András Schiff Beethoven Cycle IV

4/13/2008 07:00 PM
Davies Symphony Hall
András Schiff, Piano
Beethoven Piano Sonatas Nos. 12, 13, 14 and 15
Encore: Bach French Suite #5 in G

This was the biggest audience I'd seen for the cycle so far, no doubt because we reached the Moonlight Sonata with this program. To build anticipation, Schiff even left the stage briefly before playing it. Usually Schiff has remained on stage between sonatas. Typically his use of the sustain pedal is sparing to non-existent, but for the 1st movement he held it down through changes in the harmony. The accumulated chords created a kind of blurry halo of pitches. The accompaniment moved evenly & deliberately, with just a hint of a pulse. The mood was restrained, delicate & fragile. Schiff usually goes straight from one movement to the next, attaca, & in this case the contrast between movements was extreme. Schiff does a good job of preserving the sometimes weird character of Beethoven's music. He received a partial standing ovation before intermission for his rendition of this famous piece.

Schiff continues to play intelligently & with exacting precision in these recitals. I like improvisatory feel he gave to the meandering & sometimes halting Rondo of Sonata #15. He made it humorous & surprising.

As another generous encore, we got the whole of Bach's French Suite in G, executed with Schiff's now familiar crystalline dispatch, plus embellishments.

To emphasize the fact that some of these sonata movements are very quiet, we had a relatively noisy audience. There was a magnificent cougher during the 1st movement of the 1st piece who had 2 outbursts that nearly stopped the performance. Another cougher then made himself known during the 1st movement of the 2nd piece. A couple of other times it sounded like someone slapped a heavy object to the floor.

Olympic Torch Bait-and-Switch

I was part of the crowd at the Ferry Building at 2:00pm, hoping to get a glimpse of the Olympic torch. It was a big turn-out. Clearly thousands of people lined the closed-off Embarcadero. There were plenty of the expected protesters as well. At one point I was between 2 different groups of banner-waving protesters marching down the route. A rumor went through the crowd that the police had put the torch on a boat in McCovey Cove & were taking it to the Ferry Building over the water. I confirmed this with someone back at my office who was on the Web. But this was probably a decoy.

I went through Justin Herman Plaza on my way back to the office. It was filled with media people, lion dancers & a noisy rock sound track. The video screen set up there suddenly started broadcasting an aerial view of the torch relay, which was apparently going north up Van Ness. At this point it was obvious that the relay had been completely re-routed, though it wasn't clear how it could have made it to Van Ness from the ball park. I was side-swiped by a group of students with flags running at full speed towards Market Street.

Back at my desk, I followed the confusing turn of events through Team Tibet's twitter feed. The torch ended up in the Marina, & closing ceremonies at Justin Herman Plaza were canceled. The most dramatic event was the report of a torch bearer who pulled out a Tibetan flag & then was ejected from the relay. Gavin Newsom will no doubt claim that this was all done for the sake of safety & order, but he duped not only the protesters but thousands of legitimate spectators.

András Schiff Beethoven Cycle

Sunday April 6, 2008 7:00 PM
Davies Symphony Hall
András Schiff, piano
Beethoven Piano Sonatas Nos. 19, 20, 9, 10, 11
Encore: Bach Partita #1

Now that Schiff is a known quantity to me, I settled into my seat secure in the knowledge that this would be an evening with a lot to admire. The program began with a pair of short sonatas. Though these are light pieces, Schiff made them substantial with his full & solid sound. He ornamented both of them, which added a nice improvisatory element. In fact, Schiff's playing often has this feeling, as though even he isn't quite sure what is going to happen next. It's a fine illusion, since at the same time it's obvious that he's worked out very detailed interpretations.

He made the Sonata No. 10 into a small comedic masterpiece. In the 2nd movement theme-and-variations, Schiff teased us with the short, overly-insistent repeated notes of the theme. It was so captivating that the audience burst into applause immediately after its coyly explosive ending. Or maybe they simply mis-counted the movements. Schiff ended the final movement with a bit of physical humor, throwing down the final 3-note figure with his left hand just as he stood up to take a bow.

I really like Schiff's incisive phrasing & solid sound. I feel like he's on top of every note when he presses down those keys. So far he has been very sparing in his use of he pedal. He often uses an effect where the sound has a definite start & cut-off, as if the sound just stops instead of decaying.

More importantly, Schiff has ideas & communicates them. For instance, when the fugal entrances occur during No. 11, the sense of something urgent & emphatic happening is unmistakable. No. 11 was the major sonata in this grouping & the only piece after intermission. He filled out this short 2nd half with a virtuoso rendition of the Bach Partita No. 1 in B-flat major. His playing was crystal clear & unfussy. I especially enjoyed the introspective Sarabande & the effortlessly swift & even Gigue. It was as good as anything else in the program.

Ukiyo-e at the Asian Art Museum

I was at the Asian Art Museum yesterday to see the exhibit Drama and Desire: Japanese Paintings from the Floating World 1690–1850. The works contain a lot of pictorial details about the clothes, objects & manners of this subculture. I was impressed by the great colors & especially the depictions of the kimono fabrics. The paintings of Katsushika Hokusai rise above the decorative nature of most of the exhibit. I really liked his elongated Phoenix screen in comic-book colors & the reflective composition of Li Bi Admiring a Waterfall. He's also represented by a pair of cool hand-painted paper lanterns with dragons snaking around them.

I usually don't have the patience to sit through videos in the galleries, but this time I watched with interest the video about the British Museum's painstaking restoration of a Ukiyo-e screen. I learned that these screens have paper hinges that cleverly allow the panels to hinge in either direct.

I also took a quick peek at Zhan Wang's humorous
shiny silver model of San Francisco built from restaurant supply store merchandise.

Free the Piano Player

Interesting review of a new book about how the piano recital went from thrilling & spontaneous to stodgy & formal. What impresses me about current performance practice is the uniformly high level of technical proficiency everywhere. Flawless execution is now taken for granted.

Nikolaj Znaider

Wednesday, March 26 8:00 PM
Herbst Theater
Nikolaj Znaider, violin
Robert Kulek, piano

BEETHOVEN: Sonata for Violin and Piano No. 3 in E-flat Major
BACH: Partita No. 2 in D minor for Solo Violin
SCHOENBERG: Phantasy for Violin with Piano Accompaniment, Op. 47
BEETHOVEN: Violin Sonata in G Major, Op. 96

ENCORE:
BRAHMS: Hungarian Dances No. 17 & 7

I had never heard of Nikolaj Znaider before. I was attracted to this recital by the great program. The printed program listed the Bach 1st, but Znaider made his 1st entrance followed by his accompanist. He explained that due to the special nature of the Partita it made more sense to end the 1st half with it, leaving the silence after the Chaconne uninterrupted by Beethoven. This may have been a calculated bit of showmanship, but the Partita was indeed the highlight of the evening. Znaider has a complete & easy technical mastery, & he played the Partita with an intense focus. The Gigue flew by, & my ears were almost ringing after the sustained onslaught of sound of the Chaconne. Znaider got a scattered standing ovation after the Chaconne.

Znaider is a tall man, & the violin looks tiny in his hands. I kept watching his rapid bow arm & his use of the entire length of the bow. The program allowed him to show off his proficiency in different styles. He played the early Beethoven Sonata in a tight classical style, but played the final Beethoven Sonata broadly. He managed to give the Schoenberg a sense of shape & momentum, placing a climax near the end of the piece. Znaider is Danish, but the apparent ease of his playing reminds me of Israeli violinists like Perlman or Shaham.

Znaider's accompanist was a little sloppy, & musically I did not feel that there was a lot of communication between the 2 of them, even though they sometimes conferred between movements.

For some reason the audience applauded immediately after the 1st movement of the Beethoven Sonata that opened the program. I have no idea why this happened, since after this no one interrupted any other piece with inappropriate applause. Znaider gave us 2 vigorous encores & even threw in a down-bow staccato all the way to the tip of the bow in Hungarian Dance #7.

Alan Gilbert Leads the SF Symphony

Friday March 28, 2008 8:00 PM
Davies Symphony Hall
San Francisco Symphony
Alan Gilbert conductor
Richard Goode piano

Stucky Son et lumière
Mozart Piano Concerto No. 18
Nielsen Symphony No. 2, The Four Temperaments

I've heard Alan Gilbert conduct here before, but he never made a big impression on me. Now that he's the in-coming music director of the NY Phil, I thought I should give him another hearing. This turned out to be a very nice program. The Stucky piece is percussion-heavy & audience-friendly. It kept sounding like it was about to turn into something by either Stravinsky or John Adams. Gilbert made sure that the matching opening & closing percussion ensemble was tight.

In the Mozart, I found Richard Goode's interpretation to be very respectful of the composer. His playing is light & crisp. I felt like he wasn't trying to add anything to Mozart. In contrast, Gilbert was much more emphatic & urgent. Oddly, Goode was using a score for his performance.

Nielsen can be a cool customer, but this symphony was very accessible & easy to follow in a programmatic way. Gilbert has a very active podium style & is always doing something from moment to moment. He does a lot of cueing, though at times he is conducting along with the orchestra instead of being ahead of it.

