November 21, 2015 – Davies Symphony Hall, San Francisco – San Francisco Symphony members performed beautifully in an extraordinary, musical adventure. Alexi Kenney played violin and served as leader for the group. This was a Baroque presentation: all the musicians stood while playing; that is all except the harpsichordist. The music was equally very old, ca. 1664 and early 18th century; and very new. The Baroque sound is different than Classical and Romantic. We have lost touch from the 18thc. Early 18thc. humans walking around with music in their heads had delightful music to hear. Mr. Kenney played brilliantly. His great energy and devotion to the music spread to the other musicians as well as the audience.

Olli Mustonen, composer ( born 1967)

The opening piece was the only one composed in 2000. Nonetto II for Strings, by Finnish composer Olli Mustonen, has traces of Baroque music while it is still modern. It is a wonderful, appealing piece which can draw the listener’s warm attention. It was fifteen minutes long, and I would have happily let it go on. I referred to the program to be sure it has no Baroque ancestry. It is all modern with the Baroque musicians sending an occasional telegram for their part in Mustonen’s innovations.

Barbara Strozzi, composer, singer (1619 – 1677)

A very brief piece, “Che si puo fare,” Opus 8, no. 6., by Barbara Strozzi, about 5 minutes, was arranged by Alexi Kenney. Barbara Strozzi was a popular composer and singer. Anything about her that is known for sure is unusual in mid-17thc. An Italian woman in Venice, publishing her own compositions, and published eight volumes of vocal music. These songs were secular, not for the church. According to the program note, “she may have been the most published composer within her genre in Venice.” She died young, 58; it took 300 years before she was rediscovered. Its brevity made it difficult to get into it, but it has the same Baroque, tangy sound that seems so new to jaded twenty-first century listeners. A paraphrase of Ms Strozzi song:

“What can I do? The stars have no pity. If the gods won’t grant me peace, what can I do?/ What can I say? The heavens keep sending me disaster…What can I say?”  If Ms Strozzi had read Sappho, they could sing a duet.

Johann Sebastian Bach, composer (1685 -1750)

Bach wanted to move in order to get a better job. He wrote the Brandenburg concertos to tempt Margrave Christian Ludwig of Brandenburg-Schwedt to bring Bach to his employment. It did not work. Instead, Bach moved to Leipzig in 1723. Bach’s concertos disappeared until 1849. The Brandenburg Concerto No. 5 in D major, BWV 1050 was a new kind of concerto. This one has violin, flute, and harpsichord soloists. It was a careful mix of the old style of concerto grosso and the new concerto with more solos. This was a great, tuneful, rhythmic Bach. The musicians were all excellent. I wished the harpsichord could be heard better while playing with the strings. Not the harpsichordist fault; when he played solo one could hear very well. Possibly, the instrument would be better heard in a smaller venue. When I was a kid, friends wanted to play pop music in their piano classes, I wanted more Bach. Still do.

Antonio Vivaldi, composer, violinist (1678 – 1741)

The Four Seasons, Opus 8, nos. 1-4, by Antonio Vivaldi, has become favorite “classical” music. Vivaldi worked at the Ospedale della Pieta in addition to being the “master of music in Italy.” The Ospedale della Pieta was a home and music school for female orphans and illegitimate daughters of wealthy nobles. It interests me that some of the music was written by Vivaldi years before he wrote The Four Seasons. Then, he composed new additions some of which were more complex. One of his major, new approaches was to write poetry and music all together in pictures of the seasons. Spring paints a picture of buds opening, singing birds returning, sudden storms come and then bring quiet. In the middle of the 20thc., The Four Seasons began to be popular again. Perhaps now, its loveliness can come back in our not so lovely era.

November 16 – Gunn Theater, Palace of the Legion of Honor

The trio of Brarantschik, violin; Wyrick, cello; Nel, piano presented a breathtaking concert of Beethoven trios. The musicians selected three magnificent trios. These artists master the intertwining collaborations of each instrument. It leaves the audience to wonder how they do it and how lucky they, the audience, are to be there.

Alexander Barantschik, violin, San Francisco Symphony’s Concertmaster. Previously he was concertmaster of the Bamberg Symphony Orchestra, London Symphony Orchestra, and Netherlands Radio Philharmonic. He performs as soloist and chamber musician. As concertmaster of the London Symphony, he toured Europe, Japan, and the US.

The program began with Beethoven’s Piano Trio in E-flat major, Opus 1, no.1,1795. The title including “Opus 1, no.1” shows that he felt he was at the true beginning of his career. He had created other compositions and presented them in private performances, but this Trio was to be published and performed with different expectations. It is a mature piece. He plays with his ideas and technical construction of the interaction of the the three instruments. The Allegro sounded light and active as he allows dashing music while he adds brief ornaments. In the Adagio, we hear singing in the piano’s solo. Violin and cello carefully join in a quieter, even solemn mood, but that does not last. The Scherzo: Allegro assai has suggestions. The music plays hide and seek as it changes, stops, returns. The Finale: Presto lets us hear the intensity of Beethoven’s desires as the piano has a quizzical position that receives the answers from violin and cello. He takes note of the first movement, and all three combine in a Beethoven upright and quick end.

