Yuja Rachs it again

Something special is developing between pianist Yuja Wang, Michael Tilson Thomas, and the San Francisco Symphony. She's appearing more frequently than just once a year now, and her appearances have taken on the "buzz" of being an event. Saturday night she popped in for a one-off performance of Rachmaninoff's Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini and she'll return on Halloween night to play Prokofiev's Second Piano Concerto. Rachmaninoff's 2nd Symphony is also on the program, which continues for two additional nights with Lang Lang playing the Prokofiev 3rd. It's a going to be a good week at Davies for Russian music.

I wonder what it must have been like to hear Rachmaninoff's Rhapsody the first time it was performed in public in 1934, in Baltimore, with the composer as soloist with the Philadelphia Orchestra, conducted by Stokowski (he was also the soloist the first time it was performed here in San Francisco), long before the music was over-used in film soundtracks to the point where it became a source of parody for "romantic music." I imagine the audience must have been dumbstruck by the beauty in the score. It's still there, but at this point, like one must do with certain Beethoven symphonies, Ravel's Bolero and Vivaldi's Four Seasons, it takes some effort to block out the music's contemporary associations and take it on its own terms once more. It's worth it however, because its absolutely gorgeous, inventive music, and as the late Michael Steinberg points out in the concert's program notes, full of darkness which only make it all the more alluring.

Wang and MTT made this easy to do, in what was perhaps their best performance together at Davies so far, with an outing that was precise without being fussy and brimming with passion. Wang's past concerts here have always been a mix of undeniably superb technique coupled with an underlying question mark about how deep her heart was into of the matter at hand. She dazzles, and brilliantly, but she doesn't smolder. At least I would have said that before this performance, where she went through each of the work's variations with equal intensity and without her propensity to overwhelm. Tilson Thomas and the orchestra were right there with her all the way. There was no encore, which surprised me because the applause for Wang was tumultuous. There was, however, waving of orange towels signalling the Giants had won the game.

The second half of the concert featured Mahler's Fifth Symphony, which the orchestra just performed a month ago in a subscription series. This outing felt less cohesive overall, though principals  Mark Inouye and Tim Higgins were both in exceptional form this evening and MTT seemed pretty loose, waving goodbye to a couple seated in the front of the orchestra section who departed after the second movement. And yes, since I must comment on what Wang the fashion icon was wearing, it was a long, red, backless gown with extremely sexy black platform slingbacks. She looked great, but the real fashion statement this time was displayed on the keys. So much so in fact, this post doesn't even need a photograph of her.

Having a laugh with Elektra

Maybe there's some confusion about the source material.

I attended a preview performance of ACT's Elektra last Friday night, and unless something happens very quickly between now and opening night, this production will likely be remembered as one the most disappointing ACT has staged for quite some time. Although there's much amiss in Carey Perloff's direction, the prime offense is that this is Sophocles and someone forgot to remind Perloff that Sophocles isn't funny. If your actors are delivering lines evoking laughter from the audience, and if Clytemnestra's murder causes tittering throughout the house, something is wrong. Very wrong. The moment at the apex of the play's questioning what constitutes justice and what separates the civilized from the barbarous isn't funny, it's dreadful. This should be non-negotiable and not open to interpretation.

Nor should Pylades deliver a line like he's Dom Deluise in a Mel Brooks movie, eliciting peals of laughter from the entire audience. There's much more to dislike, including the oddly wooden delivery of Nick Steen's Orestes, which constantly grates against the one-note shrieking of Rene Augesen's Elektra. Olympia Dukakis wanders the stage looking lost as the Greek chorus, and while there's much to enjoy about Caroline Lagerfelt's Bette Davis-tinged Clytemnestra, her portrayal belongs in Eurpides' Elektra, not Sophocles'. Steven Anthony Jones' Aegisthus is also out of place, though his presence onstage is lively and brings a bit of vitality to the proceedings, but it's too little, too late.

The costumes are an incomprehensible mess. Allegra Rose Edwards gets the worst of the deal as Chrysothemis, dressed as a baby-doll fetish whore, while Elektra rolls around in a see-through black negligee which seems to have no other purpose than to show off Augesen's physical attributes. Additional music by David Lang adds little to the overall design, which includes a chain-link fence topped by barbed-wire in front of the House of Atreus (yawn). Skip this.

Petrenko rocks Respighi

Fontane di Roma (Fellini-style)

The first time I heard Vasily Petrenko conduct the San Francisco Symphony in the spring of 2010 during his debut with the orchestra, my response was immediate, enthusiastic, and looking back, a tad ridiculous, especially since I thought his return engagement a year and a half later fell short of the promise of that initial encounter. Perhaps his third visit would be the one to really tell the tale, and I was pleased to see his name on this year's roster of guest conductors, until I saw he was to perform Ottorino Respighi's Fountains of Rome and Pines of Rome- works I encountered in Music Appreciation 101, but didn't.

However, the scheduling of Bartok's 3rd Piano Concerto, with soloist Jean-Efflam Bavouzet, whom I knew nothing about, and my determination to see if my initial fanboy first impression was a fluke put the concert on my list. It turns out I wrote nothing to regret.