I enjoy reading Opera Tattler's catty remarks about the audience, but in this case I'd like to tattle on the orchestra. A 1st violinist in the 1st movement of the Nielsen went bowing the wrong way for quite a noticeable stretch. The Symphony's strings are quite uniform in their playing these days, so this lapse stood out. The player seemed a bit amused by it himself.

Paul Galbraith Recital

PAUL GALBRAITH, guitar
Sunday, March 30 at 2:00 pm in the Florence Gould Theater
Chamber Music San Francisco

W.A. Mozart Andante cantabile
Lennox Berkeley Theme and Variations for Guitar, opus 77
J.S. Bach Cello Suite No.4
Franz Schubert Piano Sonata in A-flat major, D. 557
W.A. Mozart Piano Sonata in F major, K. 280

Guitar recitals must be among the most rarefied of chamber music experiences. The strongest impression I came away with was the quietness of it. There aren't that many shared quiet experiences in modern life. The classical guitar is not a loud instrument, & Paul Galbraith is not a demonstrative player. The audience has to be very still in order for this to work at all, & this audience was admirably quiet. In fact it was so quiet that I could hear sounds of the restaurant next door, the tapping of someone's foot nearby, even a door opening backstage. When someone started clapping after the 1st movement of the Bach, she was quickly shushed.

The auditorium was almost completely dark. The stage was dark too, except for a spot light on Galbraith. He was dressed mostly in black, so the stage picture gave the impression of 2 disembodied hands flitting around the guitar.

Galbraith plays a custom guitar with 8 strings. The most obvious difference in range is the low notes it can play. He sits on a kind of throne a foot & a half high & plays the guitar like a cello. The instrument sits upright between his knees, supported by an end-pin. Instead of bowing, he plucks it, but his left hand is positioned just like a cellists. Some of the left hand stretches look very wide.

He gave a brief, knowledgeable introduction to each piece. His interpretations were contemplative, deliberate & without showiness. The slow movement of the Mozart was particularly exquisite. I got the feeling that he had spent a lot of time working out how everything was going to go, so that a piece sounded pretty much the same each time he played it.

The Legion of Honor was a happening place that afternoon. There were a lot of people of at the museum, no doubt for the Annie Leibovitz exhibit. The start of the recital had to be held for 10 minutes due to the crunched parking situation. While I was in the museum I also saw a jazz singer in the restaurant & an organ recital in the atrium.

Dr. Allan Hamilton at Stacey's

I was at Stacey's Bookstore on my lunch hour today & heard Dr. Allan Hamilton talk about his book The Scalpel and the Soul. The book seems to be about the author's encounters with the supernatural during his career as a doctor working with patients in medical crises. He's a good presenter & had all his anecdotes lined up, though the 1st couple of stories sounded like ghost stories. As far as the supernatural aspect of this goes, I'm skeptical, but he did have some good criticisms of the way patients are typically treated in hospitals. He also had an interesting piece of advice for people undergoing surgery: make yourself a CD of your favorite music for coming out of anesthesia. Apparently music helps ease this transition.

He had a much bigger audience than the much more relevant Eric Alterman last week. He ended his talk with an unusual give-away proposition. He gave us a secret code that, along with a book receipt number, allows the buyer of his book to download a bonus chapter about getting the most out of one's doctor.

Eric Alterman at Stacey's

Wednesday, March 26th

I spent part of my lunch hour at Stacey's Books & heard Eric Alterman talk about his new book Why We’re Liberals. Mr. Alterman is very much the New York intellectual. He started out by digressing wildly about Finland, a country he recently visited & found "very cool". There is no private education there. It's not possible to buy an education that's better than anyone else's. & if Bill Gates got pulled over for a traffic violation, he might have to pay $80,000, since fines are not a set amount but instead based on a percentage of income. Good idea, eh?

The book seems to be a critique of how liberalism has failed in the popular culture. I didn't realize that "liberal" had become such a dirty word. Politicians reject the label, as do voters, even though issue by issue most people in fact agree with the liberal stance. The preferred label nowadays is "progressive".

By Mr. Alterman's definition, liberals "embrace the legacy of the Enlightenment". Plus they hold the belief that government should step in where the market does not allocate resources well. Conservatives say, "You're on your own."

Conservatives have successfully gotten the liberal label associated in a negative way with issues that they don't want to address, such as universal health care, unions & the role of religion in stem cell research. Mr. Alterman partly blames liberals themselves for not defending their beliefs better.

Other problems he calls "God's fault". For instance, conservatives spread themselves out, while liberals are concentrated in cities. So states with small populations have disproportionate influence. A vote in Wyoming or Alaska counts more than one from California.

In Mr. Alterman's view, Bush won in 2004 because people didn't trust liberals on security. Even though more people thought that the war was having a negative impact on the nation, they also thought that Bush would do a better job at security than a liberal.

It was nice to drop in on such a smart discussion. The crowd was definitely larger than usual & asked well-informed questions.

Gustavo Dudamel leads the SF Symphony

Gustavo Dudamel, conductor
Kirill Gerstein, piano

Rachmaninoff Piano Concerto No. 1
Stravinsky The Firebird

The 26 year old Gustavo Dudamel is rapidly becoming a major phenomenon. His 1st appearance with the San Francisco Symphony has been sold out for months, & any returns that came in went right back out. I was excited to attend & be part of the buzz.

Obviously on this program the Firebird is the main event, but 1st came the Rachmaninoff Concerto. Before Mr. Gerstein came on stage, I was a little worried for him. The orchestra was huge, & it looked like he was going to have a tough time competing with it. However, Gerstein turns out to be a piano playing machine, & his sound is heavy enough to hear against the full orchestra. He gave an athletic performance which earned him a scattered standing ovation.

The Stravinsky was Dudamel's chance to show off. This is a flashy piece. It required 3 harps on stage! If Dudamel had simply pulled out all the stops & gone fast & furious, the audience would have loved it. Instead, he gave a surprisingly controlled reading. He challenged the orchestra to sustain expansive tempos in some of the slower, atmospheric episodes. The result was restrained & musical.

The orchestral balances were excellent. Even during the big climaxes with the whole orchestra playing, I could discern individual sections. Dudamel made seemless transitions between the numbers. It seemed like one whole instead of individual pieces.

He definitely inspires a sense of unanimity from the orchestra. They all played as one under him. There was so some nice solo playing as well. I especially enjoyed William Bennett's gorgeous oboe solos.

Dudamel looks great on the podium. He makes fluid movements with his entire body that are as expressive as a dancer's. In fact he looked like a dancer a lot of the time. A couple of times he was even jumping up & down. & to make it all the more impressive, he conducted the entire Firebird confidently without a score. Unsurprisingly Dudamel received an immediate standing ovation. During the long ovation, he amusingly made the orchestra turn around & acknowledge applause from people in the terrace seats. My concert companion rightly commented, "What's not to like?"

La Rondine at the Castro

The San Francisco Opera has also gotten into the HD arena, so I was at the Castro Theatre Monday night to see last season's production of La Rondine. As at most evenings at the Castro, someone was there to play the organ before the show. I questioned the appropriateness of doing this before an opera, but we did get a pleasant medley of operetta & opera tunes as well as the traditional "San Francisco".

The experience is pretty similar to the Met HD Broadcasts. It's full of close-ups that make you feel like you're sitting on the stage with the singers, who are all dramatically convincing. There were no hosted segments or backstage features, which was fine by me. The sound seemed to lag behind the image just a fraction, so I think there was a slight synchronization problem. The audio balance sometimes seemed out of whack. For example, during a number in Act II a glockenspiel rang out louder than anything every time it was played.

This was my 1st time encountering La Rondine. It's sort of a collision between La Boheme, La Traviata & Die Fledermaus. I thoroughly enjoyed the opera & this production. I wish I had seen it live. The production tells the story in a straight-forward way, free of directorial concept, except for updating it to the 1920s. The gorgeous art-deco sets & costumes turn out to be a good fit for Puccini's glittering orchestration.

This production was clearly a star vehicle for the attractive, long-limbed Angela Gheorghiu. She has a high, bright voice & an openly sensual stage presence. During a lull in Act I she takes off her shoes & messages her legs & reclines suggestively over the arm of a sofa. She is constantly in motion, & on the big screen this at times translated on the big screen into a distracting restlessness. Anna Christy gave a great character performance as the pert maid Lisette. Misha Didyk sounded forceful & acted well, though his sound is not very Italian. Phillip Skinner sounded solid in the thankless but necessary role of Rambaldo. Ion Marin's conducting was lush & romantic. He's also got great hair.

We were a very enthusiastic Castro audience, applauding at the curtain calls as if we were there in the opera house. Of all the operacasts I've seen so far, I had the most fun at this one.

