Monthly Archives: April 2025

Frankenstein: Run to It!

You may have seen Frankenstein movies; the Frankenstein ballet is better. Nothing against Boris Karloff, the Monster (or Creature); he was so good in the 1931 movie that the story goes on and on. Before I tell readers more, I advise you to get tickets now. Frankenstein’s last day and night is May 4th. Week day tickets are available now at half price.

Go to this link: https://www.sfballet.org/productions/frankenstein-encore/

The most important aspects of this ballet are the wonderful performances. I saw it with Dores Andre as Elizabeth Lavenza, Victor’s fiancee; Max Cauthorn as Victor Frankenstein, the aspiring scientist; Nathaniel Remez as The Creature; Alexis Francisco Valdes as Henry Clerval, Victor’s best friend; Julia Rowe as Justine Moritz, when Victor and Elizabeth were young, Justine was a playful friend, but she had a tragic future. The entire company danced so well it is difficult to describe the feats they achieved. They had intensity as well as technique; theater skills that lifted them out of any staginess; lifts and jumps that were real though they seem unreal.

Jasmine Jimison as Elizabeth & Cavan Conley as The Creature, FRANKENSTEIN ballet by Liam Scarlett performed by SF Ballet, photo Lindsey Rallo

The choreographer of all this, Liam Scarlett, devised a way for a lift to go higher. The ballerina is lifted by the danseur; he catches her up from a jump; she makes a second jump into the air from his arms. I write that it is a second jump, but to jump one normally pushes off from the floor – or from something. Here, the ballerina engages her energy and ascends. Does the partner toss her up again? Maybe. Ballerinas are strong and equally brave as they are strong. That’s it.

The ballet has two amazing pas de deux for the leads. They dance together when they decide they will marry. It was lovely and did not hide their emotions. The elegant turning into each other and sometimes away from each other was continually inventive and beautifully executed.

Another pas de deux happens when Victor has lost The Creature. He is anxious and preoccupied. Elizabeth tries to calm him with some of the steps from their previous pas de deux, but they cannot get back to the Before The Creature feelings.

There are choreographic motivations demonstrated by Scarlett. Throughout the ballet, there are movements that look straight out of modern dance technique. This ballet has a full range of emotions, and basics of modern dance show emotion. If a person pulls her/his abdomen in and lets the contraction move the back into a curve, the onlooker will see pain or sorrow. Changes of direction are dramatic: What should I do? Is there someone to turn to? Scarlett has many ways to move large groups. In the ballet, there are people in a tavern. They are excited and questioning what is going on. That scene has thirteen dancers, including Victor. Scarlett differentiates these dancers: how do they stand, what do they do to look over a table, they break into separate directions or focus at the same spot. The ball to celebrate Victor’s and Elizabeth’s marriage features a large gathering of dancers. The couples dance filling most of the stage: Then, there are more dancers dancing closer and closer to each other in complex designs. In addition to the designs the dancers make, their designs, dancing so closely, and then more quickly; it becomes frightening.

Aaron Robison in Scarlett’s Frankenstein // © Lindsay Thomas

The music composed by Lowell Liebermann fits every turn in the plot and the changes in the characters. Victor goes from tremendous joy at succeeding creating a new life from pieces of other bodies to feelings of guilt and terror. The music underscores the work of Scenic & Costume designer John McFarlane. There are gorgeous sets in the Frankenstein mansion, the frightening fight with the Creator in the garden, and the dreadful execution of innocent Justine.I was especially glad to see appropriate costumes for the story’s era. It is late 18thc., around the time of the American Revolution. Think of Ben Franklin and his experiments with a kite and electricity. The Lighting by David Finn told the story just as much as the dance and music. It will surprise you.

San Francisco Ballet in Scarlett’s Frankenstein // © Lindsay Thomas

As the choreographer passed away, the ballet was staged by Lauren Strongin and Joseph Walsh; Walsh danced the role of Victor during this run.

The story is based on the book written by Mary Shelley, the wife of poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, and daughter of Mary Wollstonecraft, author of The Rights of Women, and William Godwin, philosopher and writer. One night, in 1818, near Geneva, she was with friends during a great storm. Fall out from a volcano eruption half way around the world made the world dark for days. They decided they should each write a scary story. Mary’s was Frankenstein. The science at the time sought more knowledge about electricity. There was philosophical debate and curiosity about what is life.