Respighi's Rome pieces are full of almost comical bombast, but under Petrenko's hands they were also a blast. The band came to play, especially the brass section, with the entire orchestra creating a richly blended sound I've never heard from them under any other conductor. Nor had I noticed the strains of Gotterdammerung winding their way through the Pines, nor the trombones that are so reminiscent of Fasolt and Fafner's music in Rheingold. Of course this is likely due to my knowing virtually nothing about Wagner when I first encountered Respighi. I had also forgotten how long the nightingale sings during the piece's last section and having absorbed a lot more music since my first exposure to it, I have to admit how influential the works have been in world of film scores.  Hearing these works again was like a re-education and the hands of a master. When it was over, and the audience stood on its feet whooping and hollering in total delight, and I was right there with them. I don't think I've ever seen the audience at Davies respond to a performance as vociferously as they did on this night.

Bavouzet did justice to the most prickly of Bartok's concertos, but didn't put much of his own stamp on it. The concert began with Arvo Part's Fratres, an interesting exercise at best.

"I knew you when we were young..."

I skipped Hardly Strictly Bluegrass this year. Though it was tempting, in the end I didn't want to wrestle with the ghosts of Penelope and Thaïs that surround my memories of the festival. The decision was made even easier by the fact that Patti Smith, one of the main draws for me this year, was going to do a show at the Fillmore the following night, making me feel like I wasn't going to miss out entirely.

I never really heard much about Smith's appearance the day before, but the Fillmore show was a surprising disappointment. Smith is one of the most incendiary performers I've ever seen onstage, but this gig started off with a subdued "Kimberly," followed by a couple of tracks off her latest album Banga- "April Fool" and "Fuji-San," all set snugly in mid-tempo groove and Smith and her band seemed in no particular hurry to turn up the heat. She talked about her expensive dungarees, Obama, John Walker Lindh, and some other Patti-banter, which the audience ate up. She was in an avuncular mood, perhaps too relaxed from the massage she received before the show, which she also told us about.

It wasn't until "Beneath the Southern Cross" that the show really started to burn, but after that she left the stage for Lenny Kaye's medley slot, which also felt rather perfunctory and dialed-in, and the momentum flagged again. I ran into CC and her longtime boyfriend in the audience early on, after I moved toward the rear of the crowd to escape two Neanderthals who were yelling at each other as a means to communicate over the music, and was standing next to them as Smith came back on to sing "Maria" from the new album.

The song includes a refrain with the lyrics "I knew you when we were young," and I couldn't help but think of the woman now standing next to me, whom I used to date almost 20 years ago, with her current partner on her other side, and how much both of our lives had changed in the ensuing years. How they've gone in such different directions. I remembered sitting in the living room of her Pacific Heights flat, which was filled with carefully-cultivated succulent plants, and how she would tell me of her appreciation of Marlon Brando when he was younger; of the night we went into The Owl Tree for the first time. It was late and in the middle of the week. We were the only people there, seated at the bar, and C Bobby said in his own inimitable nonchalant way, looking out the open door at the fog rolling down Taylor while cleaning an ashtray, "It's a perfect night for a murder." 

Suddenly I was filled with this melancholy sense of loss I couldn't shake, which only gathered its own momentum as Smith went into "Because the Night"- a madeleine song for me like few others. "Pissing in the River" didn't bring me back from that ledge, and "Gloria" sounded obligatory.

The audience, many of which seemed to have never seen her before (including CC and a charming vamp I met before the show), seemed to made up of a number of the curious rather than the converted, and ate the entire thing up, bringing Smith back for a three song encore which began with a pompous-sounding "Banga" and ended with "Rock and Roll Nigger," which Smith dedicated to Obama in the evening's one true moment of vintage Patti.

The next day, I was at work when I received an email from CC saying she and her boyfriend had gotten into an argument about our plans to see the Mariinsky Ballet together later in the week and that she wasn't going to be able to go. If she had to upset a man, it wasn't going to be the one with whom she's lived for more than a dozen years. I left my desk to take a walk down to the Bay and ended up sitting at the end of a pier where a woman had once thrown her two children into the water. The lyrics to Smith's "Redondo Beach" came into my mind, creating yet another madeleine.

The Repressed Urges of the Middle-aged Male: Its Roots and Its Consequences

The Seven Year Itch certainly isn't one of Marilyn Monroe's best films, but its appeal is pretty obvious and easily falls somewhere between 5 and 8 if one were to rank her films in some kind of qualitative order. It has some great moments and features arguably her most overtly sexual performance as the young woman (never named) who wreaks havoc in the life of a middle-aged married man (played by Tom Ewell). Monroe doesn't ever actually do anything to totally derail Ewell's life, but within an hour of meeting her he's resumed everything he just swore off- smoking, drinking, and carousing and feverishly plots a way to bed Monroe. His secret weapon in the hunt? Rachmaninoff's Second Piano Concerto.

The "Rachmaninoff Reverie" is easily the highlight of the film. Ewell's absurd fantasy works so well because George Axelrod's script skewers male lust with a precise combination of mockery and fondness. Of course it certainly doesn't hurt that Monroe was at the apex of her bombshell years and would never be viewed (or filmed) quite the same way after Itch, since Bus Stop (her next film) proved once and for all she could really act. But even with a lesser female presence as the object of desire, the scene would still work because it's so spot on- men really do conjure up the most ridiculous fantasies when they unexpectedly encounter exceptionally good-looking women.