Anton Nel, piano, is a recitalist, concerto soloist, chamber musician, and teacher. He has appeared internationally at Wigmore Hall, the Concertgebouw, Suntory Hall, and major venues in China, Korea, and South Africa. He has the Lozano Long Endowed Chair at the University of Texas, Austin, and teaches at the Aspen and Ravinia Festivals.

Variations in G major on “Ich bin der Schneider Kakadu,” Opus 121a, 1794-1804=3? (rev. 1816). This piece has many variations, moods, and possibly a humorous point of view under the serious technique. The inspiration came to Beethoven through the song “Ich bin der Schneider Kakadu.” That means “I am the Tailor Kakadu.” The composer was Wenzil Muller, a composer of light songs for his singspiel. It could be an ancestor of musical comedy. The dates above show that there are many questions about when Beethoven wrote this work of ten variations. It could have popped into his mind very soon after he first heard it or maybe he remembered it years later, but it is the variations that make this piece. With thanks to James M. Keller, program annotator, “contrapuntal possibilities (as in the canons of Variations V and VII) deconstructing the theme (Variation VI), subjecting it to syncopation(Variation X).” There are more. Beethoven came upon more ideas  which were put in the Allegretto coda as he tried to sell it in 1816.

Peter Wyrick, cello, was a member of the San Francisco Symphony 1986-’89. He returned to SFS as Associate Principal Cello, 1999-2013, retiring in 2024. Previously, he was Principal cello of the Mostly Mozart Orchestra and associate Principal cello of the New York City Opera. He been soloist with SFS in C.P.E. Bach’s Cello Concerto in A, Bernstein’s Meditation No.1 from Mass, music of Tan Dun’s Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.

Piano Trio in B-flat major, Opus 97, Archduke marks a painful change in Beethoven’s work. This piece, composed in 1811, was the last time he would perform. His hearing had gone too far. The piece was not performed until 1814. It was too late. The Archduke in the title was Archduke Rudolf who was younger brother of Emperor Francis I. Beethoven taught piano to the Archduke; they were as close as they could be, given Beethoven’s non-royal background.  This Piano Trio has presence just as a royal Trio should be. The cello leads the melodic first movement, Allegro moderato. The strings have a wonderful, pizzicato Scherzo time, delightful, almost strange, but completely together. The Andante cantabile, slow and touching, adds four variations. This movement has warmth that reaches out to keep the spirit around us. The music takes us back to Allegro moderato, though it calls all to a sharp, fast, rondo finale.

Benjamin Pesetsky quoted Louis Spohr, violinist and composer, who remembered how Beethoven “pounded on the keys until the strings jangled, and in piano he played so softly that whole groups of tones were omitted…I felt moved with the deepest sorrow at so hard a fate.”

Davies Symphony Hall, San Francisco, June 8, 2025   Sibelius and Salonen made a great combination. Esa-Pekka Salonen conducted Jean Sibelius’ Symphony No. 7 in C Major, Opus 105. It was Sibelius’ last symphony; he lived until 1957, but no longer composed symphonies. He had said what he wanted to say. Except one more great tone poem, Tapiola, he stopped. He had done it. The 7th Symphony is a strange and powerful voice. After listening to it, what came to my mind was love. Love in the broadest, most extensive, personal and universal reality added up to that. It was a unified love of which we are a part.

Jean Sibelius, composer (1865 – 1957) born and lived in Finland

Some time ago, Michael Steinberg, the glorious author of program notes, told me that Sibelius’ No. 7 was the great symphony of the 20th century, even though it was composed in 1924, very early for a century of music. This performance was my first time hearing it. When the music ended and the applause for the orchestra, the conductor, and especially the composer, I wanted them to play it all again. It is not an overwhelming, knock you out symphony. It opens with a quiet drum. Its music seems down to earth at the same time it is mysterious. Perhaps the mystery wraps around the down-to-earth part. Sibelius made plans for his final three symphonies beginning in spring of 1918. These symphonies form and continual thought through each one and all. That means that the 5th Symphony began this thought and breath that relates all three. In 1918, he wrote: “The Seventh Symphony. Joy of life, and vitalite with appassionata passages. In three movements-the last a ‘Hellenic Rondo.'” Quoting M. Steinberg, “intensely, frighteningly appassionata  music, though not in any sense wild….a musical gesture that should leave a witness bereft of speech and to which one responds with concert-hall applause only in order not to explode.”  At the end of the performance of the 7th, that was truly how I felt. Ka-boom!