Peter Grimes in HD

Saturday, March 15, 2008
The Metropolitan Opera HD Live
PETER GRIMES Benjamin Britten

Conductor Donald Runnicles
Production John Doyle
Set Designer Scott Pask
Costume Designer Ann Hould-Ward
Lighting Designer Peter Mumford

Hobson Dean Peterson
Swallow John Del Carlo
Peter Grimes Anthony Dean Griffey
Mrs. Sedley Felicity Palmer
Ellen Orford Patricia Racette
Auntie Jill Grove
Bob Boles Greg Fedderly
Balstrode Anthony Michaels-Moore
Rev. Horace Adams Bernard Fitch
First Niece Leah Partridge
Second Niece Erin Morley
Ned Keene Teddy Tahu Rhodes
Boy Logan William Erickson
Villagers Roger Andrews, David Asch, Kenneth Floyd, David Frye, Jason Hendrix, Mary Hughes, Robert Maher, Timothy Bresse Miller, Jeffrey Mosher, Richard Pearson,
Mark Persing, Mitchell Sendrowitz, Daniel Clark Smith, Lynn Taylor, Joseph Turi

I got to the Westfield Mall at 9:45am, way before the broadcast start of 10:30am. There was already a line waiting to get into the theater, which hadn't opened its doors yet. & this for an opera that I would consider a hard sell!

I've never heard this opera before, so the things that made an immediate impression on me were the descriptive sea music & the climactic 3rd act chorus. I found the characters to be a uniformly unpleasant bunch. I don't buy the concept of the ambiguity of Peter Grimes's guilt. He is negligent, abusive & a menace. The problem is that no one has a good way to deal with him.

Musically this sounded like a terrific production. It was fun to see our own Donald Runnicles in the pit. He gave a lot of shape to the music. In his intermission interview, he praised this opera for its pictorial & psychological qualities. The sweet-voiced Anthony Dean Griffey displayed complete identification with his character. Felicity Palmer gave the best & funniest acting performance as the addled & gossipy Mrs. Sedley. Teddy Tahu Rhodes seems to have a commanding & powerful voice.

The production style is abstract & at odds with the more naturalist music & action. The flat set & static staging probably aren't well-suited for a broadcast presentation. Perhaps seeing those walls move back & forth works better in the theater.

A wild-eyed Natalie Dessay was the broadcast host. There was one nice intermission feature that went live to Aldeburgh, where the opera is set & where Britten lived. A presenter stood outside the local cinema where people were watching the broadcast. Must have been interesting to be in that theater & watching a live segment showing the theater you are in!

Eugene Brancoveanu

Eugene Brancoveanu, baritone
John Parr, piano

GERALD FINZI: Let us Garlands Bring
SCHUMANN: Dichterliebe
RAVEL: Don Quichotte à Dulcinée
Nebbia (encore)

Early Wednesday evening I had a rare opportunity to hear art songs in the type of small setting for which they were originally written. There were about 70 of us squeezed into a salon next to the bar in the Hotel Rex. In this little room Brancoveanu was accompanied by the self-effacing John Parr on a baby grand. For me it was a privilege to hear this singer in such an intimate venue. Since one passes through the bar to get to the salon, many members of the audience sat down with glasses of wine. A lady in front of me had a margarita.

Brancoveanu is young, charming & immediately likable. In the first set of songs by Finzi he demonstrated clear diction in English & made the contrasting moods of each song distinct. He is also a great actor. He made it easy for me to follow the emotional path of Schumann's Dichterliebe. He went quickly from innocent joy into bitterness & sarcasm, then to an angry & then a calm despair. Even though he did the rest of the program from memory, he grabbed a score for Aus alten Märchen. He had a lot of fun with the Ravel Don Quichotte songs, hamming it up tastefully as a wide-eyed happy drunk in the final number.

I like the full sound of his low notes. He sings with a lot of control. Even when he was making a lot of sound, it seemed like he could do even more. He ended his encore with a couple of thrillingly big high As. In that small room, it was something you felt physically as well as heard.

This was mini-recital with about an hour of music. Afterwards, Brancoveanu did a brief Q & A session. We learned that his voice changed when he only 9. He claimed to be able to do a high B-flat in the cadenza of Figaro's aria in Barber. He can sing both Mozart's Figaro & Rossini's Figaro, which is apparently unusual. He talked about doing Baz Luhrmann's Broadway-style La Boheme. He had to develop a new stage technique for Luhrmann, which he thinks has served him well, as opera is becoming more cinematic & more realistic in its acting style.

Even though the recital had started at 6:3pm, it was the high point of my evening. Not so for the people seated behind me. As soon as Brancoveanu finished his encore, the woman behind me stood & announced to her party, "& now we go to dinner!"

SF Opera broadcasts at the Castro

A co-worker just forwarded this announcement that there will be SF Opera broadcasts at the Castro Theatre. The schedule is a bit odd, as they are all Mondays. Who's going to be there on a Monday at 11:30am?

Bad Reviews for Doyle's Peter Grimes

I've already come across 2 pans in the print media for John Doyle's direction of Peter Grimes at the Met. I'm not a Benjamin Britten fan, but the chapter on him in Alex Ross's book made me feel inadequate in this regard, so I'm planning on checking out the Met broadcast of this event. Or should I?

Wall Street Journal: A Staging Better Heard Than Seen

San Francisco Chronicle: Runnicles energizes Met's 'Grimes'

Comics Reading

On Saturday night I was in the standing part of the standing room only crowd at Vince & Pete's Three Dollar Bill Cafe. Prism Comics was sponsoring an evening of comics readings by local cartoonists, coinciding with WonderCon. The event was well-attended by a supportive & knowledgeable crowd, & I had fun time.

A wall-mounted LCD showed images from the comics while each creator read, making it a multi-media event.

Justin Hall (True Travel Tales) read from his very silly Glamazonia series & from a made-up dysfunctional family history.

Mari Naomi (Estrus Comics) provided a humorous narration to a series of woodcut-style images that revealed what a bad date she can be.

In the truest moment of the evening, Brian Andersen (So Super Duper) was so proud to share with us his labor-of-love comic that he got choked up & nearly cried.

Paige Braddock (Jane's World) gave us a teaser of the new volume of her strip Jane's World. I'm tempted to read this one just to find out more about "The Vegan Menance". Braddock was sporting a very cool varsity jacket with Snoopy fighting the Red Baron on the back of it. I had no idea that she is in fact the creative director for Peanuts licensing. According to David Michaelis's recent biography, Charles Schulz had his stroke right outside her office, & she helped Schulz prepare the final Peanuts cartoon.

Andy Hartzell (Fox Bunny Funny) solved the challenge of "reading" from his wordless graphic novel by providing a sound track for it instead. Someone vamped on the guitar while Hartzell supplied sound-effects in the manner of a foley artist.

Tommy Roddy (Pride High) directed a multi-accented cast of 10 or so & made the experience of reading his super-hero comic like watching a Saturday morning cartoon.

This was billed as a "Queer Comics" event, but there was gratifyingly little else that the presenters seemed to have in common. Each cartoonist had a distinct artistic as well as personal style. Each also put obvious thought into his or her presentation, with the result that this came close to being an evening of performance art as well. Super Duper!

(If you look real hard, you can see me in the crowd at the Three Dollar Bill Cafe.)

The Diving Bell & the Butterfly

On Saturday afternoon I was at the Kabuki Theater to see Julien Schnabel's The Diving Bell & the Butterfly, the French movie based on Jean-Dominique Bauby's memoir of locked-in syndrome. This is one of those movies that people seem a little reluctant to see, one of those I-have-to-be-in-the-right-mood kind of movies.

Before I read the book, I expected to feel mostly pity for the author. Yet instead I also felt like he was having a full & very human experience. The movie is faithful to the spirit of the book in this way.

The movie is very beautiful & very French. It starts out being entirely from the point of view of the main character, paralyzed but for his left eye. It has a nice way of continually transitioning to a 3rd person omniscient view point. For example, it isn't until towards the end of the film that see what Jean-Do's physical condition looks like. Along the way, we get a philosophical essay about just how much in human relations occurs just in the mind.

The movie also boasts an incredible cameo by Max von Sydow. He plays the frailty of old age so movingly that it is nearly unwatchable.

Blomstedt Conducts Mozart

Mozart Divertimento in D major
Mozart Piano Concerto No. 22
Mozart Symphony No. 38, Prague

Herbert Blomstedt, conductor
Jonathan Biss, piano

I wanted to hear Blomstedt during his 2 week visit with the SF Symphony, so last Wednesday I made it to his all-Mozart program. Sadly the hall looked only half full. I suppose it was because the line-up looked so square. However, Blomstedt rarely disappoints, & he led a stylistically impeccable performance with apparent ease.

The Divertimento was played by a very pared-down ensemble (5 1st violins, 4 2nd violins, 3 violas, 2 cellos, 2 double basses, 2 horns, oboe) & featured William Bennett's mellifluous oboe sound. The result was deft & light. The audience embarrassed itself by not being able to count movements & applauding one movement early. However, it is an easy mistake to make, as that final march movement is certainly out of place. Blomstedt humorously cued the correct applause point when it was over.

Jonathan Biss is a new name to me. He's very young, only 27, & very self-assured. His playing was very even, rapid, tasteful & restrained. He's a good match for Blomstedt's highly controlled style. To me, Mozart's piano concertos are his most characteristic works, & the searching slow movement of this one is a truly profound thing. I also enjoyed the wonderful wind band sections that emerge from the orchestral accompaniment.

The performance of the Symphony displayed many of Blomstedt's well-known mannerisms: perfect balances between sections, an over-refined, almost thin, string sound, & a clear sense of the over-all structure of the piece. He did not feel the need to use a baton or to stand on a podium. & for each piece but the concerto the score on his music stand remained unopened.