The other reason it works so well is because Axelrod made a perfect choice by using Rachmaninoff's concerto as the anchor of the scene, creating an amusing parody of its use in Brief Encounter a decade earlier.

In the film Ewell is home alone reading of a book entitled "The Repressed Urges of the Middle-aged Male: Its Roots and Its Consequences" when his wife calls and he steps outside during the call. After hanging up with his wife he's about to go back inside his apartment when a potted tomato plant crashes down from Monroe's balcony, nearly missing him.

His initial anger turns immediately to neighborly forgiveness once he sees Monroe's the culprit. He invites her downstairs for a drink, which she happily accepts. She just has to take her underwear out of the freezer first.

As he's getting ready for her arrival he peruses his albums, pondering out loud what to choose as the soundtrack for the great seduction that's about to unfold: "Let's see... Debussy... Ravel... Stravinsky... Stravinsky would only scare her." He let's out a little gasp, pulls a record from the collection and says, "Here's the baby, Rachmaninoff... give her the full treatment, come in like gangbusters."

He puts the album on the turntable, takes a sip of scotch, pulls a suave drag from his cigarette, and a dreamy look comes into his eyes. Looking off into somewhere only he can see, he goes on, "Good old Rachmaninoff... the second piano concerto, never misses," like he's done this a hundred times before.

As the piece begins, Ewell's dreamy look quickly morphs into a lecherous leer as he looks toward the closed front door of his apartment, and as the piano's opening chords descend into the orchestra's swirling accompaniment, an opaque Monroe descends down the stairs and through the door like a ghost. Monroe has never looked sultrier onscreen than she does here- she's palpably provocative, dressed in a skin-tight gown (tiger striped, no less), to the point where you can almost see steam rising from her. Seen on a large screen, she's perhaps best described as a disruption in the natural order of things.

Ewell is now seated at the piano dressed in a red smoking jacket, nonchalantly playing the piece, and in an affected European drool offers, "You came. I'm so glad."

Monroe writhes at the opposite end of the piano and snarls, "Rachhhhhmaninoff."

He replies "The Second Piano Concerto," as if this was the most inevitable thing in the world for him to be playing.

She looks down helplessly, avoiding his eyes, and says, "It isn't fair."

"Not fair? Why?" he replies, never missing a note.

"Every time I hear it I go to pieces."

"Ohhh?"

She approaches him and asks "May I sit next to you?"

"Please do."

She sits down next to him on the bench and turns her body toward the camera. To the audience, that is. She brings her long, dark cigarette to her mouth and inhales deeply. She sets the cigarette down and begins to caress herself.

Sorry.

Perhaps I'm getting a little carried away here. Well, no I'm not. That's exactly what happens. In the movie, I mean.

Marilyn Monroe on a subway grate in Manhattan.

This entire scene of The Seven Year Itch played through my mind in a flash as I watched Khatia Buniatishvili stride onstage at Davies Symphony Hall last week, where she was the guest soloist with the San Francisco Symphony for- yes, that's right- Rachhhhhhmaninoff's Second Piano Concerto.

Buniatishvili wore a white gown, skin-tight, with rhinestone sequins hugging every curve with cascades of something resembling mohair flowing from her thighs to the floor. Monroe would have applauded it. Monroe would have looked sensational in it. Kind of like she did at Kennedy's birthday at Madison Square Garden, and with a physique rivaling Monroe's, Buniatishvili's entrance caused my brain to fall out my skull, land somewhere on the floor, and roll under the seat in front of me. All I could really think to myself was fuuuuuck as she smiled, bowed slightly and took her seat at the bench, smiling like an ingenue.

It took me about four or five minutes to focus on the music and it was only then I realized that good old Rachmaninoff was having a rather turgid time of it in the first movement, with guest conductor Vladimir Jurowski and the orchestra out of sync with the pianist and nothing coming from the stage that would have made anyone writhe in ecstasy. Though I had a great seat where I could watch Buniatishvili's fingers on the keyboard and see her from a perfect forty-five degree angle, I found myself slightly envious of Alexander Barantschik's view.

The second movement only picked up with the contributions from the soloists of the orchestra, who rendered its lilting theme with grace, but it felt constricted and remained so through the third movement and though Buniatishvili played it with enough physical conviction to make her rise off the bench at moments, it sounded much tamer than it looked. Still, as she took her bows and the audience gave her a standing ovation, I couldn't help but think she's the sexiest woman I've ever seen on a stage. Any stage.

Khatia Buniatishvili on a red carpet in Germany.

During the intermission I stepped outside and encountered an acquaintance. We discussed what we had just seen and heard. I was more interested in the former, he the latter, but I couldn't help wondering if that was a decorous decision on his part and not reflective of his true thoughts on the matter. He was accompanied by a woman who was being accosted by a butch woman on a mission and I was trying to parse out exactly what was going on before giving up and returning inside.

I was seated next to a former rabbi and his wife, who had just returned from a European cruise. I asked him what he thought of Buniatishvili. I didn't ask his wife.