Cavan Conley as The Creature & Esteban Hernandez as Victor in Frankenstein ballet by Liam Scarlett performed by SF Ballet, photo LIndsey Rallo

In the ballet’s Act I, scene 2, Victor’s mother dies. She was pregnant, fell to the floor, disappeared, but gave birth to Victor’s baby brother. That is a way of creating life. Victor wants to create life from body parts from the dead. He rejoices that the electricity he masters can create life, too. The Creature wants Victor to make another creature to be his partner. He learned to read – not explained much in the ballet –  and learned that Victor wrote in his journal that his experiment had failed. The Creature became angry; he wanted love, but could he love?

The extraordinary, but real, Nathaniel Remez could not have been made. This other way of creating life is compared with Victor’s mother’s death and his brother’s birth. Remez performed majestically. He became the sad/angry Creature without love. His presence on stage was that of The Creature who killed the whole family, but Nathaniel Remez’s human beauty is not from AI.

Photos courtesy of San Francisco Ballet

LOVE FEST FOR MTT

LOVE FEST FOR MTT: April 26, 2025

San Francisco knows how to throw a Love Fest. For Michael Tilson Thomas’s 80th birthday, nothing better than the best of the best could do. MTT, as he is called, is now Music Director Laureate of the San Francisco Symphony, Conductor Laureate of the London Symphony Orchestra, and co-founder and artistic director laureate of the New World Symphony. He has won 12 Grammy Awards and conducted all the major orchestras in Europe and the US. However, San Francisco thinks of MTT as ours. His active participation in the life of the SF Symphony and through that his treating the City as home; that’s why the completely packed Davies Symphony Hall, even in the partial view seats, started teary and smiling and sharing stories before the concert began. San Francisco loves MTT, and we believe he loves us, too.

MTT has been living with a brain tumor. Still, he has come back to conduct first twice a year and then once a year. If you are wondering how he could conduct, his ability to conduct is still there. No question. What is gone is the physicality of his former conducting. There were the jumps, the great reach to the roof, both arms crossing together from left to right and then indicating one section or player with his baton. Oh, there were also the deep knee bends. He danced with force.

The first time MTT conducted the SF Symphony they played Mahler’s 9th. He became the Music Director in 1995. We need to remember that MTT’s Mahler concerts were so well known and admired that MAHLER was written on the side of Muni Buses.

Mayor Daniel Lurie names this day, MTT day, and awards him for the whole city.

MTT conducted two lengthy pieces, one at the beginning of the birthday program and another at the end. The opening was Benjamin Britten’s, Variations and Fugue on a Theme of Purcell, Opus 34 (1946). It is also called The Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra. While it might have educational aspects, it is, as Michael Steinberg wrote, “the work is very much worth playing for its sheer musical pleasure.” The music’s theme comes from Purcell’s revival of Abdelazar, or the Moor’s Revenge, a play by Aphra Behn. The music first identifies one section of instruments – maybe strings or percussion and the others. Then, Britten puts the orchestra back together in a fugue; he has themes for each section. The instruments play them one at a time and then together. It is happy, playful music which is not at all superficial; it brings music that bows and smiles. Wonderful choice.

Benjamin Britten, composer (1913 – 1974)

MTT also conducted Overture from Khantshe in Amerike, by Joseph Rumshinsky (arr. MTT), a composer originally from Lithuania and then lived in New York. He came to the US in 1904 because Boris Thomashefsky, MTT’s grandfather, asked him to come. Rumshinsky aided the Yiddish Theater and created it as a source of fine operettas. MTT produced The Thomashevskys: Music and Memories of a Life in the Yiddish Theater. Its premiere was at Carnegie Hall, 2005. I was thrilled to be in the audience for his presentation of The Thomashevskys on the Davies Symphony Hall stage. It was fun and touching with MTT’s music and music from the early 20thc.