Although he had planned on 3 movements, this symphony was one movement with different tempi changing without the listener noticing the change until after it happens. The time of the symphony constructs and moves on; Sibelius writes through and about Time. It surrounds us and it is us. That mystery we heard at the beginning became an all covering, all happening effect of our world. The beauty of this symphony is frightening and it is us. The love is bigger than one notices from moment to moment, here, down-to-earth, in sight and sound and time. Yes, please play it again.

Richard Strauss, composer (1864 – 1949) Germany/West Germany

New ways to compose came from early 19th century by Schubert, Liszt, and into the 20th with Richard Strauss. Strauss’ symphonic poems were in that tradition. He may have been inspired by Sibelius’ works. The concert opened with Strauss’ Don Juan, Opus 20; it was composed in 1888-1889. The music is not at all shy about hearing the adventures and disasters of Don Juan in the symphonic poem. Then, continuing the symphonic poem tradition, the program ended with Strauss’ Till Eulenspiegel’s Merry Pranks, Opus 28. I have a memory of this music from 5th grade. The “music lady” came to Maryland Elementary School and played Till Eulenspiegel and later The Moldau, by Bedrich Smetana. She told the class the story of Till the naughty things he did and then the end when he is hanged. It is hard to like this story though the music is very vivid. She wanted us to see the story in the music; I did not want to see that. However, I have always loved The Moldau.

The orchestra played with power and grace. It was their Music Director’s second to last concert. He will lead the SF Symphony and the SF Symphony Chorus, Thursday through Saturday, this week playing Mahler Symphony No. 2. I felt fresh energy from the musicians, and I felt that Maestro Salonen was more relaxed in his directing but also in his own physical movements. The music was simultaneously in his own body as he conducted his orchestra. It is hard to say “good bye” to the Music Director. He made his mark in such a short time, 5 years, and much of that time was taken up with the pandemic. His performances have been memorable, and these recent programs, The Firebird and Sibelius’ Symphony No. 7 will stay in my mind played his way.

Third Coast Percussion plays Stanford’s Bing Concert Hall, May 7, 2025

Witnessing the Third Coast Percussion’s performance was a delight. The four musician-magicians, Sean Connors, Robert Dillon, Peter Martin, David Skidmore, play at a very high level. They demonstrate the serious art that they enjoy in collaboration with other artists. The Bing Concert audience was thrilled with creations by four composers and guest violin artist, Jessie Montgomery, who was also one of the composers.

The program opened with Please Be Still, by Jlin (2024). Third Coast Percussion commissioned the work to celebrate their 20^th anniversary. It was a good way to get a listener’s head into the world of rhythm. The musicians each, mostly, addressed different percussion instruments. They would walk around the collection of Things that make sounds out of soft bumps or sliding strokes and choose the marimba, look at it, and after a few nods or gestures in air by drum sticks (with large, soft looking heads) enter the particular rhythms’ realm. Composer Jlin reveals her inspiration for Please Be Still:

“When they asked me to compose a piece that was Bach-based I, of course, jumped right to it. The Bach piece I chose to derive from is “Kyrie Eleison,” the movement from Bach’s “Mass in B Minor.” That piece has so many rhythmic sections with endless possibilities. I’ve been a lover of Bach’s music since I was a kid, and always found his work complicated. The percussionist in me hears Bach’s keystrokes as if they were individual acoustic drums. I’m always trying to play against the rhythm, and this piece was not different.”

Musicians of TCP with Jessie Montgomery; the Third Coast is Chicago, of course.

Jessie Montgomery’s work, Lady Justice/Black Justice/The Song (2024) was powerful.The work does not hide what it expresses. A statue of “Lady Justice,” by Ori G. Carino inspired the composer; the Lady is a fount of Justice in a world of injustice, specifically toward Black people. The statue and a painting had been in a room with light cast through its layering of silk. As the composer wrote: “the silk layering, revealing her timelessness and multiple hues. The image is staggering, aspirational, and technically virtuosic.” Montgomery found deep feelings which met visual representations and turned that reality into music. It is a successful work of artistic alchemy. She salutes “Ori’s natural sense of beauty and grit,” which led her into ideas that spun textures, light, and “emotional qualities” into this major work. Collaboration can happen when the collaborator is not available for meetings. “The main melody that appears throughout (which harkens to a Brahms-inspired theme that I wrote years ago, inspired by a line in Langston Hughes’ epic poem, “Ask Your Mama: 12 Moods for Jazz.”)

I was pleased to experience this new music. When I began to dance and choreograph full time, rhythm was taboo. Anything Brahms was simply dead. I had read Langston Hughes in 8^th grade and loved every line. A lot of people who could read, did not read or know about Hughes. I went ahead with rhythms because how else could I dance?

Tigran Hamasyan’s Sonata for Percussion (2024) is in sonata form of three movements. It could be fast, slow, fast, but those fast times are not identical. TCP found the piece required techniques not in their vocabulary. Hamasyan’s band plays exciting and challenging rhythms. It took TCP on a wild hike in hills, turning while moving forward. “The outer movements both explore different subdivisions of 23-beat rhythmic cycles, while the middle movement is in a (relatively) tame seven.” The movements have meaningful titles although there is no story: Memories from Childhood, Hymn, 23 for TCP.