The second half of the concert featured the first North American performance of excerpts from Prokofiev's score for Sergei Eisenstein's film Ivan the Terrible, arranged by L.T. Atovmyan into a kind of mini-opera featuring two singers (mezzo-soprano Elena Zaremba and baritone Andrey Breus) and chorus. It was an exuberant performance all around- the chorus sang with boisterous precision, and the soloists not only sang it well, but seemed to be enjoying themselves immensely. Zeremba was often tapping her feet and moving along to the music, and Breus wore traditional  boots and trowsers, looking somewhat ridiculous with a whip in his hand. Chekov's gun maxim should have been applied here more forcefully than it actually was during "The Oprichniks" sequence. Nevertheless, Jurowski, making his debut appearance with the orchestra, showed why his appearance was highly anticipated, providing real contrast between this part and "Swan" segment before guiding the strings and flutes through the instrumental "Anastasya" segment, which was drenched in the uniquely Russian sound.

Zeremeba conjured her best Ulrica for "The Broad Expanse of the Sea," making me realize it's been too long since she's appeared across Grove Street. "The Fall of Kazan" featured wondferul playing from the tubas (!) and cellos before culminating in a loud finish which sounds like Prokofiev doing Fasolt and Fafner in Russian. "The Glorification" featured some extremely tricky parts for the clarinets, and brought things to an end with Russia united and still standing. It was a blast, and well worth hearing.

The concert began with Scriabin's brief Reverie, which was played so wonderfully it came across as much more than the amuse bouche I expected.

An Iliad

The Minister's Rebellious Daughter and I were sitting in my kitchen, sharing a salad I had hastily put together. Lately it seems everything I do has felt thrown together at the last minute, lacking a larger plan, with little deliberation behind it. A daily juggling act performed solely to keep everything airborne, if for no other reason than allowing it all to fall has already been attempted and the clean-up proved to be a nightmare.

The Rebellious one had warned me about Thaïs from the first time I introduced them, and in her best channeling-Barbara Stanwyck-mode, told me I was only asking for problems with this one. More than two years later, we sat looking out my window on a gorgeous, warm evening, eating salad while I validated her warning, filling her in on the five past months. The second arrival. The second departure. The re-run, the fallout, the resulting sense of paralyzing futility that comes from ending up exactly where you started, only with much less of what you had when it all began.

The Rebellious one said something was different this time. She saw a change. She knew the story was the same but she sensed a different outcome. I told her I was willing to let it lay this time, to not return to the front for a third tour, finally ready to place my helmet upon the ground and leave it there. This particular Helen hadn't been worth the war. Was there one who ever was? Which brings me to An Iliad of a different kind.

Henry Worinics as the Poet An Iliad. Photo courtesy of kevinberne.com

Hours later, we watched with admiration as Henry Woronicz took a deep bow on Berkeley Rep's Thrust Stage, concluding a truly epic performance. He had just spent an hour and forty-five minutes driving home the futility of war, thousands of years of wars, with unflinching determination. As The Poet (Homer), Woronicz, resident actor and director of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, had taken Lisa Peterson and Denis O'Hare's lean distillation of Robert Fagles' justly praised translation of the The Iliad and spun it out for an audience on two levels- one epic, the other intensely personal. And it was easily the best theatrical performance I've seen this year, and perhaps the best solo performance I've seen since I Am My Own Wife.

The Poet enters and almost immediately tells us how tired he is of telling this particular tale. How wearying it is to tell the same story over and over, for what seems an eternity- and to him its obvious he feels it as such. But he has no other tale to tell- this one is his- there are many like it, but this one is his. And he's going to tell it one more time, with only the faintest hint betraying that what he would really like most of all is to never have to tell this fucking story again. Okay, so there is really nothing subtle about any of it, but when you're bringing an epic that is only 10% of the entire tale to begin with, subtleties are a luxury best discarded.

Woronicz's Poet isn't only telling us the story of what happened in the ninth year of the Trojan War, he's manifesting it physically onstage during his performance: the confusion, the anger, the madness, rage, hopelessness and bewilderment run across his face and through his body, rendering a portrait of an individual so alienated by what he's seen, which only grows with each re-telling, he's at the point where he alternates between being in tune with everything happening around him, every nuance of which leaves a silent but visible impression on him, and callous indifference.

Out of nowhere, and for no good reason perhaps other than that I seem to recall the Greek poets who originally performed these works also worked with one, a musician, bassist Brian Ellingsen, barges in and adds a brilliantly electrified and electrifying component to it all. I'm not sure it's necessary, but Mark Bennett's score adds drama and a sense of disorientation to the whole, as does the lighting by Scott Zielinski. An Iliad is powerful theater, and I can't praise Woronicz's performance highly enough. It plays through November 18th. See it.

The Mariinsky Ballet's Swan Lake

Oksana Skoryk

There is a sizable contingent of Soviet émigrés where I work. For the most part they keep to themselves, but over they years I've infiltrated their group a bit, mostly because I frequently see them at concerts or the opera house. On the whole, it is safe to say they are much more knowledgeable about the arts, especially Classical music and ballet, than their American contemporaries.

When I see them at the opera house, it is always for opera, and never for the ballet. Repeatedly and consistently, they have told me they can't watch American ballet companies, even one as good as ours, having been raised on the Bolshoi and Kirov. They're adamant about it to an amusing extent. Want to get a rise out of a Russian? Start talking to them about ballet and tell them how much you like San Francisco's company.