Sasha Cooke, mezzo soprano
The next section of the celebration presented seven songs, five of them by MTT. Of the two that were not his were Claude Debussy’s La flute de Pan from Chansons de Bilitis (1897), sung by Frederica von Stade, mezzo soprano, John Wilson at the piano. Frank Loesser’s Take Back Your Mink, from Guys and Dolls (1950). The singers were stars. Three of them, Ben Jones, tenor; Jessica Vosk; and Sasha Cooke, mezzo soprano, got their career starts with help from MTT. Frederica von Stade and MTT have worked together since 1970. In Take Back Your Mink, the SF Symphony Chorus women added lively singing, dancing, and swinging somethings not mink. MTT’s songs are tender, sometimes ironically funny, personal in ways that most everyone thinks. The titles tell it: “Not Everyone Thinks That I’m Beautiful” (1985); “Drift Off to Sleep” (1982); Answered Prayers, 1974. The songs were a special way to know more of MTT. Unlike some other conductors who write music, Michael Tilson Thomas very rarely put his own work on an SFS program; it was his songs I most wanted to hear.

The after intermission concert started with a beautiful MTT song titled “Grace.” (1988) Sasha Cooke and Frederica von Stade gave the song thoughtfulness and shading of emotions. Very lovely. John Wilson on piano. The SFS Chorus, directed by Jenny Wong, reached into the heart of the music by Leonard Bernstein, the Finale from Chichester Psalms (1965). As Bernstein and MTT were good friends, it was the right selection for this birthday.

Leonard Bernstein in 1973. (Photo by Allan Warren/Creative Commons)

One more terrific, long piece to close the show; it was MTT conducting Roman Festivals (1928), by Ottorino Respighi. The movements are four festivals. Each one has a different energy and a different sound, rhythm, character. I had never heard it before and enjoyed it very much. The different movements included: Games at the Circus Maximus, The Jubilee, The October Festival, and The Epiphany.

Planning a program is an art. Our Maestro made wise choices for what he would conduct. Excellent music that might not be the “usual” thing, two long pieces which had interesting changes of emotion and rhythm, and, most of all, demonstrated that despite his condition, MTT, you’ve still got it.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, MTT!

Photos by Stefan Cohen, courtesy of SF Symphony

 

 

Music of the Americas: South & North

Davies Symphony Hall, San Francisco, April 10, 2025 — This concert was interesting, innovative, excellent. The conductor was Marin Alsop. It was her first appearance conducting the San Francisco Symphony on a subscription program. Her conducting is expressive through arm and hand movements. Her body language is clear and powerful. It was exceptional. The orchestra was with her as she led them in compositions new to many in the audience.

Marin Alsop

The concert opened with Antropolis, by Gabriela Ortiz. It is fantastic. The title is an invented name for the sounds of Mexico City. It is best to quote the composer: “a piece that narrates the sound of the city through its dance halls and nightclubs…I wanted to pay a very personal tribute to some of those antros or emblematic dance halls of Mexico city that left a special sonorous imprint in my memory. These cabarets or dance halls represent the nostalgia for rumberas and live dance orchestras, such as El Bombay, where it is said that Che Guevara would twirl, or the Salon  Colonia, which seems to have come out of dreams taken from a film of the Golden Age of Mexican cinema…”

Gabriela Ortiz, Composer

This music’s rhythms are sensational; the percussion section has so many different kinds of percussion instruments. They include timpani, cymbals, suspended cymbal, cowbell, almglocken, claves, maracas, guiro, metal guiro… Well, there are eleven more, but the list will take over the whole article. Only ten minutes long, I would have gladly heard it again. The composer, among other awards, was the first woman composer “inducted into the Collegio Nacional, 2022. She now holds the “composer’s chair at Carnegie Hall.” The SFS musicians had smiles all over their faces; something challengingly different. Musicians and audience had a great time.