Jessie Montgomery’s Suite from In Color has history. When working with TCP for her first foray in a percussion ensemble, she brought “excerpts from a number of existing works.” In Color was one of them. She used this exploration to develop musical sounds. The work she did make was different than what the original explorations would have made. Sean Connors, of the TCP, asked to arrange what they had been doing and made it a percussion quartet. It has a unique approach for the items making the sounds into “Red, The Poet, Purple” movements.

The program ended with Lou Harrison’s Concerto for Violin and Percussion Orchestra (1940/1959). The program says “Lou Harrison holds a particularly special place in the heart of percussionists.” Harrison and John Cage were among the earliest composers of classical style to write for percussion ensembles. Harrison also holds a special place in the SF Bay Area music world. He was a warm and welcoming human. While Cage avoided harmony or melody, Lou made Things and instruments sing when he tapped, knocked, or even slapped them. He made non-pitched items musical and helped Things get along with other instruments. In this performance the audience was able to see a full range of percussion music. Physical movement of the percussionists added theater to the program. Flower pots and other objects joined the orchestra. Harrison’s movement for the solo violin allowed us to hear the full range of Montgomery as violinist as well as composer. The audience jumped to applaud TCP and Montgomery.

Photo courtesy of Stanford Live. Quotations from composers courtesy of Stanford Live program book.

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.

November 16th at Davies Symphony Hall we heard majestic music performed by the San Francisco Symphony; the totally amazing pianist, Helene Grimaud; the SF Symphony Chorus with soloists Liv Redpath, soprano, and Michael Sumuel, bass-baritone.

Liv Redpath, Soprano soloist

Entwine    Dai Fujikura was asked to create a five minute piece for orchestra.  The theme was the current world situation: the Covid pandemic. While considering what the pandemic did to ordinary lives: isolation, fear of getting it from someone, avoiding crowds – what struck him first was “touch.” Do not touch was pressed forward from childhood to adult minds. Fujikura, one of the foremost contemporary Japanese composers, presented a fascinating piece. One of its characteristics is the music being passed along from instrument to instrument. Powerful, repetitive sounds from the strings are also highlighted by light harmonics sometimes flickering in and out beyond our constant hearing. The human touch was what we needed and could not have. Fujikura gave us an original approach to sound.

Maurice Ravel, composer (1875 – 1937)

Piano Concerto in G Major   Ravel was into jazz. He managed to stretch sounds and rhythms into completely new and always exciting music. If you have not heard this Concerto, look for it and be there. It is inventive and alluring and will wake up your head, even if you did not know that you were sleeping. Ravel toured in the USA in 1928. He heard American jazz, met Gershwin – he asked to study with Ravel but Ravel said no – and came home to France. He worked on this Concerto from 1929-1931. He was writing Concerto in D Major for left hand at the same time. The extraordinary Helene Grimaud played the Concerto like it had been written for her.

Helene Grimaud

She managed the ins and outs of the music which skids along from crazy wild music speeding away with it to the second movement, Adagio essai, which becomes slow and quiet. Grimaud was fantastic in the Adagio. The notes seemed to be separated farther than normal but they never went away. The left hand has a waltz to play continually. Then the orchestra re-enters,  and high spirits and exuberance take over. There are unusual breaks and emphasis on unexpected notes. It is a very special Concerto composed by a unique composer and played by a very special pianist. Let the music jump! Glory time.

Gabriel Fauré, composer (1845-1924)

Requiem, Opus 48     Gabriel Fauré was the choirmaster at La Madeleine Church in Paris beginning in 1877 and then became organiste  titulaire serving in that esteemed position for nine years. His Requiem, the Mass for the Dead, was performed first at La Madeleine. Despite his excellent and long service, he did not like the music which was allowed for churches. He began work on a Requiem soon after his father’s death. He added work to it for two years without ever saying that it was for his father. In a strange coincidence, his mother passed away only two weeks before the Requiem’s debut. He loved his parents and felt the losses. Still, he was not enthusiastic about the orthodox Catholicism. In 1902, Fauré said,

“Perhaps instinctively I sought to break loose from conventions. I’ve been accompanying burial services at the organ for so long now!  I’ve had it up to here with all that. I wanted to do something else.”*

And he did. By editing the “normal” Requiem verses, leaving out the most terrorizing words of damnation, his Requiem reached out to suffering loved ones as well as to the one who had passed away.

“People have said my Requiem did not express the terror of death; someone called it a ‘lullaby of death.’ But that’s the way I perceive death: as a happy release, an aspiration to the happiness of beyond rather than a grievous passage.”*

The San Francisco Symphony Chorus and the soloists were superb. The sopranos lift the spirit singing on C for two measures. The tenors, as described by Ron Gallman, “unfurl a long melody, chant-like in its purity and simplicity.”* The baritone soloist in the Offertorium projects a glowing, mellow sound that floats over the orchestra. The soprano solo shines in the Pie Jesu. She is calm and hopeful for the lost beloved.