All of this was in the forefront of my mind as I stood in the lobby of Zellerbach Hall last Thursday night, watching the audience filter in to see the Mariinsky (formerly the Kirov) Ballet and Orchestra perform Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake. The émigrés, unsurprisingly, were out in force and I saw a few familiar faces. It was my first time seeing a Russian ballet company, and I was curious to see if they were really as superior as their former countrymen claim.

They are.

The Mariinsky Orchestra got off to an alarmingly slushy start under Mikhail Agrest, though he soon brought it all into focus and for the rest of the performance a rich, lush sound emanated from the pit. The floor of the stage was covered in plastic or something, it wasn't wood, and the dancers visibly worked against this, creating a constant squeaking all night. At one point, Vladimir Schklyarov (Prince Siegfried) landed from a turn, grimaced, and grunted loudly, as if he'd hurt something, but he kept on and betrayed no sign of injury afterward. I'm certain the culprit was the floor. Apart from that, the performance was as magical as one could wish for, including the fairy-tale sets by Igor Ivanov and the exquisite costumes by Galina Solovieva.

Oksana Skoryk's Odette was one of the most graceful physical performances I've ever witnessed. Her arms indeed moved like wings, especially when she unfolded them, in an uncanny way, and  she executed the fouettée with awe-inspiring precision, drawing perhaps the loudest and most sustained applause from the appreciative audience. As the black swan Odile, Odette's evil doppelganger, her face and movement took on a steeliness and determination, but she possessed the same beguiling grace.

Schklyarov, whose face has a wonderful openness to match his physical expressiveness, was convincing from his first moments during the birthday party through the end, never flagging, and his   series of jetés produced audible gasps from the audience, justifiably so, but curiously I don't recall one lift of Skoryk.

Alexander Perish struggled with the floor more than anyone else, noticeably hedging some steps throughout the evening, and he seemed uncomfortable during the trio with Ekaterina Ivannikova and Nadezhda Gonchar (both, again, marvelous dancers), but he also had many fine moments. Siegfried's mother was the stately and beautifully costumed Elena Bazhenova, whose strong resemblance to Maria Callas gave her non-dancing role an additional presence and authority. The Evil Sorcerer Rothbart, whose costume topped them all, was well-executed by Andrey Solovyov with a highly menacing presence. The Jester was Ilya Petrov, whose lively spins and engaging manner made the most of the unnecessary role.

The swans were exceptional, almost always perfectly in sync, forming one gorgeous scene after another, and the national dance sequences were a delight, especially the Spanish one featuring Anastasia Petrushkova, Yulia Stepanova, Kamil Yangurazov and Karen Ionessian.

The Mariinsky Ballet and Orchestra is part of the Cal Performances season.

Berkeley Symphony's Innovators

Last week, really beginning back on October 3, I took in an exhausting number of performances, and still missed much that was going on around town. After seeing I Capuleti ed i Montecchi on Wednesday, I went across the Bay on Thursday evening to see the Berkeley Symphony's season-opening concert with Rosine Stoltz. The audience was comprised of locals, students, and a large contingent of contemporary composers: John Adams, Ken Ueno, and Erling Wold were among those I spotted in the crowd.  

The orchestra's Executive Director Rene Mandel strode onstage and thanked everyone for showing up and then Music Director Joana Carneiro and composer/musician/inventor Paul Dresher came out onstage. The petite Carneiro sparkled with energy, wearing a black top and a long grey a-line skirt that would have looked great if it didn't look like she worn it on BART before coming to the concert. She was quite the contrast to Dresher, tall and dressed in Berkeley casual. Carneiro explained they were going to play the first two pieces of the program together (Charles Ives' The Unanswered Question and Dresher's Concerto for Quadrachord and Orchestra, receiving its world premiere this night) together, before turning the microphone over to Dresher so he could explain what a quadrachord is and something about the piece we were going to hear.

Ives' Question was answered by series of coughs and other noises coming from the audience. 

Dresher, in collaboration with instrument designer Daniel Schmidt, is the creator of the quadrachord, and it's essentially an electric bass on steroids without a wooden body, its 160-inch long strings strung over a base that has electric bass pick-ups next to two bridges and can be played by bowing, plucking, striking, etc. In the program notes Dresher writes that it's capable of "easily and accurately playing the harmonic series up to the 28th harmonic and beyond." I'm not really sure what that means, but many in the audience apparently did, and were excited at the prospect of hearing it in action. The concerto was broken into three movements, fast-slow-fast, and the first two are called Uncommon Ground and A Tale of Two Tunings.  I certainly felt I was standing on uncommon ground as I watched Dresher playing instrument and couldn't hear a thing. It seemed someone had forgotten to turn on its amplifier. As the music progressed, parts of it actually reminded me of Wold's Certitude and Joy, and then Dresher began to use a bow, which produced a sitar-like sound, and soon, as he programmed a loop to form a rhythmic bottom, the piece took on an Art of Noise/world-pop quality complete with chimes and "smooth jazz" elements. The piano provided much of the propulsion, along with the loop, which functioned like a metronome, thus essentially robbing Carneiro of the ability to establish the rhythm, but instead keeping the orchestra playing along with it.

