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.