This might not have been one of the more exciting or emotional concerts I've been too, but I left knowing that I'd heard Mozart played truly well.

The Metropolitan Opera in HD Live

Manon Lescaut – Puccini
Conductor James Levine; Karita Mattila, Marcello Giordani, Dwayne Croft, Dale Travis

I'm used to sleeping in on weekends, so it was a bit of an effort to make it to the 10:00am Live from the Met HD broadcast on Saturday. This is too early for opera. I was surprised at how full the theater already was at 9:30am. I had to sit in the last row to be anywhere near the center. The audience was mostly middle-aged couples, so it doesn't look like these broadcasts are bringing in new audiences for opera.

I have to say that the show is very slickly produced. It's a different experience from seeing a live opera performance. It's amazing how close you get to the singers. Often their faces fill the entire screen. Viewers who get used to this style of presentation will probably be disappointed when they attend a live performance; they will feel very distant from the action.

In this cast Dale Travis as Geronte came across the best in this medium. He is a terrific actor & singer & commanded my attention whenever he was on-screen. Mattila is also a great actress, & the dramatic physicality of her performance came through especially strong in her protracted 4th act death scene.

& of course the Met orchestra led by Levine always sounds fantastic. Often I was listening to the orchestra more than to the singers.

The intermission features where Rene Fleming interviews harried performers just as they getting on or off stage are embarrassing. But I liked seeing the scene changes from backstage & hearing that control-desk guy cue James Levine. I also like the count-down clock to the end of the intermission. Now this would be a good feature to have at the actual opera house during intermission!

I will probably go to other broadcasts, but perhaps I'll be more likely to attend the repeat screenings that start at noon the next day. I'm interested in the Tristan, but even a Wagnerite like me isn't going to be up to it at 9 in the morning!

Bang On a Can Marathon

I was very curious to check out the open house Saturday at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts & especially the free performances by the Bang on a Can All-Stars. As things turned out, I didn't have the time for this I wanted that day. The only thing I know about Bang on a Can is that they look like the hip future of classical music music. All I can say from the two and a half pieces I heard is that they give technically proficient & no doubt stylistically correct performances of new music. There were a lot of wires & hardware strewn about the stage, & all the music I heard had electronic amplification, which I tired of quickly.

William Vollman at Stacey's

Friday I spent part of my lunch hour at Stacey's Bookstore to see William Vollmann read from his new book Riding Toward Everywhere. Riding the rails is something I associate with Depression Era hobos, so I had no idea that people still did it today. The excerpt he read displayed the somewhat contradictory elements of romanticism, intellectual detachment, & Saga-like dry humor. Vollmann comes across in person as straight-thinking & direct, as very American. Someone, perhaps indiscreetly, asked if he paid people in the book for their stories. Vollmann replied that he did, "5 to 20".

How Good People Turn Evil

Last Tuesday, February 5th, I was at the JCC SF to hear Philip Zimbardo lecture on "How Good People Turn Evil". He gave a 90 minute talk, to an audience of about 400, based on his book The Lucifer Effect. Zimbardo is responsible for the infamous Stanford Prison Experiment, which demonstrated the extent to which situation, not personality, affected the expression of sadistic behavior. The parallel to Abu Ghraib is inescapable.

Zimbardo came to the podium wearing a black T-shirt with a devil design on it. His talk was part theology, part history, part psychology, & part inspirational message. He quoted Milton as readily as he cited academic studies. His belief in the importance of his topic was unquestionable, & he came across as a very compassionate person.

Zimbardo is an entertaining & humorous speaker, but there was plenty of rough stuff as well. He showed more Abu Ghraib photos beside the few well-circulated by the mass media. He drew comparisons to the trophy photos of lynchings, of which he had many chilling examples. We also saw pages from a Nazi children's comic book showing Jews being kicked out of town. The basic insight is that there exists in each of us the potential for evil behavior, & this potential can be realized by particular circumstances.

But after this hard lesson, he ended on a hopeful note. He gave examples of "everyday heroes" who stand as paradigms of the good side of our nature. We can all be everyday heroes as easily as we can be devils.

Partner For Life

On my recent trip through the Castro Muni Metro station, it was impossible not to notice that all the ad space was taken by posters for a Web site called partnerforlife.com. I suppose it's an upscale Internet dating service for gay men. It's a pretty slick campaign. Pictures of happy male couples with tag lines like "First dates are great. First anniversaries are better" & "Cruising is great. A copilot is better." They do a good job making determinedly single guys like me feel insecure.

Retro-Castro

I heard that the Castro neighborhood had been dressed to look like how it was in the late 70's, for the filming of a movie about Harvey Milk. Yesterday during my lunch I took the Muni Metro over there to check it out. It didn't look like they were filming anything at that time, so there wasn't much to see. The most obvious thing is the bright red & yellow paint job given to the Castro Theater signs. It looks like the facade of a carnival fun house. Was it really like that back in the 70's?



Search flickr for Harvey Milk Movie to find lots of cool pictures of the filming.

Myung-Whun Chung's Mahler Mishap

I didn't witness this one myself, but Myung-Whun Chung actually had to have a do-over of the final bars of the 1st movement of Mahler 1 at his recent SF Symphony concert. Very surprising considering that this is a pretty standard part of the repertoire nowadays. Joshua Kosman's review describes an under-rehearsed performance. Civic Center blog, however, loved it, miscue included.

American Bach Soloists: Christmas Oratorio

Sunday night I heard the American Bach Soloists perform Bach's Christmas Oratorio at St. Mark's Lutheran Church. This light & airy venue could hardly be more appropriate for this concert.

I have to confess that initially I had my doubts, since the Christmas Oratorio is really 6 separate cantatas intended to be performed on different days from Christmas to Epiphany. I didn't even know you could perform them all in one program. It's a lot of notes! The concert took 3 hours, but it was great. First of all, this is some of the most optimistic, positive & healthy music ever written. The performance itself was technically very clean, with some outstanding soloists. One had a sense of this being a gathering of very fine virtuosi.

There was only 1 instrumentalist per part, so it's a very small ensemble. 4 female singers faced off against 4 male singers on either side of the orchestra. The soprano Abigail Hanes Lennox has a high shimmering voice & is an effective actress. She made every one of her numbers into a complete dramatic scene. The soprano Yulia Van Doren makes a large, liquid sound. Mezzo Sonia Gariaeff also has a large, solid voice.

Tenor Derek Chester should have brought down the house with his terrific breath control & exactness in the thrilling coloratura aria "Frohe Hirten, eilt". Tenor Aaron Sheehan did an amazing job as a clear-toned Evangelist. He had no problem with all those high A's, & he topped it all by taking on the final tenor aria "Num mögt ihr stolzen Feinde schreken". This angular & pointed aria must be taxing, especially after all that declamatory singing, but Sheehan dispatched it with seeming ease. I also got to hear my favorite singer from the previous concert, baritone Jesse Blumberg, who makes a beautiful, large & clear sound.

I liked Debra Nagy, playing both oboe & oboe d'amore. She's a very musical performer & makes a nice sound on these extremely nasal instruments. John Thiessen gave a completely confident & clean reading of the virtuoso trumpet part.

Oddly, I never felt like I got a good sense of Jeffrey Thomas's personality as a conductor. I liked that his tempos were not uniformly brisk, as is often the case with HIP groups. But he often seemed to be doing little more than directing traffic & making ritards at the ends of numbers. Perhaps his talent is bring together talented musicians & allowing them to do their best.

It was also a pleasure to be with such an appreciative audience. The house was full, & because of all the colds going around, I was prepared to hear a lot of coughing. Incredibly, this attentive audience never coughed or displayed restlessness. You could feel that people were really listening to the music. There was only applause after the 1st half & at the very end. This respectful attitude of the audience, as much as the fine performance, made this a very satisfying evening.

Tom Dolby at Books Inc.

I dropped into the Books Inc. on Market Street (formerly A Clean Well-Lighted Place for Books) for the advertised "Book Launch Party" for Tom Dolby's new novel The Sixth Form. I actually had read his first novel, The Trouble Boy. This first book totally fed into my fantasies about living & working in New York, though the world it describes is totally different from the kind of life I would imagine for myself.

Anyway, Dolby knows how to throw a book party. I snagged a generous glass of white wine & ate some hors d'oeuvres. & since he is the son of local rich guy Ray Dolby, I was in very prosperous company for about an hour. It reminded me very much of the crowd round the bar at Davies Hall just before a performance.

Sudhir Venkatesh at Stacey's

I spent part of my lunch at Stacey's Bookstore & saw Sundhir Venkatesh talk about his new book Gang Leader for a Day. He's a sociology professor who's written a couple of books about a 5 year period he spent hanging out with a street gang in a Chicago housing project. He had a lot of interesting things to say. To
him, the underground economy he was studying is a real "free market". There's no enforceable contracts, government regulations or corporate bailouts. It's actually rational for his subjects not to plan for the future. There are a lot of angles to what he's doing. He has a quiet but strong physical presence. I wished the event were longer so that he could talk more.