Michael Sumuel, Bass-Baritone

Although Fauré left some of the texts out, it was still useful for Catholic funerals. He did not include the Dies irae, the Last Judgment. He kept brief, though to the point, passages; from the Offertorium: “free the souls of the dead/from hell’s punishments and the fathomless void” After the Sanctus: Holy, holy, holy Lord God of Hosts./ Heaven and earth are full of your glory./ Hosanna in the highest” he goes to Pie Jesu: “Holy Jesus, Lord,/ give them rest. Give them rest, eternal rest.”

Through the entire Requiem, Fauré  makes light/lux and rest eternal/requiem aeternam  the central message of his beautiful vision. He adds verses from the Libera me/Free me, and, briefly, lines from Dies irae in Libera me. The harsh “day of wrath/ calamity and misery;/that day, that day is momentous/and exceedingly bitter.” contrasts with peace. Fauré returns to peace, stays with peace, gives us music and song of peace.

*Quotations from Fauré, and one from himself, are from Ron Gallman’s program note essay.

On November 8, Dr. Tria Blu Wakpa will share her research findings through her talk: “Still Our Own Indian Selves: The Decolonial Possibilites of Student Theatrical Productions at a Former Indian Boarding School.” This program begins at Noon and ends at 1:00. PACIFIC TIME. The presentation is only on Zoom in order to make it available to everyone regardless of time zone. IF you want to attend, please send a message to livelyfoundation@sbcglobal.net  so that we can send you the Zoom codes. The event is presented by The Lively Foundation. It is FREE. IF YOU ARE ABLE, please consider making a donation of $10 – or any other amount – to support Lively’s programs. The following information is Dr.Tria Blu Wakpa’s Abstract and Biography in full.

Dr. Tria Blu Wakpa, Assist. Professor, UCLA’s Department of World Arts & Cultures/Dance

Abstract:

In this presentation and workshop, I will first share research that examines student performances that occurred at St. Francis Mission School between the 1930s and 1950s and then offer a workshop that incorporates movement and mindfulness practices based on these findings. Founded by Jesuit officials in 1886, St. Francis operated as an Indian boarding school until 1972 on the Rosebud Indian Reservation, located in South Dakota on the lands of the Rosebud Sioux Tribe, who are Sicangu Lakota. I posit that officials invested an immense amount of time and resources into staging these productions, because they fulfilled institutional aims by attempting to assimilate and convert Lakota people while shaping and disseminating discourses related to the purported legitimacy, sanctity, and benevolence of St. Francis and its alleged contributions to Lakota people and futurities. I term these methods settler colonial choreographies. Meanwhile, working within material and structural confines, Lakota people found ways to sustain their practices and identities, navigate settler colonial stereotypes and institutional policies, document their experiences and contributions, and otherwise nurture their wellbeing, freedom, and futurities. I refer to these actions as decolonial choreographies. Ultimately, I show that the productions simultaneously supported the self-determination of St. Francis—and by extension the U.S.—and Lakota people. To conclude the session, I will guide attendees in movement and mindfulness practices that are in conversation with the tactics that Native people used to reinterpret student theatrical performances at St. Francis and support their holistic health.

Bio:

Tria Blu Wakpa is an Assistant Professor in the Department of World Arts and Cultures/Dance at UCLA. She received a Ph.D. from the Department of Ethnic Studies at UC Berkeley. Her research and teaching center community-engaged, decolonizing, and movement analysis methodologies to examine the history and politics of dance and other holistic practices—such as theatrical productions, athletics, and yoga—for Indigenous peoples in and beyond structures and institutions of confinement. She is a mother, scholar, poet, and practitioner of Indigenous dance, Indigenous Hand Talk (sign language), martial arts, and yoga. In addition, she is the Co-Founder and Editor-in-Chief for Race and Yoga, the first peer-reviewed and open-access journal in the emerging field of critical yoga studies. Her first book project, Choreographies in Confinement, contextualizes dance, theatrical productions, basketball, and/or yoga at two sites for Native children on the Rosebud Indian Reservation in South Dakota: a former Indian boarding school and a tribal juvenile hall. Her writings have been translated into French and Portuguese and appeared in academic journals and books. In 2023, Professor Blu Wakpa’s article, “From Buffalo Dance to Tatanka Kcizapi Wakpala, 1894-2020: Indigenous Human and More-than-Human Choreographies of Sovereignty and Survival,” won the American Society for Theatre Research’s Gerald Kahan Scholar’s Prize “for the best essay written and published in English in a refereed scholarly journal or edited collection.” This same year, she was named the Fulbright Association’s Selma Jeanne Cohen Dance Lecture Awardee. She has held major fellowships from the Ford Foundation, the Fulbright Program, the Hellman Fellows Fund, and the UC President’s Postdoctoral Program.