Paul Dresher and his quadrachord

There were some giggles from the audience during the second movement, and I'm not sure if they were in response to the ever-escalating cacophony which veered into a funeral march, which was fun for a brief moment and then became repetitive, as Dresher showed off the instruments capabilities, the finer points of which frankly were lost on me.

The last movement is called Louder/Faster, and it was, but to my ears it essentially sounded like a mash-up of the of the theme from Mission:Impossible and Resphigi, and Dresher played the quadrachord with mallets and what looked like knitting needles, creating a power-pop extravaganza with which the percussionist was clearly having a blast. In the end it felt like pop music masquerading as Art music. That intersection/intent isn't necessarily a bad thing in and of itself, but I kind of wish that Dresher had composed a concerto for Geezer Butler instead.

During the intermission Rosine and I ended up chatting with Ueno about Dresher's piece. Well, they chatted about it, and I tried to follow along, not really understanding much of what they were talking about until Ueno brought Jeff Beck into it, and then I began to get it. Most of the conversation revolved around equal temperament and timbre.

Ueno left us, and the concert, and we returned to hear the orchestra play Beethoven's Seventh Symphony, which Carneiro led at the extreme edges for each movement, pushing the orchestra to play very fast or very slow.

This concert, called "The Innovators" will be followed by three more with a similar format featuring 20th Century music, a contemporary world premiere, and a piece by the Old Guard: "The Rebels" on December 6, featuring Dylan Mattingly's Invisible Skyline, Ligeti's Piano Concerto with pianist Shai Wosner and Schumann's 2nd Sympnony; "The Illuminators" on February 7 will have Alfama by Andreia Pinto-Correia, Lutoslowski's Celle Concerto featuring Lynn Harrell, and Rachmaninoff's Symphonic Dances; "The Idealists" on March 28 has Steven Stuckey's The Stars and the Roses  paired with Bruckner's 4th.

The Capulets and the Montagues

Isabella was seated at a table next to the window, her back straightened against the traffic flowing down the street, her dark eyes trained on the door, waiting. Though it had been  nearly five months since I saw her last, it soon felt like a matter of days as we quickly fell into our easy rapport, despite everything that had transpired during this long interlude.  She had been in Prague, among other places, taking in a dreadful Carmen and a sumptuous Traviata amongst other things during her trip, and she had much to say about it all.

I asked her what she was doing now, and she replied "I'm writing a solo piece. It's about Wagner and sex. You figure prominently in it."

After pausing a moment to take this in, I wondered aloud, "Is it comedic, or what?"

Her response straddled the line between prolixity and obfuscation before settling gently on an admission of indecision regarding her direction.

Finally she trained those eyes on me, which now looked like black pools above the pearls roped around her neck and said, "So how are you?"

I looked down at the cup of jasmine tea before me, realizing I could only give her what amounted to a superficial account in the time we had left before we had to make our way across the street, and left most of the story concerning these past months spent in the company of Thaïs for another time, though I knew she curious about it all.

Like many people, I suppose, Puccini's operas were the doorway leading to my love of the form. He was eventually replaced by Verdi as the favorite, who in turn lost out to Wagner. Along the way I developed an appreciation for the works of Donizetti, and an ever-increasing awe for those by Rossini. 

Bellini, on the other hand, never gained a place in the standings. How could he? He composed less than a dozen operas, fewer than half of which are ever heard. However, the quantity really isn't the issue- Bizet, Mascagni, Leoncavallo are just a few of the one or two-hit wonders whose works will get me to the house. No, the problem with Bellini is that everything he did well, and there is much that he did indeed do well, Verdi, and to a lesser extent Donizetti, borrowed and improved upon. Improved upon greatly, in fact, and when one becomes familiar with the work of the original only after digesting that of his more talented successors, well, there you have it. 

Even Norma, his crowning masterpiece, is something I can barely tolerate due to its absurd plot, the most preposterous in all of opera's standard rep.

So it certainly wasn't the opportunity to hear some Bellini which made me want to see  I Capuleti ed i Montecchi (The Capulets and the Montagues), but rather it's the exceptional cast, especially the return of Joyce DiDonato, whose career seems to be hitting its peak right now, and let's hope it's an extended one.

Prior to seeing it for myself, I read the many scornful accounts of this particular production which made it seem just short of being completely incomprehensible or comparable to so-called "Eurotrash," for which some folks seem to have such a distaste (I appreciate Eurotrash, btw, but then again I also appreciate Russ Meyer films and The Spice Girls, so perhaps this shouldn't surprise you).  I found it to be neither trashy nor incomprehensible, and while it's certainly not brilliant, it serves the opera, which is second-rate to begin with, reasonably well.

Comprised of two acts with three scenes in each, this co-production from the Bavarian State Opera wasn't designed for this house, so there are ungodly long set changes between each scene that kill what little momentum there is to begin with and only once seemed worth the wait, when the audience applauded as the curtain rose for Scene III in Act 1, though it's hard to say if the applause was for the tableaux vivant opening featuring a riot of color from costume designer Christian Lacroix, or if the audience was just happy to be getting on with the show.