Thin is In; Science is a Bust

I got an exhibits pass for the MacWorld Expo at Moscone Center just so I could handle the absurdly thin MacBook Air. Yet another object of desire from Apple. It's very light, & the edges taper, making it seem even sleeker. Its lack of an optical drive would seem to limit its practicality, but I think this is the way of the future. No need for CDs or DVDs; everything is available from the cloud. With the Time Capsule backup appliance, you even backup wirelessly.

After the show, I took Muni out to Potrero Hill, hoping to check out the Ask a Scientist event at the Axis Cafe. However, even though I got there a good 20 minutes before the official start of the event, the place was already turning into a zoo. Clearly, all the seats had been staked out way ahead of time. People were standing around 2 or 3 deep, the line for food & drinks was out the door, & more people were continuing to arrive. I decided to bail on this one, even though I think the concept is excellent.

Best of 2007

Looking back on the past year, here's the stuff that I would have really regretted missing: First & foremost would be the production of Intimate Exchanges at the Brits Off Broadway festival in New York. I read about this wacky multiple-paths play many years ago, but I never thought that I'd actually get an opportunity to see it. Gustavo Dudamel & The Simón Bolívar Youth Orchestra of Venezuela lived up to the hype & then some. I could have seen The Simpsons Movie any time & now on DVD, but seeing it with an opening night audience made it a true event. & exciting for me personally was going to Berkeley to see Alex Ross & have him sign my copy of his much-anticipated book.

I felt very fortunate that the SF MOMA had the comprehensive Joseph Cornell exhibit. I'm now at a new level of appreciation for this reticent artist. I was also very glad to see & hear 2 of my favorite performers, Radu Lupu & Emmanual Pahud, in top form. Then there was Susan Graham's powerful performance in Iphigénie. I got introduced to 2 performers new to me & whom I look forward to hearing again: András Schiff & Marino Formenti.

& since we're still sort of in the holiday mood, I have to say that I still grin when I think about Mark Morris's dancing snowflakes.

SF Opera at the Movies

SF Opera is going to be following the Met into movie theaters: S.F. Opera productions headed to movie screens

The Hard Nut

Every year at this time, I read rave reviews about Mark Morris's version of The Nutcracker ballet. It's been a regular event at Cal Performances for several years now. So this year I finally broke down & decided to check it out this past Saturday night.

When you go the SF Ballet's Nutcracker, there are lots of parents with little girls all dressed up. I didn't see any children at this performance, but there must be have been some. There were plenty of restless adults, however. It took the audience quite a while to settle down. During the overture, there was lots of talking & lots of sushing. The woman next to me started yawning as soon as the lights went down, then snored intermittently during the entire 1st act. Surprisingly, she came back for the 2nd act. I guess she had rested up by then.

The production reminds me of the Matthew Bourne versions of classic ballets that I've seen. The music is intact, but the action has been replaced by a modern story that still references the original scenario. There is a strong sense of parody. The Christmas party of the 1st scene takes place in a comic strip version of the 1960s. The opening image is of kids watching cartoons on TV. There's an artificial tree, a hostess on tranquillizers & guests doing the limbo.

The party scene is more acting then dancing, & there is more going on than you can follow. The dancers are all great actors as well. One of the guests was a hilarious would-be lothario with curly hair & long sideburns. I discovered in a review I read later that this was Mark Morris himself.

The Dance of the Snow Flakes that ends the 1st act is the highlight of the show & worth the price of admission by itself. Instead of ballerinas doing wispy pirouettes while fake snow wafts down from the rafters, the corps de ballet provides its own snow storm by tossing handfuls of confetti in choreographed patterns while executing athletic leaps. The result is like a fireworks show. I actually let out a whoop at the climax. It's such a clever idea that you wonder why no one has ever done this before.

This number is choreographed for both male & female dancers, dressed identically & doing the same steps. This exemplified the gender-fluid casting of the show in general. It was only during the intermission that I finally convinced myself that Mrs. Stahlbaum was danced by a man. The female dancer playing the spoiled little brother was also completely convincing.

A truly nice touch was the children's choir that appeared at the side of the stage for the Dance of Snow Flakes to provide the vocal line. I believe that even the SF Ballet uses recorded voices for this.

This finale was so good that during the intermission I was pretty much expecting that the rest of the evening would be a let-down. Fortunately, the 2nd act has a counterpart in the Waltz of the Flowers that was equally fun & joyful, as well as a little bit obscene. Now I know what all the raves are about.

Persepolis Preview at the Kabuki

Wednesday night I was privileged to attend a special San Francisco Film Society screening of Persepolis. A big part of the event was the chance to check out the remodeled Kabuki Theater. It's actually pretty much the same, except that there are now fancy bars on the 2nd & 3rd floors. On the 3rd floor, there is just barely a view of the city lights over the rooftops of the neighboring buildings. I guess the idea is that you can see a movie then adjourn to the bar with your friends to discuss it. It's not clear to me if you have to buy a movie ticket in order to get into the bars, though.

The event was sold out, so naturally the bar was completely overwhelmed. It took a really long time for me to get a glass of Spanish red wine, for which they charged me $6. Not unreasonable.

Before the screening, there was a brief on-stage interview with Marjane Satrapi & Vincent Paronnaud, the directors. The movie is based on Satrapi's Persepolis memoir. Satrapi's appearance was the highlight of the evening. She is a very smart & a very funny woman. There was a comic opposition between her outgoing, out-spoken personality & her co-director's reserved & silent demeanor. Among the concepts she threw out in her answers to questions:

• She dislikes the label "graphic novel" to describe her books, "novel" being a far too bourgeois art form.
• We usually stop drawing by the time we're 10, so we think of drawing as something that belongs to childhood. We can talk about how poetry or music has meaning, but we have no way of talking about how a drawing has meaning. Yet drawing is prior to writing.
• When we think of animation, we tend to think of cartoon rabbits, but animation is not a genre, it's a medium.
• Fanatics know how to push the buttons of people's emotions. They get people to start yelling or be fearful. Any artistic work (which is about asking questions, not providing answers) or intellectual work, therefore, is a work against fanaticism.
• When asked how she had the courage to tell this story, she said that Italo Calinvo says, "I write to express myself without getting interrupted."

As for the movie itself, it is a very direct adaptation of the books, both in the visual style & in the storytelling. If you are familiar with the books, then the movie offers no new information. However, this is no negative criticism. It's a great story experience, showing the tight intertwining of the political, the personal & the familial.

The Great Dictator at the PFA

I'm going to miss the Castro's screening of Chaplin's The Great Dictator this coming Wednesday, but I really wanted to see it, so I went to Berkeley this afternoon for the showing at the PFA. The 1st time I saw this movie many years ago, I enjoyed it much more than I expected to, so I wanted to see if my reaction was still the same, & it pretty much was. Much of the movie is dated & a bit embarrassing now, primarily the scenes with Paulette Godard, & especially the final close-up of her which caps Chaplin's anti-climactic oration.

On the other hand, I think all the funny parts are still really funny. Of course there are the famous back-to-back set pieces of Chaplin dancing with the balloon earth, followed by Chaplin as the barber shaving his customer to Brahms's Hungarian Rhapsody. But right at the start, the opening battle scene is full of great gags: Chaplin's Little Fellow operating a giant cannon & an anti-aircraft gun, then losing an armed grenade down his shirt-sleeve, finally ending up flying upside-down in the cockpit of a crashing plane. Chaplin's first appearance as Hynkel, delivering his faux-German speech, is worth half the price of admission already.

There's plenty of classic slapstick humor at the expense of Hitler & Mussolini, which is funny it itself, though I sometimes have to remind myself that at the time the full horrors of the war were not yet widely known. It is interesting, though, that the movie is very explicit in stating that Hitler's anti-Jewish rhetoric was a way to distract the general population from economic problems.

The turnout at the FPA was not as large as I would have thought. The theater was perhaps a 3rd full. But we were a good audience & laughed at all the right places & were politely quiet through the worst bits.

Justin Hall at the Cartoon Art Museum

I dropped into the Cartoon Art Museum again to see the local phenomenon that is Justin Hall, who was "cartoonist-in-residence" today. I'm still a bit unclear on the concept, but I'm sure that Justin is just the man for the job. He loves to share his knowledge of comics, & he's a guy who can talk with anyone.

Manga Conquers America

Thursday night the Cartoon Art Museum sponsored a talk by Jason Thompson on the publishing history of manga in the U.S. It was a promotional event for his book Manga: The Complete Guide.

The talk got started a half-hour late, & the museum staff was unable to get the speaker's laptop to work with their projector, so Mr. Thompson resorted to flashing his slides at us from this laptop. This technical snafu made the event a bit lame.

Mr. Thompson had quite a long, fact-filled talk. It ran to almost an hour & a half. I'm not a manga reader myself, so this was really too much information for me. However, Mr. Thompson clearly has complete command of his subject area. If the book parallels this talk, then it has some interesting commentary on the manga publishing industry.

This is not to imply that the talk was boring. The history of manga publishing is apparently filled with characters at the margins of social trends. We heard about furries, new age hippies, & adult-movie stars who also draw. I learned that Barefoot Gen, which I've read & admired, was the 1st manga translated into English. It was put out by an anti-war group, not by a comic or manga publisher.