June 28, Davies Symphony: The San Francisco Symphony performed Mahler’s Symphony No. 3 in D Minor. It was a stunning presentation. Each movement was full of surprises, emotions, music that inspired our imaginations. San Francisco has been Mahler territory from the beginning of Michael Tilson Thomas’ tenure as Music Director. The Muni had Mahler painted on the sides of buses. MTT brought us great performances. Now, it is Music Director Esa-Pekka Salonen’s time to make the audience marvel at the music and the brilliance of conductor and musicians. This concert was the last of the regular season. It was another great musical experience from the SF Symphony.

Esa-Pekka Salonen, Music Director, San Francisco Symphony.

Before Gustav Mahler began to compose his Symphony No. 3 in D minor, he wrote a scenario in five parts, like sketching the story behind a play. He gave a title to each part. At first, the titles were following this theme: What the Forest Tells Me, What the Trees Tell Me, What Twilight Tells Me, but he changed the titles five times during his summer retreat. He removed the trees, the twilight, and the rest. He switched to Summer entering the symphony, and he wanted to add something Dionysiac, possibly scary. The various images that came to him worked. In less than three weeks he had written the 2^nd, 3^rd, 4^th, and 5^th movements. When Symphony No. 3 premiered in 1902, none of the titles were on the program. Mahler wrote to conductor, Josef Krug-Waldsee the reason why he removed them.

“Those titles were an attempt on my part to provide non-musicians with something to hold on to and with a signpost for the intellectual, or better, the expressive content of the various movements and for their relationships to each other and to the whole. That didn’t work (as, in fact it could never work) and that it led only to misinterpretations of the most horrendous sort became painfully clear all too quickly.”*

I was glad to read another quotation from Mahler in a conversation with Sibelius about what a symphony is because I have often thought that Mahler’s symphonies encompassed the world. He said, “a symphony must be like the world. It must embrace everything.”* Symphony No. 3 surely demonstrated that.

The first movement is nearly a half hour on its own. That is because Mahler sees so much. The beginning is joyful but a change comes immediately, something sad, more than sad has been released. We hear what might be funeral music, wailing, anger at the undoing of the human. Then, there are marches which are followed by what could be popular music that plays with a gentle hand that turns to enthusiasm. Yes, it is the whole world. Each of us lives all of the turns of experience which Mahler recalls for the listener and for the listener to re-live right now right here whether in a concert hall or hiking past a small town. This first movement, Part I, Kraftig, entschieden (Powerful, determined) is the full first part giving us moments of danger and loss as well. He does not abandon us to loss but reminds us of love.

Part II includes four briefer movements, each with its own identity. The first one is a minuet: Tempo di menuetto. Sher massig (Moderate). Then, the music is placed out doors with a song by Mahler, Ablusung im Sommer. He awaits “Lady Nightingale’s” song once the cuckoo stops. The trumpet becomes a post-horn with a beautiful tune which is carried by the flutes. Arnold Schoenberg observed, “at first with the divided high violins, then, even more beautiful if possible, with the horns.”* The symphony continues to a song by Nietzsche. It is the Midnight Song from also sprach Zarathustra. This song begins by warning humanity. Then, it explains the depth of eternity. “The world is deep–/deeper than the day had thought!/Deep is the pain!/Joy deeper still than heart’s sorrow!/Pain says: Vanish!/ Yet all joy aspires to eternity,/ to deep, deep eternity.” Soloist Kelley O’Connor, mezzo-soprano, sang the first. Her voice fit well with both songs. Her presence communicates authority and, even as a sinner, attracts empathy.

Kelley O’Connor, mezzo-soprano

Next the sopranos and altos of the SF Symphony Chorus plus young boys of the Pacific Boychoir Academy sang the text of The Boy’s Magic Horn (Des Knaben Wunderhorn) with added text by Mahler: “But you mustn’t weep.” The SF Chorus sounded wonderful. O’Connor joined in this song as the sinner. The children made bell sounds and joined the SF Symphony Chorus in “Liebe nur Gott!” Love only God.

Mahler did a daring thing – when did he not do a daring thing? – and ended his symphony with an adagio. The music runs into the terrible, nameless event of the first movement. The interruption of his forward motion leads his music to spiritual directions. The duet of kettle drums was astonishing. The percussionists used drumsticks with large heads of something looking like cotton on the striking end. Side by side the percussionists, each with two drums sticks, struck the drums simultaneously, loudly, and powerfully. Side to side over and over. It created chills, questions, a mystery. The composer instructed the drums should be played “not with brute strength (but) with rich, noble tone” and that “the last measure not be cut off sharply”* in order to produce softness and a silence in the hall and in each listener. Mahler’s No. 3 has the fullness of life. This was Mahler’s world.

*quotations are quoted from the SF Symphony article by Michael Steinberg.