The opera opens with a chorus of Capulet supporters gathered onstage in the Capulet's palace, suspended above them are  sleek English riding saddles, polished to the point of fetishism (and by all means feel free to insert Marx's theory of commodity fetishism in here if you like), suggesting a climate of aggression and battle, albeit a highly-stylized one. They're just hanging there, a hovering presence signaling something violent is in the air, waiting to come into play.  Tebaldo, performed by Saimir Pirgu in his company debut, gets a couple of  choice arias in this scene, during which he displayed a nice tone but failed to nail it at the top of the range. His stage presence was far from commanding as he vowed to avenge the death of Capellio's son (Juliet's brother). Eric Owens, a singer of terrific talent and ability, is largely wasted in the role of Capellio and he seems to know it- his performance lacked the spark which seemed an inherent part of his stage persona in the previous times I've seen him. Then DiDonato as Romeo enters in disguise, her face so garishly lit from below I though she had on a mask, and blah, blah, blah- you know this isn't going to work out very well for Romeo. During all of this, and for the rest of his appearance throughout the opera, current Adler Fellow Ao Li made a great impression in the role of Lorenzo, the family physician.

Scene 2 opens with a statue of two lovers creating a Pieta suspended above Juliet's almost-bare room. It's a gorgeous effect, and has powerful implications during the scene, which in the one really interesting directorial choice, is played as a mad scene for Juliet. The only thing onstage besides the statue are the walls of Juliet's room and a sink- an ugly one, reminiscent at first of the kind found in a cell, which is anchored into a wall. Juliet sings her song of woe, she slowly makes her way to the sink, then into the sink. At first it looks like she's approaching a fountain, and as the scene unfolds it becomes one of a woman performing an ablution. After performing the ritual she stands in the sink, yearning to touch the Pieta of the lovers, which remains beyond her grasp in every sense. To bash Bellini again, this most beautiful part of the opera was stolen - it's essentially a re-write of "The Willow Song" from Rossini's Otello. Nicole Cabell, making her company debut as Juliet, was radiant and convincing in this scene, and if she doesn't have the type of voice one normally associates with bel canto, it's not a problem here as she unleashed one gorgeous legato line upon another.

Romeo then enters, and here's where Bellini's decision to use the source material of the story instead of Shakespeare's version of the tale becomes problematic for this production. Rather than embrace one another, the two lovers force themselves into separate corners or against opposing walls of the cell/room all while singing of their deep and profound love for one another. The result comes across as two young people lost within in their own individual, personally created isolation and familial alienation, and they are mistaking the resulting confusion and conflict for love. The problem for the audience is that if the kids don't come across as lovers, but instead seemed just confused kids playing at being lovers, the whole thing goes off the rails, and it did, despite the efforts and gorgeous singing of DiDonato and Cabell, who couldn't make it come truly alive.

Scene 3 has the Capulet chorus re-enter with the saddles now on their shoulders, ready for action. There's much congratulating Capellio on the imminent wedding. Romeo vows to stop all of this nonsense, and then his real identity is revealed. Uh-oh. This lasts for about half an hour, and the when the curtain comes down if you feel a bit tired, you should- it's been a long hour and a half so far.

Act II opens with Lacroix-clad female wedding guests doing a walk of shame up bleachers to disappear into another set of bleachers beyond the back wall of the stage. I've read that the women appear onstage with flowers stuffed in their mouths at some point in this opera, and this may be the scene, but I didn't notice- I was too busy looking at the shoes. I have a bit of thing for high heels. I was still thinking about the shoes during part where Lorenzo brings the potion, Juliet drinks it, and then begs Capellio for forgiveness. None of this erased the shoes from my mind. I wanted more shoes.

Scene 5 finds Romeo at looking into a vanishing point on the horizon, singing a lovely aria reflecting his diminishing future options. Then Tebaldo entered the scene and was facing off against our hero, which unfortunately at one point had him (actually her, remember) bending over with his rear facing the audience. I found myself thinking Romeo has a really nice ass. Now Isabella had been given a behind-the-scenes tour of this production and had seen the costumes up close, and knew some details which she had imparted to me during the intermission- the costumes were exquisitely crafted and had many fine touches the audience would never even know were there, including gorgeous undergarments of sheer, luxurious fabric. As Romeo bent over, and I hate to admit this but I will, I found myself deeply engaged in an internal debate on exactly what kind of undergarments Romeo was wearing and this continued to occupy my mind for quite some time.

My attention eventually shifted to the abstract pictures slowly morphing their way into various images  against the backdrop of the walls of the Capulet's palace, which now seemed to be showing a bulimic Geisha who is slowly dying while Romeo is consumed by feelings of abandonment, his despair now equaling Juliet's as Tebaldo declines to kill him.

In Scene 6 Romeo enters Juliet's tomb, where she's unresponsive to his pleas for her to wake up. He's so bummed he takes the poison too. Juliet rises and does the tableaux vivant of the dead, quite well actually, while Romeo sings his heart out. DiDonato was at her best in this scene and Cabell stood motionless with her arms raised in what must have been an excruciating pose. Juliet comes alive, explains it was all a ruse, but it's too late now, of course. The couple sing together beautifully, but again the lack of physical interaction between them undermines the message, rendering them ultimately as pretend adults playing at being lovers. Bellini scored this penultimate moment beautifully, and as the last note of "Giulietta" passed from DiDonato's lips the magic was palpable. That should have been the moment the curtain fell, but unfortunately Bellini then has everyone rush onstage for a crash and bang ending ala Cavalleria Rusticana and absolutely ruins what could have been a sublime ending. Dolt.