In Thompson's view, the practice of printing manga unflopped, in the right-to-left reading order of Japanese, is more a matter of reducing production costs than preserving artistic integrity.

There was a small group of about 20 who showed up for this event. Many of them seemed to be associates of the speaker. There were also a lot of touchy-feely couples, so maybe this was also your classic cheap date.

Berlioz at the SF Symphony

Berlioz Lélio
Berlioz Symphonie fantastique

Michael Tilson Thomas, conductor
Stanford Olsen, tenor 1
Shawn Mathey, tenor 2
Dwayne Croft, baritone
SFS Chorus

Went to this concert Wednesday night, solely for Lélio, which I had never heard before. Even though Berlioz billed this as a sequel to the Symphonie fantastique, it was programmed first, probably because it is a lighter work overall. In fact, it felt more like a collection of 6 separate pieces rather than a large cohesive work. No matter. The individual pieces were each satisfying on their own.

It starts off charmingly with a tenor soloist accompanied only by the piano. We could be in a 19th century salon. Later, the strings come in with the idée fixe from the Symphonie fantastique, making the linkage explicit. It is a sweet-sounding but sinister song about a siren. Stanford Olsen sang this from within the orchestra, standing next to the piano. The tessitura is pretty high, but I think he hit every note.

Varied movements follow: An eerie chorus; a wild brigands' song; another tenor sings from within the orchestra, this time with harp accompaniment; an orchestral interlude; a choral fantasy, minus bass voices, addressing characters from Shakespeare's The Tempest. It's definitely a mashup, but each piece kept my interest.

There was a sense of uncertainty to the proceedings, as if the performers weren't always sure what was going to happen next. At one point the chorus took several moments to reach a consensus as to whether they were going to sit or stand.

The confusion carried out into the intermission. When I emerged from the auditorium, I was sorely disappointed to discover that none of the reserved drink orders, mine included, had been prepared yet. The harried bartender apologized, explaining that he had been told we weren't going to be let out until 9:00. The short first half let out around 8:45.

The performance of the Symphonie fantastique occupying the 2nd half was recorded live as part of the Keeping Score series. Perhaps 10 cameras were stationed around the orchestra. A long boom camera extended from the terrace directly over the orchestra. Most notable were 2 robotic cameras, one on a vertical stand at the back of the orchestra & the other on a track running along the front of the stage. This one could go back & forth & also rise up to the eye level of the musicians.

During the performance there was plenty of distracting movement from all these devices, though it was also kind of cool to watch. It was clear that there were going to be a lot of motion shots in the finished broadcast. It must be especially difficult for the musicians to pretend to ignore the cameras. The robotic camera in front could maneuver itself to within a couple of feet of a musician's head.

Under this scrutiny, the orchestra sounded like a completely different band in the 2nd half. It was obviously well-rehearsed, & everyone knew exactly what was going to happen next. The sound was brilliant & concise. There was a lot of detail. The bassoon solo in the 4th movement really popped out. I was also impressed by the strong flute solos. They captured a clean performance with a lot of surface sheen.

Chaplin at the Castro

This past Tuesday night I saw 2 programs of Charlie Chaplin films at the Castro. To me, The Kid is Chaplin's first masterpiece. It's a marvel how much emotion he packs into this short film. There's an incredible cinematic moment where The Mother, on her charity rounds, sits on a stoop, cradling a baby. It's clear that she is thinking of the baby that she abandoned at the beginning of the story. Then the door opens behind her & Jackie Coogan appears & then sits down at the opposite side of the screen. At first neither character sees the other, yet each of them is the other's dream. It's a moment rooted in a physical reality, yet it also expresses each character's deep psychological desires. It's such a beautiful moment that it almost always chokes me up. One of the few movie scenes I prefer to watch alone!

I don't think I'd ever seen The Pilgram before. It was surprising that Chaplin does not appear in his Little Tramp guise through most of the movie. Lots of great stuff in this one. The church service must be a classic set piece, as well as the tea party with the incredibly obnoxious child. I recently saw the famous clip of W.C. Fields kicking a little kid, but I had no idea that Chaplin did this gag first! The ending was another terrific surprise, with Chaplin walking off into the distance while straddling the U.S./Mexico border. Politically, times haven't changed.

The final film of the evening was The Gold Rush. Again I was impressed but how many places this movie goes emotionally. It mixes the old-fashion histrionics of the Big Jim character with the realistic & somewhat cynical portrait of Georgia's flirtatious relationship with Jack. The treatment of the Little Tramp by the dance hall girls is just plain cruel. There's a fantastic cinematic moment when Chaplin first appears at the dance hall. He stands in the foreground, with his back to us, while the middle ground & the background are filled with light that shines on dancing, happy people. Visually the scene is beautiful, yet the Little Tramp's isolation is poignant by contrast. & this little scene is capped with the gag of the pretty girl walking warmly towards him, but only to get to her boyfriend behind him.

I'm a big Chaplin fan, so I was very excited to see this show & very disappointed at the sparse turn-out & the very low-key reaction of the audience. Perhaps Chaplin's brand of humanism isn't in sync with our times right now.

Jeff Wall, Olafur Eliasson at SF MOMA

This past Saturday I got to go back to the SF MOMA to see the 2 exhibits I missed on my last visit. Jeff Wall's huge light box photos fill several rooms. Simply by their huge size, they reference the tradition of history painting. Most of the photos are distinctly unsettling. His scene of the grave filled with tide pool creatures is both creepy & beautiful. One gets the sense that there is a lot going on behind each image. Part of the fascination is just trying out how they are done. Is the pictures of wind blowing away a woman's papers staged or constructed?

The Olafur Eliasson installations on the top floor were still fun on a second viewing. The Notion motion, which appears to be an interactive video projection, turn out to be pleasantly low-tech once you are allowed to peek behind the curtain. In the 360º room for all colors, people were tripping themselves out by standing inches from the wall so that their entire field of vision was filled by the glowing wall of color. How can I get a room like this for myself?

Harold & Maude at the Castro

Last night I went to see the showing of the cult classic Harold & Maude at the Castro. They are doing a series of Hal Ashby films. I missed the showing of Being There that went with this one. It was a pretty big crowd for a 9:30pm show on a weeknight. The trailers for Coming Home & Shampoo got a few snickers even before the feature started.

Of course I have seen Harold & Maude before, though this was the 1st time I'd seen it in a long time. I have to say that I remembered pretty much everything. I was glad to see that the movie has aged well. It's still funny & surprising & earnest in all the right places. There's a great moment when the 1st computer date rushes shrieking from the house, & then Harold shares his reaction with the audience. This got the biggest laugh & then applause.

Those 70's clothes & the flower motif are the main things that give away the movie's era. But otherwise I'm not sure that life has really moved on all that much. We're again at war, we've still got problems with conspicuous consumption, interactions with government & bureaucracy are a drag, & some of us sensitive souls are still looking for happiness.

LA Phil "Lite"

A friend who frequents the LA Phil sent me this published description of up-coming concerts by the LA Philharmonic. He notes that even the full-length version of the program only has 63 minutes of music. Light stuff indeed.

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Los Angeles Philharmonic
Nicholas McGegan, conductor
James Galway, flute

Friday, November 30, 2007, 8pm – Casual Fridays

Mozart: Flute Concerto in D, K. 314 (c. 20 minutes)
Mozart: Andante in C for Flute, K. 315 (c. 6 minutes)
Schubert: Symphony No. 4, “Tragic” (c. 30 minutes)

Check online for the latest program information.

Thursday, November 29, 2007, 8pm
Saturday, December 1,
2007, 8pm
Sunday, December 2, 2007, 2pm

Schubert: Overture to The Conspirators (c. 7 minutes)
Mozart: Flute Concerto in D, K. 314 (c. 20 minutes)
intermission
Mozart: Andante in C for Flute, K. 315 (c. 6 minutes)
Schubert: Symphony No. 4, “Tragic” (c. 30 minutes)

Check online for the latest program information.

Don’t miss Upbeat Live (free pre-concert event) in BP Hall with Raymond Knapp, author and Musicology Professor at UCLA.

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The Silence & The Rite at The Castro

The Castro Theatre screened several Bergman classics over the past weeks. Last Tuesday I attended the double feature of The Silence & The Rite. 2 of Bergman's more challenging, films, no doubt about it! I had seen The Silence many years ago as a college student, & I remember being baffled by it & shocked by some of the acts put on the screen. This time around I think I got a bit more out of it. I didn't worry so much about trying to make it a cohesive narrative. Instead I tried to identify with the psychological states of the characters. It's fascinating to watch & still very modern.

Even if the story seems to make no sense at all, there is a lot of arresting imagery. Even from that 1st viewing many years ago, I had strong memories of certain images, such as the little boy staring up at a huge painting of a man attacking a naked woman, or the extended close-ups of upside or side-ways faces.

I had never seen the The Rite & in fact had never even heard of it before. It's a very strange, intensely intimate drama about a troupe of 3 dysfunctional actors & a law-enforcement official who appears to be persecuting or stalking them...I think. There are moments when it's not clear how much of it is supposed to be "real" at all. Maybe it's about Bergman's petty desire to humiliate his critics. The use of sex to express power relationships & to humiliate is a major theme in both movies.