The San Francisco Symphony has not run out of extraordinary programs led by stellar guest conductors. On April 25, SFS presented three jewel like performances of seldom played music. It was a thrilling night of musical discoveries and highest musicianship.

Gustavo Gimeno’s conducting was wonderful to watch. He is graceful in his gestures and kept a strong control of his musicians. I was impressed by the way he stopped the music. He held on to the silence that would come after the end of a movement or the whole piece. He was respectful of the music and let it fill the air around the last notes. That silence emphasized the last sounds still in our heads. His conducting is precise, and still he lets the emotion and wit of each piece capture the audience. Gustavo Gimeno is the music director of the Luxembourg Philharmonic and the Music Director of the Toronto Symphony. He is the Music Director Designate of Teatro Real Madrid

Gustavo Gimeno, conductor, Music Director of the Toronto Symphony

Maestro Gimeno opened the concert with Funeral March from The Great Citizen, Opus 55 (1939) by Dmitri Shostakovich. It was the first San Francisco Symphony performance of this music. When Gimeno spoke to the audience before the Prokofiev Symphony No. 3 in C minor, Opus 44 (1928), he noted that it was a great piece which he had wanted to perform for a long time.

Shostakovich wrote many scores for movies. The Great Citizen was a two part movie about Sergei Kirov, a Bolshevik revolutionary hero who was also a friend of Stalin. Being a friend of Stalin was a different kind of friendship; Kirov was assassinated in 1934. The Kirov Ballet was named for him. Shostakovich lived on Kirovsky Prospect in Moscow. Kirov was hugely popular which was his downfall. Shostakovich wrote about music for movies: “What a rewarding task the composer has in trying to catch the rhythm of the dynamic stream of film sequence…” He recognized that “no theatre or concert hall can  compete with the cinema with its audience of millions.” Of this music only the Overture, Funeral March, and Conclusion have survived. The Funeral March, just seven minutes long, was beautiful and moving. it has the character of a Funeral March, but the beauty of a work by Shostakovich.

William Walton, composer, 1902-1983

Jonathan Vinocour, Violist, Principal Violist of the SFS, and Gustavo Gimeno, Conductor

The San Francisco Symphony with Gustavo Gimeno, Conductor, and Jonathan Vinocour, Viola, perform Shostakovich’s “Funeral March from The Great Citizen, Opus 55,” William Walton’s “Viola Concerto,” and Prokofiev’s “Symphony No. 3.” At Davies Symphony Hall on Thursday night, April 25, 2024.

Viola Concerto, by William Walton, has been performed before in Davies Symphony Hall, but not since 1997. Geraldine Walther was the soloist with David Robertson conducting. It was this listener’s first time to hear this great concerto, composed 1928-1929, and revised in 1962. Curiously, the work had influences from Prokofiev and from Hindemith, a composer and viola player. The concerto’s three movements have changeable, ear pleasing, and surprising rhythms. While it is fully a modernist piece, there is a Romantic, English essence. Somewhere Puck plays in the music. It is a challenging, virtuoso piece for the violist, Jonathan Vinocour, Principal Viola in the SF Symphony, since 2009. In an interview, Vinocour says that this is his favorite viola concerto. “…it’s an extremely expressive piece, which to our ears is simply beautiful and moving. It uses lots of clashing harmonies –very mild by today’s standards–but it gives a feeling of yearning.” Listening to this concerto, it seems to have that emotional message at the same time the audience is caught up in the stunning invention and demands upon the soloist. The full audience and the orchestra loudly cheered Vinocour’s triumphant performance.

Sergei Prokofiev, composer, 1891-1953

Sergei Prokofiev’s Symphony No. 3 in C minor, Opus 44 has an unusual history. It was written by using music Prokofiev had written for an opera, the Fiery Angel. Prokofiev worked at the Fiery Angel off and on from 1919-1927. He managed to have a concert performance in Paris of the opera’s second act. It is unbelievable that some audience members who considered themselves very avant garde thought the opera was “old hat.”

Having seen the Fiery Angel at San Francisco’s War Memorial Opera House, I found that an impossible critique. It could be called a bit nutty, but as Prokofiev said, “Of orgies there is no end.”  The first issue of The Hedgehog, the international arts review, Vol. I, No. 1, November, 1996, included a picture of the apparently (but not truly?) naked Russian acrobats on the cover. The cover feature was “New Faces of Opera.” There were interviews and pictures with Pam Dillard, Zheng Cao, and Mika Shigematsu. The wild acrobats and The Fiery Angel were described in the article, “Moving on Stage,” by Camelita Ng, which included five operas of the season. The Fiery Angel was a co-production of Covent Garden and the Kirov. The men spent most of the opera “perched on scaffolding above the stage.” They were “a visualization of the demons tormenting the heroine.” When the demons come down from their scaffolding, it was fascinating and terrifying.

