Daniel Hope a British violin virtuoso, was the guest conductor and soloist of the New Century Chamber Orchestra last week in a sensationally good concert called Hope for Menuhin. Hope's parents were anti-apartheid exiles from South Africa in the 1970s who moved to London, where father Christopher wrote novels and mother Eleanor became secretary and then manager to legendary violinist Yehudi Menuhin. "Through someone who knew someone who knew someone, my mother had the choice of being secretary to the Archbishop of Canterbury or Menuhin, and thankfully she chose the latter," he told the audience at one point during the concert, explaining how Yehudi had become his mentor.
The concert was filled with music associated with Menuhin, from the Baroque era to contemporary times, starting with J.S. Bach's Concerto in D Minor for 2 Violins, which Hope played with concertmaster Dawn Harms above. Their interplay with each other and the larger ensemble was delightful, featuring some of the best playing I have ever heard from New Century.
Saturday evening was my first time back for a concert in Herbst Theatre since its retrofitting rehab. Tthe acoustics were noticeably improved by the wooden box seats on the side which replaced those weird 1970s box seats which did terrible things to the sound. Having the string players standing rather than sitting also seemed to do wonders for the acoustics and the energy level. Above is Daniel Hope and Iris Stone who played Echorus for 2 Violins and Strings by Philip Glass, one of his more expressive, beautiful works, which followed a short piece called Darf ich... by Arvo Part.
The first half of the program ended with a violin concerto by Mendelssohn which he wrote at the age of 12. The score was lost and rediscovered 100 years later, and then acquired in 1951 by Menuhin who toured with it around the world. It's a wild, virtuosic piece that Hope played brilliantly.
The second half of the program started with the Concerto in A minor for 2 violins by Vivaldi, and this time it was Candace Guirao who shared soloist honors with Hope. They were sensational, and again, so was the whole ensemble. A pair of elegaic pieces followed, by Bechara El-Khouri (Unfinished Journey in memoriam Yehudi Menuin) and Toru Takemitsu (Nostalghia for Violin and Strings). The finale was a short, fun ride with Bela Bartok's Six Romanian Folk Dances.
The New Century Chamber Orchestra is looking for a new leader after announcing that Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg is leaving her music director post after the upcoming season. Daniel Hope is probably too busy to be interested in a job halfway around the world from his base in Vienna. Plus, he is taking over the Zurich Chamber Orchestra this year from Roger Norrington. Still, it was obvious that Hope worked beautifully with the New Century musicians, and it would be nice to see him return.
The Kronos Quartet, consisting of (left to right) David Harrington and John Sherba on violin, Hank Dutt on viola, and Sunny Yang on cello, have been hosting a four-day festival at the SFJAZZ Center this week, involving lots of new music and guest performers from around the world. First up on Friday evening's program was Nicole Lizee's The Golden Age of the Radiophonic Workshop [Fibre-Optic Flowers], a gloss on the 1960s BBC Radiophonic Workshop for electronic music. This required the musicians to not only play their string instruments but also reel-to-reel tape players, hand-held proto-arcade games, and a typewriter. Lizee was featured in a SoundBox concert last year with her psychedelic Kool-Aid Acid Test #17: Blotterberry Bursst, and this piece was equally fun and inventive.
Next up was Bubbles, a choral piece by the Serbian emigre Aleksandra Vrebalov. Dedicated to Black Mountain College, it used texts from John Cage and Robert Creeley who were professors there, sung beautifully by the San Francisco Girls Chorus with the incomparable Andy Meyerson above adding to the mix on vibraphone.
The following piece featuring the SF Girls Chorus was Sound, Only Sound Remains, with a recorded soundtrack of what appeared to be an Armenian folk song surrounded by the live young female voices. It was exquisite.
The composer was Iranian emigre Sahba Aminikia, who is much better looking in person than in the crappy photo above. In the program notes, he explains: "Since the 1979 Islamic revolution in Iran, women have not been allowed to sing publicly, according to the Islamic code...Sound, Only Sound Remains was produced following my announcement on Facebook inviting Iranian female singers to collaborate with me...Numerous sound clips, mostly recorded on handheld devices, were sent...and these breathtaking and sensational audio clips from across the oceans formed the opening and ending of the piece." In the middle was a song by 1930s Armenian-Iranian singer Loreta Hairapetian, sung by Ooldouz Pouri and Mina Momeni in Iran.
The final piece on the first half of the generous program was All Those Strings! by Swedish composer Karin Rehnqvist above, commissioned by Kronos so they could collaborate with Ritva Koistinen below, who plays the kantele, a Finnish version of the zither which has an otherworldly, celestial sound.