Bergman has tough actors. In both movies the camera is often right in their faces. A Bergman actor has to stand up to a lot of scrutiny!

Slatkin Leads SF Symphony

Haydn: Symphony No. 67 in F Major (1779)
Barber: Piano Concerto, Opus 38 (1962)
Elgar: Enigma Variations, Opus 36 (1899)

Leonard Slatkin, conductor
Garrick Ohlsson, piano

I heard this concert on Friday, as part of my non-shopping Black Friday. This was a really solid evening. Every piece made its point. The Haydn was elegant & witty. The first movement showed off the precision of the string section. Haydn's trick of ending the 2nd movement col legno got a laugh. The 3rd movement has an amusing trio that is played by just the concert master & principal 2nd violinist in a country dance style. After this trio, Slatkin stepped down from the podium & paid a few dollars to each soloist. The 2nd violinist even had a cup ready for the tip! But even without this schtick, I was left with the recognition that this is a great piece & that we all need to hear more Haydn Symphonies.

Garrick Ohlsson produced a large, fluid sound for the virtuoso Barber Concerto. In the 1st & 3rd movement the soloist has to produce flurries of notes, & his playing was always clear & flowing. He seems to be a very efficient player too, dispatching what must be very difficult writing with apparent ease. At one point I thought I saw him do a hand crossing by passing one hand under the other! The 2nd movement is one of those lyrical, suspended stetches of music. This is the composer of the famous Adagio for Strings, after all.

After intermission, we got a solid reading of the Enigma Variations. Everything was in place. Fine solos from the orchestra & exemplary leading from the podium. Slatkin was always comfortably ahead of the orchestra. Often he would give a cue, then step back & let the orchestra play, providing hints rather than trying to direct everything.

My only complaint is with a few members of the audience. I was sitting in the back of the orchestra section. Nearby was a father with his 2 young sons, around 10 years old. One of them, understandable bored, fidgeted constantly, pulled his sweater on & off, found imaginative ways to drape himself over his armrest & otherwise was pretty distracting. Immediately after the Barber they got up & left, & figured they were going home, but they returned for the second half. As the lights went down, I moved several rows down, so I missed the 2nd half of the little boy's performance. However, I ended across the aisle from someone who really needed a tissue but instead spent the whole of the Elgar sniffling.

Joseph Cornell at SF MOMA

Instead of using Black Friday to start my Christmas shopping, I went to the SF MOMA with the intent of checking out the Joseph Cornell retrospective. I was not the only one with this idea. The museum opens at 11:00am, & when I got there at about 5 minutes to, the line to buy tickets was already around the corner. By the time I got my admission & checked my shoulder bag, it was 11:25. The galleries were host to many families & many crying babies. Museums really are mass entertainment now.

The Joseph Cornell exhibit is excellent & truly comprehensive. It's also very large. The works are grouped by themes, though I didn't find this organizing principle very convincing. Works that are very similar, such as the 2 versions of the Pink Palace, end up in different galleries for no clear reason. Besides the well-known boxes, the exhibit contains collages, portfolios, films, graphic design work & even an amusing newspaper parody made for his family.

Cornell's work is very consistent in tone over 3 decades. There's a melancholy sense of the inevitable decay of memory, of the impossibility of preserving experiences & feelings. Taglioni's Jewel Casket (1940) contains artificial ice cubes nestled in a plush jewel chest. An accompanying text tells us how the ice cubes were meant to remind a famous ballerina of an incident where she was waylaid by a Russian highwayman & forced to dance in the snow. The whimsical & romantic tone of the story & the artifact made me think of the Museum of Jurassic Technology.

I did not have time to explore the Olafur Eliasson exhibit, but it's obviously really fun. It starts with an electric fan swinging erratically & dangerously over the heads of visitors in the lobby. People were lined up on the 2nd floor to enter a room chilled to 18 degrees Fahrenheit, containing a frozen car. The top floor is a playland of light. Not to be missed is the room that turns all color into grey values. It's like stepping into the black & white part of The Wizard of Oz.

I also had to skip Jeff Wall's huge light box photos. I left the museum feeling that I need to make a repeat visit soon.

Apple Store Opens on Chestnut Street

Black Friday was opening day for a new Apple Store on Chestnut Street. I now live 3 blocks from an Apple store. I'll probably be in there every day now. It is impressive-looking, no doubt. All stainless steel & glass & bright lighting. & everything looks so tempting. It goes quite far back. & at the back of the store, where one would expect cash registers, there is a genius bar instead. One of employees claimed that they are the first store to have the floating icon.

Coming up at the PFA

The Pacific Film Archive has programs coming up for the 2 greatest film geniuses of the 20th century:

Charles Chaplin
Ingmar Bergman: Light and Shadow

Masters of Origami

On Saturday afternoon I ventured outside the City to Alameda's K Gallery at Rhyhmics Cultural Works to see an exhibit of local origami artists. I've been doing origami as a hobby ever since my grandma taught me as a kid. In my lifetime I've seen it change from a craft into a full-fledged art form, meriting its own museum exhibitions. The gallery was hosting a standing-room-only class led by Bernard Peyton & Peter Engel. Even though we were led through simple models, I found it quite challenging just to fold in the air. I got to talk with Peter Engel afterwards, & it turns out that there is a whole aesthetic to folding in the air vs. on a flat surface.

Anyway, many of the models on display are astounding. Vicky Mihara's connected cranes are simply insane. & I have to take it on trust that Robert Lang's sharp-edged, multi-limbed arthropods really are folded from a single uncut sheet of square paper.

A few pictures from the exhibit:

Emmanuel Pahud

Emmanuel Pahud, flute
Eric Le Sage, piano

Thursday, November 15, 8:00 pm
Herbst Theatre

REINECKE: Sonata, Undine, Op. 167
BRAHMS: Sonata No. 1 for Flute and Piano in F Minor, Op. 120, No. 1
WIDOR: Suite, Op. 34
STRAUSS: Sonata in E-flat Major, Op. 18

ENCORE:
SCHUMANN: No. 2 Lebhaft, leicht & No. 3 Rasch und mit Feuer from Fantasiestucke Op.73

I first heard Pahud at another Herbst Theatre recital a few years ago, & I was completely swept away by his playing. I felt like he could have switched to tissue paper & a comb & would still have gotten something out of it. I went around saying that he was a musician who transcended his instrument, but this really didn't explain anything. So I was really looking forward to hearing him again & starting to figure out what impressed me so much.

For the 1st half of his program I was again totally absorbed in the music. Pahud played the Reinecke with a light, fluid tone. He demonstrated incredible nuance & control at the end of the quiet movements, when his sound drifted away to silence. When he started the Brahms he had a different sound that was heavier & fuller. It was like he had returned to the stage with a different instrument.

The Widor was the virtuoso show-stopper of the evening. One of the distinctive features of Pahud's playing is his breathing. This piece has lots of extended runs & long phrases, & time & again he would pass up perfectly good opportunities to take a breath. He can keep his sound going without a break through extremely long passages with lots of notes. As a result, I was left feeling breathless!

The Strauss gave Pahud a chance to really wail on the flute, if such a thing is possible. He unleashed a lot of sound, seeming to take the flute to its dynamic limit. In other words, he can be really loud!

Obviously I think Pahud is a very special performer. He communicates so well musically, & he is so at ease. I think the flute is an awkward instrument, but he looks very comfortable on stage. He also comes across as a nice guy. Before announcing his encore he politely thanked us for our patience & kindness.

Animation Shorts

I returned to the SF International Animation Festival last Saturday for 2 of the shorts programs.

Best of Annecy 2007
Shaun the Sheep “Still Life” (Sadler Christopher, England, 7 min) -- Hilarious Aardman clay animation skit about a farmer's day out with an easel & paints. One clever joke after another. Completely in the style of Wallace & Gromit. In fact the sheep dog with an iPod even looks like a beady-eyed Gromit.
Beton (Michael Faust, Ariel Belinco, Israel, 6 min) -- Absurdist political commentary about the wall in Israel. A military post takes extreme measures to shoot down a kite appearing above the wall.
Welcome to White Chapel District (Marie Viellevie, France, 5 min) -- This one I did not get. A recitation of the grisly deeds of Jack the Ripper illustrated with crude schematics & stop-motion photography.
Devochka Dura (Zojya Kireeva, Russia, 7 min) -- Humorous vignettes about a decidedly individual pre-school girl trying to get the attention of one of her classmates. Animated in loose, fluid pencil drawings.
The Pearce Sisters (Luis Cook, England, 9 min) -- Gruesome tale of 2 sisters leading a hard, isolated life on the English coast. Nasty events ensue when a shipwrecked sailor is rescued from the sea. Clearly meant to be humorously macabre, this is the kind of story that only animation can make palatable.
Premier Voyage (Grégoire Sivan, France, 10 min) Charming clay animation recounting a new father's train journey with his 10-month old daughter. Very philosophical & very French voice-over by the bemused dad.
The Runt (Andreas Hykade, Germany, 10 min) -- Sinister & unrelentingly cruel coming-of-age story told in a visually pared-down & abstract style.
t.o.m. (Tom Brown, Daniel Benjamin Gray, England, 3 min) -- Off-beat vignette about a school boy's peculiar & ritualistic journey from home to school. The traditional cel-animation look of the piece sets us up for a puzzling punch line. Narration, character & animation all work together here.
Méme les Pigeons Vont au Paradis (Samuel Torneux, France, 9 min) -- Satirical story about a country priest in France racing with death for the soul of an old man. In the end, death appears to be the only honest man around. Looks like it was 3-D computer animated. Slapstick but with a surprising moment of gore at the end.

