Monthly Archives: March 2025

SF Ballet Makes History: Raymonda & Frankenstein

Saturday, March 8, 2025, San Francisco War Memorial Opera House — The full house audience applauded through out the performance. They witnessed exciting, innovative, and challenging ballet in the North American Premiere of Raymonda, choreographed by Tamara Rojo, after Marius Petipa. The World Premiere of Rojo’s work was presented by the English National Ballet, London Coliseum, London, England, January 13, 2022. Rojo was the Artistic Director and Lead Principal of the English National Ballet. She was appointed Artistic Director of SFB, December, 2022. Marius Petipa’s technique and choreography could be said to have invented classical ballet. His Raymonda was made for the Imperial Mariinsky Theatre, 1898, set to music by Glazunov. In Petipa’s work, the ballet was set in the medieval ages during the Crusades. Since Petipa’s time, this is the first Raymonda that presented the ballet and music in their entirety. That was a major step in ballet history,

San Francisco Ballet in Rojo’s Raymonda // © Lindsay Thomas

Rojo believes that companies and dancers must hold on to their legacy, the history of ballet and its choreography. She chose to set her new Raymonda in the Crimean War. One of England’s Prime Minister said that if anyone tells you that he knows the reason for the war, he’s lying because it is impossible to figure out. England was on one side; Russia on the other. There were devastating diseases which killed at least so many as the guns. Rojo took advantage of the international character of the war. She incorporated classical dance with folk dance and dances of national identities. Vadim Sirotin directed the Character Dancing.  I am certain that Rojo has endless variations of steps, combinations of large and small groups, the men dancing on their own, the women with the men or not; it was magical except that we knew Tamara Rojo was tapping into her bottomless mine of precious dances. She noted for all of us the importance of Florence Nightingale, the founder of modern nursing and of keeping records of statistics. During the war she was called “the lady of the lamp.” Rojo used lanterns as effective articles for  the Nurses’ dancing. The Crimean War was a sad prologue for the American Civil War, 1861 – 1865. Nursing was developed on the battle grounds and in tents by Clara Barton who also created a movement for better nursing. Yet another historical event: the Crimean War was the first time battles, places, and people were photographed. The Civil War also picked up the significant record of the horrors of both wars.

Fernando Carratalá Coloma in Rojo’s Raymonda // © Lindsay Thomas

Sasha De Sola and Joseph Caley in Rojo’s Raymonda // © Lindsay Thomas

Max Cauthorn presented another star performance. it was a gift to watch him again after his remarkable presence in Manon. Frances Chung danced Raymonda beautifully. She had a complicated character. She was a young lady from an upper class background who planned to marry John de Bryan. He joins the English army; she ponders the idea that she, too, should help her country. Then, Abdur Rahman, in photo above danced by Fernando Carratala Coloma, comes on the scene. John asks him to look out for Raymonda. What will she do? Both men would like to marry her, but she was promised to John. After battles and much marvelous dancing, the families gather for a wedding. Raymonda exerts her independence and leaves the wedding to find her own future. The SFB danced so well they lived up to the fabulous dances Rojo made for them.

FRANKENSTEIN: Runs March 20 – 26    Frankenstein was choreographed by Liam Scarlett with music by Lowell Liebermann. It was last performed by SFB in 2018.  “Haunting music, pyrotechnics,” and a powerful story make this another outstanding offering by SFB. Tamara Rojo wrote that it “explores humanity and hubris, amplifying the existential, gothic drama in a way only ballet can go.” It is still Women’s History month. If one thinks that there may be only one female character, please remember that the author was Mary Shelley. She published it in 1818. She was married to Percy Bysshe Shelley, the great Romantic, English poet. Her mother was Mary Wollstonecraft, the author of the Vindication of the Rights for Women. Mary Shelley was with Shelley and Lord Bryon near Geneva. They decided they each would make a ghostly story to read to each other. Of the creative stories, it is Mary’s which has stayed in our culture. They had to stay inside because the air was dark with ashes from a volcano across the world. They called it the year with no summer. That era was a time of electricity experiments and experiments with life. Mary had a deep understanding of new science and how it was changing everything. The SF Ballet will present an ENCORE! of FRANKENSTEIN, April 26-May 4.