Brief summary: A nun has visions of an angel. She believes the angel appears as a count. She follows him. As James M. Keller wrote, the nun becomes “a sort of obsessed stalker.” She convinces her convent that her visions are real, and all are possessed with wild sexual and religious craziness. Real or fantasy? The opera had its premiere in Venice, 1955, two years after Prokofiev’s death. The symphony is fantastic itself. Prokofiev selected pieces from the opera to use in his Symphony No. 3. Adjectives such as “intense,” “violent,” and especially “loud” are used by some music writers. The loudness is not continual; the music is brilliant and complicated in a brilliant way. Knowing the story behind the music certainly justifies the music, if one would ever need “to justify” Prokofiev. The composer wrote a description of how he borrowed from his opera to make this symphony. “The material for the Scherzo and for the Andante was also found without difficulty. The Finale took a little longer. I spent far more time whipping the thing into final shape, tying up all the loose ends and doing the orchestration. But the result—the Third Symphony-–I consider to be one of my best compositions.” Prokofiev was a genius. I will vote with him every time.

Karina Canellakis, Conductor

The San Francisco Symphony demonstrated that making a program is an art in itself. On April 18, we saw and heard the SFS’ excellent sound conducted by the amazing Karina Canellakis. She is Chief Conductor of the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra which she leads at the Amsterdam Concertgebouw and Utrecht’s TivoliVredenburg, She is also Principal Guest Conductor of the London Philharmonic. She comes on stage, promptly takes her place, and puts all her energy into conducting. She has a very physical style. One can remember that the sound is a real, physical thing when watching her bringing the orchestra forward with her arms upward, pulling them in. She has a great interaction with the musicians. Everyone levitates a bit off the stage floor; Ms Canellakis has an engaging, positive presence even during tragic music.

Richard Strauss, composer, 1864-1949

The opening piece, Richard Strauss’ Don Juan, Opus 20 (1889) sounded wonderful. Those of us who do not find Don Juan to be a hero, still find the music made to accompany his triumphs outstanding. The Don Juan music was one of the symphonic poems Strauss created in the 1880s. The music represents Don Juan as an adventurer like the jovial Three Musketeers, a swashbuckling, devil-may-care kind of a guy. The music provides expressive moments when one could imagine him with a beloved and then turning to another. Only for a moment did I think, “Gee, here’s this wonderful woman conductor making Don Juan attractive through the music.” Then, the music ends the way it had to end: a father avenges the death of one of the women. Terrific music about a cheerful serial rapist. True to the spirit of another era.

Maurice Ravel, composer, 1875-1937

The Piano Concerto in D major for the Left Hand, by Maurice Ravel, is an extraordinary achievement even for a master like Ravel. However, it is a great work and not an oddity. It challenges the pianist’s and orchestra’s technique. It is beautiful, wholly original, and, I think has depths that one cannot anticipate while being mesmerized by the pianist’s one hand. The story behind this work is touching although the pianist and composer did not create a great friendship to match the great music. An Austrian family, Paul Wittgenstein was the brother of philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein. Paul had begun a successful career as a pianist. Then, in World War I, he lost his right hand. it took a very long time to rehabilitate his injuries. Major composers wrote music for him: Hindemith, Korngold, Prokofiev, Britten, Strauss. it is Ravel’s that has lasted.

Cedric Tiberghien, pianist

The pianist, Cedric Tiberghien, was brilliant and met every challenge without looking like he was climbing a mountain of difficult technique. Listen, but also see this music; it is very special, gorgeous, and moving.

Richard Strauss returned to the program with Death and Transfiguration, Opus 24. It was written 1888-1889. It was meant to be a symphonic poem, but there is no relation to a literary work. It is as though Strauss had a libretto running through his mind. He imagined a man who was very ill and in bed. While asleep he imagines or remembers moments of his life. He has a fever and pains. He was an artist. Strauss wrote,”the fruit of his path through life appears to him, the idea, the Ideal which he has tried to realize, to represent in his art, but which he has been unable to perfect because it was not for any human being to perfect it.” The moment of death comes, the music pictures his “soul leaves the body, in order to find perfected in the most glorious force in the eternal cosmos that which he could not fulfill here on earth.” This listener disliked the subject,fought it, the title, the music from its beginning. Then, without knowing why, this listener wept. A great composer can do that.

The program ended with La Valse, composed by Ravel, 1919-1920. it is a glamorous waltz at the beginning. Before the Great War, Ravel was fascinated by the Viennese waltz. He had plans for music saluting Johann Strauss II. The War changed everything including the waltz. It had been enjoyed in times of plenty; everyone in party dresses, the men smoking cigars, the women being elegantly flirty. Then, a generation of young men – French, English, German, all of Europe – were dead. They were missing legs, wearing terrible injuries, mentally different than before. La Valse presents all of this. Toward the end it goes faster and faster. I imagine an enormous chandelier suddenly crashing to the floor.

The SF Symphony met all the challenges of these great works with energy, precision, musicality. It was a brilliant evening we will be thinking about for a long time.