I like programs like this, each short in a different style & from a different country, & each one having a punch at the end. When the lights came up after the last one, I was sorry that the program was over already.

Maker’s Dozen
Raymond (Bif, France, 5 min) -- Stop-motion animation of a live actor who is put through his paces as a human guinea pig being treated with substances that affect his locomotion in abrupt ways. It's extreme slap-stick.
Sleeping Betty (Claude Cloutier, Canada, 10 min) -- Satirical take on the fairy tale, drawn in a rich children's story book style. The animator's sense of humor is very particular, & it took me a little time to start getting the jokes. It's sort of a Mad Magazine look at the story. This animator was at the screening. His film took 5 years to do!
Sundance Forgetfulness (Julian Grey, Canada, 2 min) -- A voice-over about the impossibility of retaining experience, illustrated by live-action film clips in which major visual elements have been whited-out, perhaps by hand.
How She Slept at Night (Lilli Carre, USA, 4 min) -- I didn't get this one at all. In the voice-over a man recounts memories of his wife. This is illustrated with lightly animated drawings. The content repeats 3 times with minor variations.
One D (Mike Grimshaw, Canada, 5 min) -- Taking graphic design to an extreme, a night out at the movies is depicted in a world where everything is no more than a one-dimensional line.
Naked (Sex) (Mischa Kamp, Netherlands, 6 min) -- A real-audio interview with a young person (a pre-teen perhaps?) about his close-calls with sex is illustrated with crude, perhaps rotoscoped, drawings. Maybe it's just me & where I am in my life, but I find this kind of content completely uninteresting.
The Forest in Winter (Jake Portman, Bill Sneed, England/USA, 5 min) -- A crazed mash-up of Little Red Riding Hood in an artsy Soviet style, complete with stilted Russian voice-over, & a loud Japanese snack food commercial. It's a sensory assault, but I have no idea what the point was.
Lovesport: Paintballing (Grant Orchard, England, 2 min) -- A paintball war animated in the style of an early video game. Each skirmish ratchets up the level of violence, though the players are only rendered as abstract geometric shapes. It's just one joke, but it's brief.
Today (Jerry Van De Beek, Betsy De Fries, USA, 2 min) -- TV spot illustrating a joyful Billie Collins poem.
Pingpongs (George Gendi, England, 6 min) -- This one I didn't quite get. Real audio conversation between an elderly husband & wife, full of inanities & knowing pauses, illustrated by crude line drawings of their heads.
Wolf Daddy (Chang Hyung-Yun, South Korea, 10 min) -- Hilarious dead-pan parody of an anime feature film. I'm not an anime fan, but this film is so absurd that even I could recognize the targets of the jokes. There's an over-sized but benign animal, an innocent child, & the continual unexplained juxtapositions of the fantastical with the mundane.
Madame Tutli-Putli (Chris Lavis, Maciek Szczerbowski, Canada, 17 min) Creepy scenario about a woman who takes a nightmarish train journey symbolizing the end of her life. Scary imagery & animated puppets with eerily life-like eyes create a paranoid vision of the world. The animators were present at the screening, & in the Q & A they revealed the secret: Real eyes were filmed & composited into the stop-motion animation. It took 4 years!
Court Order—In Memoriam Peter Mansfeld (Zoltan Szilagyi Varga, Hungary, 8 min) -- A reading of the official documentation of the trial & execution of a political prisoner, illustrated with minimal animation of black & white drawings. I found this one difficult to appreciate. While the subject is clearly important, I wasn't sure how the animation was supporting the story.

This program wasn't as strong as the 1st one, but Madame Tutli-Putli is not to be missed. Interestingly, at the end of the program, the animators remarked that the film isn't as dark as it appeared at the screening. My impression is that the projection method used for the program made everything too dark. I don't know how the program was projected, but it was not film. It may have been video instead.

Alex Ross at Google

There's a YouTube video of Alex Ross being the Sister Wendy of classical music. How often do you hear Stravinsky being compared to Madonna?

The Magic Flute at SF Opera

Tamino: Piotr Beczala
Pamina: Dina Kuznetsova
Papageno: Christopher Maltman
The Queen of the Night: Erika Miklósa
Sarastro: Georg Zeppenfeld

Conductor: Donald Runnicles
Original Production: Sr Peter Hall
Director: Stanley M Garner
Designer: Gerald Scarfe

I was at the last performance of this opera last Saturday evening, in one of the best seats in the house: front row, grand tier. Musically I was very satisfied. Runnicles's tempos tend to be fast, though I never felt that he was rushing through things. I heard great flute & oboe solos from the pit. The cast was uniformly strong & consistent. The stand-out of the evening was Erika Miklósa as the Queen of Night. Her voice is lighter than one would expect for her character, but her coloratura sounded effortless, nuanced & even lovely. No shrieking to get out those high notes here! She got the biggest ovation of the evening after her 2nd act aria.

The production itself turns out to be a bit old. It's a revival of a 1993 production by Peter Hall. The setting is a clearly fairy tale Egypt, & the costumes are fanciful & bright. We got the clever & cute animals costumes, ala The Lion King. Actually, I totally enjoyed the little penguin in red tennis shoes that was obviously played by a child. I was creeped out by the chorus who all wore identical gowns & masks. It made Sarastro's court look like a totalitarian nightmare state.

Simón Bolívar Youth Orchestra of Venezuela

Shostakovich Symphony No. 10
Bernstein Symphonic Dances from West Side Story
Various Works from Latin America
Gustavo Dudamel, conductor

I was lucky enough to get a ticket for this performance at Davies Hall last Sunday evening. Dudamel & the Venezuela Youth Orchestra remade the orchestral concert experience for me. One attends concerts regularly for years waiting for experiences like this. The orchestra is over-sized: 11 double basses, 8 horns, 4 flutes, bassoons, etc. & Dudamel has them playing with a unanimity of purpose that makes every statement, large or small, emphatic & visceral. The 1st half was the hour-long Shostakovich 10, which Dudamel conducted from memory. It made me want to throw away my anemic Naxos CD version of the same piece. The 2nd half was like being invited to the best party in town. This is the only orchestra I've ever seen that has its own choreography!

Read the raves for this tour:
- Simón Bolívar Youth Orchestra, the greatest show on Earth (LA Times)
- Dudamel is absolutely revelatory (LA Times)
- Fiery Simón Bolívar Youth Orchestra sets Bernstein ablaze (SF Chronicle)

Dudamel returns early next year to lead an SF Symphony subscription concert. I definitely want to see that to find out if he wields the same power in front of a professional orchestra.

The Pixar Story

Last night I went to the opening night of the San Francisco Animation Festival at the Embarcadero Cinemas. I had no idea we even had such a film festival here. They screened The Pixar Story, a new documentary about Pixar Studios by Leslie Iwerks. It amounts to a 90 minute commercial for this hard-working & successful studio. In the Q & A afterwards, the director even admitted that she had a hard time finding a conflict for the film, since so far the studio's history has been one of producing one hit after another.

However, I still learned some things I didn't know before. In the most surprising moment in the film, John Lasseter relates being fired from his dream job at Disney over a project called "The Brave Little Toaster." & I understand a little bit more about Ed Catmull's role in developing the technology that gives the Pixar movies their vivid 3-D look.

The San Francisco Film Society seems like a neat organization. My movie ticket got me into a reception where they served wine, beer & desserts, which all disappeared pretty quickly. Pete Docter, the director of Monsters Inc., was there & drew some pictures for fans. Coming up are screenings of a movie version of Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis at the Kabuki & a new Gus Van Sant movie. The latter I would want to see just because of the venue: it's being held in something called the "Premier Theater" in Letterman Digital Arts Center in The Presidio.

Cool moment of the evening: When I used a $20 bill instead of a credit card to pay for my ticket, the box office guy observed that "Cash is king."

The Kollektief Accompanies Murnau's Faust

Last night I was able to walk conveniently from my place to the Palace of Fine Arts to see Murnau's 1926 silent Faust accompanied by a European jazz ensemble called the Willem Breuker Kollektief. The event was sponsored by the San Francisco Jazz Festival.

Both the movie & the music were very entertaining. The score used a somewhat dissonant harmonic language that was more contemporary than the film, but it was well-coordinated with the action. I liked that the score picked up on the movie's humor. There were clever moments where the ensemble did fun things to illustrate the scene, such as when the trombone comments on the action by doing a kind of wah-wah laugh, or when the musicians provide the singing voices of a festive crowd, or when one of the saxophone players switches to the harmonica during a sultry situation.

The band was set up on the Palace of Fine Art's vast stage, with the screen looking rather small behind them. To me, this emphasized the music over the movie. I guess since this is happening in the context of a Jazz festival, this is appropriate. But it would interesting to try this at the Castro Theatre as well.