on the theorbo and Jonathan Byers on violincello. (Photo by Michael Strickland.)

Another virtuosic element was The Clarion Choir, a 20-person ensemble out of New York City. They have collaborated with The English Concert before and their performance on Sunday included some of the best choral singing I've ever heard. They even contributed a couple of singers for smaller roles, including Jonathan Woody as The Priest of Jupiter, whose rich bass voice was so strong that he sounded as if he could step in and sing Hercules in a pinch. (Photo by Michael Strickland.)

Also noteworthy was Alexander Chance in the nondescript messenger role of Lichas. Chance has a sweet, non-hooty countertenor voice, perfect diction, and a confident stage bearing that draws attention even when he's standing stock still.

The bass William Guanbo Su, whose career is just taking off at major opera houses around the world, gave an excellent performance as the demi-god strongman who returns from conquest with the beautiful young Pincess Iola. Her presence literally drives Hercules's wife Dejanira into jealous insanity even though in this version of the tale Hercules is innocent of any hanky-panky.

Dejamira is the oratorio's major role, here embodied by the 58-year-old Swedish mezzo-soprano Ann Hallenberg in one of the most thrilling performances I have seen on a concert stage. (Photo by Michael Strickland.)

Hallenberg's English diction was exemplary and her acting so strong that it felt as if we were seeing a great actress attack a classic role like Hedda Gabler or Lady Macbeth. She was simply amazing.

The young soprano Hilary Cronin as Princess Iole was perfectly lovely and held her own when confronted by the jealous Dejamira. As my concert companion said at intermission, "Just let her keep singing one beautiful note after another at me, and I'll be happy." (Photo by Michael Strickland.)

The Harmonic Labyrinth with ABS

The American Bach Soloists presented an unusually rich program entitled The Harmonic Labyrinth on Sunday afternoon at St. Marks Lutheran Church. It started with a short secular cantata from 1747 by J.S. Bach, Non se che sia dolore, written as a goodbye present for a friend. The piece is essentially a flute concerto that turns into a soprano and flute duet. Soprano Maya Kherani was the lovely soloist while Bethanne Walker was mellifulous on her original instrument flute.

Next up was Pietro Locatelli's 1733 Violin Concerto in D Major, a virtuosic work with two fiendishly complex cadenzas. Violinist YuEun Gemma Kim was a joy to watch as she tore through the work under the baton of Music Director Jeffrey Thomas.

The second half of the program was achingly gorgeous, with a pair of vocal works devoted to the Virgin Mary. First up was Domenico Scarlatti's final composition, the 1756 Salve Regina for soprano and strings. Mezzo-soprano Sarah Coit sang the 15-minute work in a creamy, seamless fashion that had everyone in the church pews melting in pleasure.

The major work on the program was still to come, Pergolesi's 1736 Stabat Mater, which was the composer's final work before his early death at age 26. After the work was published, it quickly became a sensation all over Europe, and it's easy to hear why. The music for two sopranos, singing separately and together, is so beautiful that I'm surprised it hasn't been repurposed for commercial purposes everywhere, rather like the Flower Duet from Lakmé that British Airlines was using for years. I have only heard a live performance of this Stabat Mater a couple of times over the decades, and there was always something missing until Sunday's performance, when Maya Kherani and Sarah Coit interweaved their voices with such perfection that the audience floated out in pure happiness. As my late friend Jack Murray once said when handing me an LP of the work as a birthday present, "Don't worry. It's an 'up' Stabat Mater."