Gabriela Montero, composer/pianist

Piano Concerto No. 1, Latin, by Gabriela Montero; she played the piano in her Concerto. Her compositions often have a political, humanitarian purpose or represent events in Venezuela, her home country. She composed Ex Patria for piano and orchestra in recognition of the 19,336 individuals who were murdered, in 2011. She wrote Canaimo: A Quintet for Piano and Strings, 2024. She received the Vaclav Havel Prize for Creative Dissent from the Human Rights Foundation. The Quintet was premiered at the ceremony. The composer describes her thoughts: “European formalism and the informality of Latin America’s rich, rhythmical identity merge in a complementary dance of both the joyful and macabre. Writing my concerto, I set out to describe the complex and often contradictory character of Latin America, from the rhymically exuberant to the forebodingly demonic… ”  The Concerto has three movements; Mambo, Andante moderato, Allegro venezolano. There is a strong shift from the exciting dance music of happy people to the danger of the evil forces which, in the real world, are dedicated to destroy that delightful dance and, as the composer wrote, holds “our continent hostage to tyranny in its multiple guises.” This very special Concerto puts reality into music that is as exquisite as it is frightening. The audience’s enthusiastic applause led the composer/pianist to improvise an encore which might have been imagined by Haydn.

Aaron Copland, composer (1900-1990)

Percussion was a theme of the evening. Aaron Copland wrote Fanfare for the Common Man for a project from the Cincinnati Symphony. Eighteen composers were invited to create a fanfare for percussion and brass. The fanfares would open the Cincinnati Symphony’s programs, in 1942-1943. American citizens were fighting in World War II. The Symphony’s conductor, Eugene Goossens’ intention was to create patriotic feelings. Copland said he had thought of different themes for his fanfare, but he chose the “common man, after all, who was doing all the dirty work in the war and the army….He deserved a fanfare.” The piece was played with care. It was not rushed; the brass announces pride and determination. It is only three minutes, but it delivers its salute majestically.

Joan Tower, composer

Joan Tower’s three minute Fanfare for the Uncommon Woman No. 1 was a perfect parallel. It was also written for brass and percussion, but her list of percussion was longer.  It includes snare drum, medium bass drum, cymbals, high and medium gong, tam-tam, tom-toms, large bass drum, temple blocks and triangle. Copland had bass drum and tam -tam.  Tower’s Fanfare premiered in 1987, with the Houston Symphony. Her idea caught on; there are now six Fanfares for the Uncommon Woman. No. 1 was dedicated to Marin Alsop. Tower kept on with the Fanfares, and dedicated each one to an adventurous woman who take risks. Four of the six are scored for three trumpets, four horns, three trombones, tuba, and percussion. That is the instrumentation of Copland’s Fanfare. The second one (1989) added one percussion. The third one, debuted 1991, has a double brass quintet. The fourth and sixth are scored for a full orchestra; the fifth was commissioned by the Aspen Music Festival, 1993.I listened to find the differences between them. It seems to me that the percussion instruments added decoration. The light, sort of circular sounds, were more delicate and used the diverse percussion instruments to give Tower’s more of a universal sound. They added sounds that might have come from South America, possibly Asia. Actually Copland’s and Tower’s make a good pair.

Samuel Barber, composer

The program closed with Symphony No. 1, Opus 9, by Samuel Barber. He wrote it in 1935-36, but revised it, in 1943. The SFS played it beautifully and kept the emotional aspects on the surface. Barber did not hide from the dark and occasional light moods of his four movement Symphony. The movements are not separated with pauses. Instead, like a view seen over hills and fields, the view encompasses the variations into a whole, going into darkness and climbing up to sunlight. There are pieces by Barber that bring me down. Then, I need to listen to a different selection. The strength that Marin Alsop and the SFS brought to Barber’s Symphony No. 1 was a success that can open one’s heart.

 

 

 

 

SF Symphony: Brahms & Shostakovich

Davies Symphony Hall, San Francisco, March 30 — This was a great program. Brahms’ Violin Concerto in D Major, Opus 77 and Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 10 in E minor, Opus 93.

If you ever learn that Gil Shaham, violinist, is playing near you, someplace on this same planet, go to hear and see him. He was the guest soloist playing Brahms’ Violin Concerto in D major. He is a blissful musician and shares the bliss with his audience. As he played, he related to the conductor, Juraj Valcuha, and also turned toward the Concertmaster, Alexander (Sasha) Barantschik. It seemed that he wanted their experiences in the music to fit with each other so that they enjoyed making music together.

Gil Shaham, violinist,  He performs regularly with the Berlin Philharmonic, Boston Symphony, Chicago Symphony, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Orchestre de Paris, Israel Philharmonic. He has multi-year residencies with Montreal Symphony, Stuttgart Philharmonic, Singapore Symphony.