Riccardo Frizza did a fine job with the orchestra.

Another Sam Adams, please....

Embarcadero Boardwalk. Photo by Travis Jensen

My trepidation about spending the warmest afternoon of the year (so far) in the confines of Davies Symphony Hall pretty much evaporated when I felt the air-conditioning caress me as soon as I walked through the door this past Sunday. Very few places in this City are air-conditioned, and most that are seem to have antiquated systems that don't work well- at least when it matters that it works well. It was a decent sized crowd, though I expected a full house to be on hand to hear MTT lead the orchestra through Mahler's 5th. The weather may have had some small part in it- I know I was tempted to be elsewhere.

When the season announcement prominently included the West Coast premiere of Samuel Carl Adams' Drift and Providence, it was hard not to wonder to what extent nepotism likely played a hand. This young man, the son of composer John Adams, had never previously composed a single work for an orchestra, but here was a commission from the San Francisco and New World symphonies for a full orchestral work- an opportunity and level of exposure that dozens of other, better-known, composers have spent years waiting for in vain.

The downside for Adams the Younger was that if his piece sucked, he would be unlikely to ever get a second chance from an orchestra of consequence, and equally important, the classical audience would whisper "Fie on the brat!"

MTT took the stage wearing a tie and a black suit- I guess that's the "Sunday dress" code, as I noticed all the men wore suits rather than the customary tails on this afternoon. What an odd tradition. Picking up the mike to address the audience, he gave a brief lecture about what Adams the Younger was up to with this piece (he premiered it with the New World back in April), stating that the composer was exploring "sonic possibilities," creating "sounds inside of sounds" and "tidal shifts of chord patterns"  and other such things (which usually translates to most in the audience as "I know you're going to hate this, but if you had any taste you'd see how brilliant it is"). Onstage behind him was a surprisingly large orchestra seated in front of a phalanx of percussion.

The five movements of the work are played without pause, so it goes Embarcadero - Drift 1 -Divisadero -Drift 2 - Providence. It began with what Tilson Thomas aptly described as the "strike of a match" made by rubbing something I couldn't discern against enormous cowbells of the sort one usually sees during a performance of Mahler's 6th. Hints of R. Strauss came through in Embarcadero, causing me to look around the stage to see exactly what combination of instruments were making these intriguing sounds, and even then I often couldn't figure it out, it was captivating from the start. Somewhere along the way I noticed we had drifted into the Drift 1, because everything grew languid as if suddenly the music was floating over the sea, reminding me of Britten's Billy Budd as it shifted from celestial tones to portentous, finally ominous, crests.

Somewhere in the Drift I became lost and eventually found myself in a clearing on Divisadero, obviously not far from Golden Gate Park because the Drift was still following along behind like the fog which follows you as you make your way east coming in from Ocean Beach, which, as it does in real life, slowly drifted away the closer the music moved inland, headed in the direction of Divis.

A horn brayed loudly, like some stoner on Haight Street, backed by shimmering strings, then suddenly a loud crash of cymbals put us back into the Drift again, which oddly reminded me of the descent into Wagner's Niebelheim, but instead of anvils the orchestra was using brake drums and scraping cowbells. It sounded like the rustling of chains (maybe this part should be called Tenderloin). It was, dare I say it, genuinely exciting music. I must not have been the only to think so because the audience was absolutely dead silent- no coughing, no whispering, no rustling of programs. Everyone sat there rapt by these "sounds within sounds." The fucking kid had delivered- you knew it for sure at that moment.

But now I was hopelessly lost within the Drift, and even though I had read the program notes before in an attempt to be able to follow along, the loud climaxes I expected weren't all that loud and I had no idea we were actually in Providence by this time- I thought we had just drifted past Nopa on a busy night, with notes skittering aimlessly to and fro on the sidewalk like some drunk twenty-something on her iPhone arranging for a postpriandal sexual encounter with a guy different from the one who just bought her dinner, slowly but steadily spiraling into different orbit.

The horns returned, the volume increased and only now I though we had moved into Providence but it turns out we'd already been there quite some time, for what all of this signaled, through xylophones and marimbas and more, tearing up and down the scale, and then everything suddenly hushed. Silence. A low, descending heave of a sigh from a trombone and tuba. Then flutes- a lot of flutes. Silence. Scraping cowbells. The end.

I'd love to hear it again.

Mahler's 5th was pretty much what I expected- huge in the first movement's funeral march, triumphant during the second, erupting into peals of glory led by the brass and horns which had a pretty flawless afternoon. At the end of the second movement someone behind me squirmed endlessly in a squeaky seat, breaking the spell. The Scherzo seemed to last forever, because it nearly does, but I was still reminded of how brilliantly Mahler uses instrumental color as the orchestra waltzed through the endless variations of the dance before exploding into a circus of sound, even as the waltzing tempo never ceased. The movement feels like an entire symphony in itself.

Somehow the Adagietto didn't make the impression I expected, though the reverberating bass notes of its conclusion may have been my favorite musical moment of the entire afternoon. Gorgeous.