The three-movement piece was spare and granular, what I tend to think of as insect music, which seems to be in fashion right now. At first it felt deadly dull, and the many kids in the audience who had been brought to see their sisters perform earlier in the evening, were squirming all over their seats. By the final movement, my brain had somehow recalibrated, and the piece became fascinating, rewarding a deep listen.
After intermission, there was a world premiere of a piece that also involved prerecorded folk songs with a live string quartet. Written by the 25-year-old Albert Behar above, Lost Wax is a five-movement work playing with the intersection between Bartok's string quartets and the hundreds of folk song recordings Bartok made in Hungarian villages at the start of the 20th century. It was a lively, tuneful and substantial work which I'd like to hear again.
The final piece was a suite arranged from four songs by Bollywood composer Rahul Dev Burman, complete with a recorded tabla click track among other instruments, that allowed each of the Kronos members a solo turn. Pictured above is the most recent Kronos cellist, Sunny Yang. The other three members of the Kronos are the original musicians who formed the worldwide touring group in the 1970s.
I have only seen them three times over the years because I am not a big fan of amplified classical music, but it is easy to see why they are so popular, with their adventurousness and musical cross-over expertise. The SFJAZZ Center is a perfect venue for them. The acoustics are way too dry for unamplified, acoustic music to resonate, but the sound system is incredible and it was well used all evening long.
Super Bowl 50 is being played in Santa Clara this year while San Francisco pretends it is being played here.
With no public input of any sort, the Ed Lee administration and various Bay Area leaders managed to win the bid to host America's Annual Big Game and San Francisco proceeded to give away the public treasury while they were at it.
The San Francisco expenditures mostly centered on Super Bowl City, a huge, outdoor pedestrian mall at the end of Market Street which wraps around the Embarcadero Center.
To create this free fan fantasia, streets downtown have been blocked for the last 10 days and will continue to be blocked until sometime later next week.
I had heard the San Francisco Police Department and Homeland Security were a heavy-handed presence around the event, but still wasn't quite prepared for the overwhelming militaristic bromance between the two groups.
Besides big trucks with big men bringing out big dogs to sniff for bombs...
...there was one scary tableaux after another which would not have looked out of place in a Central American country owned by the United Fruit Company 50 years ago.
The silliest part of all this police overtime was that the crowd was mellow, and the intrusive, airport-style security entrances ensured there were no weapons on any bad actors.
What is most strange about the event is that there is essentially nothing to do...
...except take selfies.
On Friday afternoon, there was nobody performing on the City Stage, so people wandered around aimlessly among the corporate booths...
...drinking $8 cups of Bud Light, the official brew of Super Bowl 50, which was responsible for one of the ugliest sculptures ever created.
Jeff Koons and Damien Hirst better look to their laurels.
The Left Coast Chamber Ensemble gave a concert at the SF Conservatory of Music on Monday called "Oboe Bliss," a takeoff on the major piece on the program which was the 1927 Quintet for Oboe and String Quartet by British composer Arthur Bliss. (Photo above is from left to right violinist Anna Presler, violinist Ilana Thomas, oboist Tom Nugent, violist Phyllis Kamrin, and cellist Leighton Fong).
The concert started well, with Sacred Forest, a short world premiere written by Elinor Armer above who was working out themes for an upcoming opera she is hoping to write based on Ursula K. Le Guin's novel Lavinia "if only I can get a libretto to come through," she noted. The piece was written for the same forces as the Bliss Oboe Quintet, and it did sound like a Sacred Forest, gentle and slightly spooky.
Then there was a three-minute string trio by Berkeley composer Anthony Porter called five, six, seven... that involved a lot of plucked strings, and came and went before it had a chance to make an impression. The music wasn't helped along by the slow motion stage manager above from the Conservatory who took eons to rearrange chairs and music stands between pieces.
This was followed by Kurt Rohde's transcription of cinco of the Siete canciones populares Espanolas by De Falla for flautist Stacey Pelinka, violinist Anna Presler, oboist Tom Nugent, and cellist Leighton Fong. In the program notes, Rohde writes that "the Siete canciones is one of those pieces that can sort of survive anything," but this particular transcription seemed to work against the gypsy inflected melodies rather than with them, with the exception of Leighton Fong who somehow channeled a flamenco guitar at times.
Another short Elinor Armer composition, a viola solo played by Phyllis Kamrin, was another Le Guin influenced piece called Taking the Waters on Oling Island.
Finally, the Bliss Oboe Quintet arrived, and both the music and its performance were wonderful, particularly by oboist Tom Nugent above. Bliss (1891-1975) is another one of those composers who should be better known outside of his own country and it was a treat to hear a major piece live. I just wish the Ensemble had programmed something else by him, like the 1932 Quintet for Clarinet and String Quartet rather than the scattershot fare preceding.