The Concerto is something different in Brahms’ repertoire and new to the late19th century audience for serious music. “Normally,” in concerti of the era, the orchestra was a frame for the music made by the soloist. The soloist dominated the two-some. In this concerto, they are equals. It also offers new, off-center rhythms that made the listeners at the 1879 premiere decide it was a strange Brahms, as though he had heard wisps of this music from E.T. The first movement has a lovely, lyrical method to carry through changes from major to minor and the presence of Hungarian folk tunes folded into this Allegro non troppo. I remember it, even when there are surprising switches, as a deep and moving quiet, moving like a river, not entirely moving like an emotion. This is where an Adagio oboe melody drifts through gentle but never weak, winds. The violin brings more musical strife and then it all becomes calm, but never still. The finale, Allegro giocoso ma non troppo (happy but not too happy) is obviously demanding over-the-top technical brilliance. Shaham was in clover. It was not a bit challenging to him as the full audience were thrilled.

Johannes Brahms, composer (1833-1897)  This is the first Violin Concerto he wrote. He was pounced on by writers and music lovers. What had he done? He had made a great piece with new sounds and rhythms which were not welcomed. The reception rattled him so much that he destroyed his second violin concerto and never wrote another. Occasionally, I hear the finale movement of the Violin Concerto in D major on the radio, but not the whole concerto. It is a rare jewel. Shaham, Valcuha, and the SF Symphony gave it the performance it deserves.

Dmitri Shostakovich, composer (1906-1975)

On one of my first visits to the San Francisco Symphony, I learned that they would not play anything by Shostakovich. It shocked me. The idea was that Shostakovich was a loyal Russian Communist, and therefore an enemy. Later, Leonard Slatkin was a guest conductor. He spoke to the audience and encouraged them to understand Shostakovich’s hunted life, and appreciate the greatness of his music. It surprises me now to note that some music writers still assume that Shostakovich was all about Communism and writing music that supported the current ideals. Some even treat the two times he had lost approval by Stalin’s regime was, “after all, only twice.” This is a great composer. He could not have his work performed. He could not work. He wrote for movies, and tried to be rehabilitated. He had to know that other artists had been sent to Siberia, which was a place to die, or, they were shot. When he was allowed to go to the US as an artist on display but with grim chaperones, he was reported to look like a prisoner speaking what he had to say. He was denounced by the authorities, lost his teaching positions, did not write between his Symphony No. 9, 1945, until the Symphony No. 10, 1953. What happened? Stalin died. So, the question about his Symphony No.10 in E minor, Opus 93 is whether the Symphony was specifically about Stalin. For myself, I think it is about Stalin, but not as a portrait of that dictator. The atmosphere, what there was to breathe, what to think, how not to think was all Stalin and his cohorts all the time. Shostakovich and other artists who lived in Stalin’s world had lives which were continually repressed by the entire regime. Shostakovich was there; his family and private life were constantly in danger.

Shostakovich at the piano

The Symphony opens with the cellos and basses. Moderato, it has a sound lying under the music; that sound says, “Be careful. You may be watched.” The strings carry the movement forward to language from solo instruments: a clarinet solo, a horn fills the music, more clarinet, and a flute accompanying plucking strings. The whole orchestra builds its very loud cries, and the music becomes even louder. Briefly, it sounds like an army. The movement ends with piccolo and timpani. The listener, becoming anxious, catches her breath, but still the eyes open wide in the quiet but ghostly end. The second movement is an Allegro, like a super fast scherzo. It is rushing to the edge of the moon. Is someone running away? Is a whole nation running after…what? It pushes the heart of the music. There is no moment to think; the strings play very, very quietly. The scherzo abruptly cuts itself off. The third movement has three styles: Allegretto – Lento – Allegretto. It is not so fast as the Allegro, but runs briskly. Then, there are slower moments and a return to the brisk movement. There is a teasing, lively mood that has that under lying, troubling, secret sound. The piccolo, flute, timpani, and triangle present a sardonic tone as the music marches on. The Symphony ends with Andante – Allegro beginning similarly to the first movement’s cellos and basses. A lovely oboe almost calms the music as once again the flute flies solo. Now, the wildness of the second movement becomes an energetic, klezmer. It is at last a joyful sound for all of us.