 

Beethoven & Rachmaninoff: Breathtaking

Davies Symphony Hall, San Francisco, Sunday, March 2 — Experiencing this performance took the audience into the world and the center of human life. Not magic, as someone might say, but the beauty and energy of real life swept us away. The music:  Piano Concerto No.4 in G Major, Opus 58, by Ludwig Van Beethoven; Symphony No. 2 in E Minor, Opus 27, by Sergei Rachmaninoff. The beauty would make one tingle. Another note about the music is how much each composer knows about being alive.

Ludwig Van Beethoven, pianist and composer (1770 – 1827)

The soloist, Francesco Piemontesi, brought the music’s soul to Davies Hall. I have a recording of this Piano Concerto and listen to it frequently. A recording can never match being there and hearing the live music in person, but now I cannot imagine another pianist playing with the same understanding, delicacy, and power. Piemontesi demonstrated that a soft sound can be powerful. Robin Ticciati was the conductor. He and Piemontesi were on the same wave length with regard to both the feeling and technique. The orchestra performed well on all levels. The musicians were perfect partners in this strange and beautiful concerto. The piano sounded like water running smoothly over polished rocks. The key to this concerto is the very first note. The soloist begins. The pianist played that first note in a way that said, “This is what I am, what I will be, what you can feel. One note.” I felt it touched me, made my throat close, my eyes momentarily almost in tears. No reason why, except that Beethoven created a unique Piano Concerto that offers a journey through lush sounds in the quietest way he could. He let the Concerto tell us the message.

Francesco Piemontesi, pianist     The audience went appropriately wild after more bows. His encore was gorgeous.  J.S. Bach’s Chorale Prelude, Sleepers, Awake/Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme 645, transcribed for piano by Ferruccio Busoni, 1898. Piemontesi played the piece so that it sounded like he had two more hands. Some of that is thanks to Busoni, but it could only been played that way by a great pianist. Francesco Piemontesi is a great pianist.  These performances are his first at San Francisco.  This season, he will perform with the Chicago Symphony, Cleveland Orchestra, Pittsburgh Symphony, Oslo Philharmonic, Helsinki Philharmonic. He will perform with Robin Ticciati with the Budapest Festival Orchestra and tours with the London Philharmonic. And more.

Robin Ticciati, Conductor     has been music director of the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, since 2017. He is also the Music Director of Glyndebourne Festival Opera since 2014. He has conducted the Berlin Philharmonic, Vienna Philharmonic, London Symphony, Czech Philharmonic, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, and many more in Europe and the US. His San Francisco debut was January, 2023. I admired his conducting tremendously. His directions are clear and strong. His arms open high and wide to include the sound world, and he uses his natural grace, going into a grande plie or on his toes,  to signal where the music should go. I liked to see his movements as they confirm that music is something real that can move mountains and human hearts, too.

Sergei Rachmaninoff pianist and composer ( 1873 – 1943)

The Symphony No.2 in E minor, Opus 27 is so beautiful that the self-appointed Modernists could not admit it is great music, but it is. They called it new or semi or whatever before Romantic. Rachmaninoff’s music is original. He has his own voice and style; expansively it includes the fullest experience and ideas. It is sensual and magnificent. When the first movement began, I thought, “Oh, he is taking us into a mystery.” Later, I read that Michael Steinberg commented that it begins “in mystery, with pianissimo low strings.” The Symphony No. 2 is about 55 minutes long. It has to be big to be so full of all its love and life. The composer leads us through the Symphony’s world. The first movement is marked Largo-Allegro moderato, and it covers slow and rhythmic, melodies in motion. The second movement, Allegro molto, is wilder. There are tunes that Rachmaninoff, also a composer of songs, flies through. There is a fugue in the second violins and then a scherzo-like drama that Rachmaninoff lets loose. Steinberg knew that the composer liked to enter notes of the Dies irae from the Gregorian Mass for the Dead. But that is not the idea of the Adagio that comes next. It is about love. “Now hear this;” The music tells the story of love; it does not need to speak. There is still more mystery in the next movement. Each instrument plays: English horn and oboe and then each of the others. The clarinet returns to the melody at the beginning. Having begun the Finale with the Symphony’s quiet, now it turns on the music rushing like a water fall. Rachmaninoff ‘s lyricism thrills the ending with wide world embraces.