Esa-Pekka Salonen in Berkeley

Is this guy the world's greatest living musician?  Probably.

Well-sung versions of "Si. Mi chiamano Mimi" aside, I've only been to two musical performances which brought me to the point where I found myself fighting back tears. The first was The Tristan Project- a multimedia, semi-staged version of Tristan und Isolde which I saw when it was revived at Disney Hall in 2007. At the conclusion of the first act, I sat there in my seat, completely blown away, demolished, really, fighting back tears and unable to speak to my date. I remember thinking to myself I'm not sure I'll be able to take two more acts of this. When I finally I did speak, after waiting to make sure I could do so without a sob in my throat, I said out loud to no one in particular, "How the fuck are they going to top that?" My girlfriend agreed, though she had only a minimal appreciation for Wagner at the time. Thankfully, the intermission gave me enough time to steel myself for the rest of it, and by the time the Liebestod unfurled a couple of hours later, I was ready.

The second time was yesterday (Sunday as I write this) in U.C. Berkeley's Zellerbach Hall, listening to the closing minutes of the fourth movement of Mahler's 9th. After it was over, the feeling that if I spoke aloud I would lose it stayed with me for a good ten, possibly fifteen minutes after the performance. After I could no longer remain silent without seeming rude to my companion, I spoke, and found I still couldn't choke it back. How silly I thought I must have looked, but in hindsight I suppose it's better to be moved by such beauty than to be immune to it. To experience such things, rare as they are, is the reason we pursue art, isn't it?

Now the interesting thing to me is this- though the orchestras were different, the conductor for both of these performances, separated by five years and what feels like a lifetime to me, was Esa-Pekka Salonen.

I'm struggling to avoid hyperbole here, but after spending four consecutive nights listening to the results of the man's work, I can think of only a small handful of living musicians who may be Salonen's peers. It's one thing to create one's own dazzling, substantial body work and quite another to display a complete mastery of the works of others from the past two hundred years. Yet Salonen, over the course of four nights sponsored by Cal Performances, did just that. It's easy to name individuals who can do one or the other, but try naming musicians who can do both, and with such impressive results. I can only come up with one other name.

The first night, held in the smaller Hertz Hall, was a "Composer Portrait" dedicated to Salonen's own compositions, featuring four pieces of distinctly different character, all satisfying and exceptionally played. Salonen spoke at length with Cal Performances' Director Matias Tarnopolsky before cellist Kacy Clopton took the stage to perform knock, breathe, shine (2010), a three part solo work which starts off with unusual strains of jazz and rock woven into a pizzicato tapestry before the bow interrupts, as if answering the knock, then replaces the fingers as the means of expression, as if to answer "Who's there?" breathe possesses a plaintive tone that seems at once foreign yet familiar in its ability to transcend the boundaries of is commonly looked at as "classical music" (misnomer acknowledged), and shine is a bright and vigorous conclusion, during which Clopton used a number of playing techniques I've never seen to execute the piece, validating Salonen's comment that he seeks to challenge musicians while pleasing the audience with his compositions.

Next came the Calder Quartet, who stuck around town after performing a brilliant program of Nancarrow, Ades, and Bartok last Saturday night. They took the stage in their matching Beatle-esque suits (which prompted Isabella to exclaim how cute they were) to perform Homunculus (2007). Salonen describes the work as a miniature string quartet, containing everything usually found within the form's more traditional length, only smaller and more compressed, like the being referenced in the piece's title- a fully-formed, yet tiny little man inside of a single sperm cell (this was a very amusing description to hear, by the way). My favorite moment of this was when the Homunculus breaks free and takes its first tentative steps into a new existence. The Calders, over the course of their local performances this week, have proven themselves to be virtuosos of the highest caliber.

Salonen and Tarnopolsky chatted some more, and Salonen grew a bit rambunctious during this second exhange, exhibiting a wry sense of humor, especially with an anecdote about Mahler. Pianist Glora Cheng then performed Dichotomie (2000), a two-part work comprised of mechanical and organically inspired halves, which ends with the marvelous sensation of having a light extinguished and everything swallowed by darkness. The University's own Eco Ensemble, led by conductor David Milnes, performed Mania (2000), a chamber-sized cello concerto with Clopton as soloist. I didn't envy Milnes position here, conducting the work with Salonen seated in the audience, but the group pulled it off with aplomb, Clopton especially, who handled the almost ridiculous technical challenges (Salonen's titles aren't randomly selected) with consistent fluidity while the ensemble rocked repeating blasts of tripled notes which give way to icy, creepy slower parts.

The next three nights featured Salonen conducting London's Philharmonia Orchestra, of which he's been Principal Conductor and Artistic Advisor since 2008. The first program began with his own Helix (2005)- a kind of Bolero-esque number which weaves two threads together for nine minutes of propulsive fun until they climax in an elongated, bright crescendo (Helix, Mania and Dichotomie have all been recorded, and a video featuring segments of knock, breathe, shine can be found here). He then led the orchestra through a rousing version of Beethoven's Symphony No. 7 (1812) and a flawlessly delineated rendering of Berlioz's Symphonie fantastique (1830). This particular Berlioz composition is one I've never warmed to, and though oddly enough I had some rather strange dreams paralleling its plot earlier during an afternoon nap that day, it left me more admiring of the execution than the work. My companion, however, who has experienced countless performances of it during her lifetime, was deeply impressed by it, as was a certain music critic seated directly in front of me who quite uncharacteristically bobbed and weaved to much of the music in obvious delight. However, the Beethoven enthralled me with its transparency and brilliant sense of pacing, which illuminated everything without once flagging during the slower sections, and maintained a sense of rhythmic vitality without ever feeling hurried during the fast ones. Of the half-dozen times I've heard it performed in concert, this was easily my favorite, in no small part due to the thrilling clarity of the Philharmonia's string section. There were two encores- a work of Boccherini's arranged into an elegant waltz by Berio called Ritarata, followed by the prelude to the third act of Lohengrin, which oddly enough was probably being played at the exact same time across the Bay in the War Memorial Opera House. Salonen introduced the latter by saying "How about some Wagner- quickly!" to the amusement of the thrilled house.

The second night featuring the Philharmonia was a semi-staged version of Berg's Wozzeck and of the four evenings this was the one I was looking forward to the most. An exceptional cast of singers was assembled, all of whom acted out their parts at the lip of the stage in front of the orchestra, with the chorus placed at the rear. The limitations of this kind of presentation can be severe but that wasn't the case here. Although the dread and unease which builds over the course of the opera in a typical staging was largely absent, the cast's consistent efforts brought forth most of the story's drama. Johan Reuter was magnificent in the title role, perfectly capturing his character's confusion and anguish. Angela Denoke's Marie, sung with piercing clarity came off with unexpected depth and nuance. As the Drum Major, Hubert Francis turned the secondary role into an equal of the guinea pig soldier and cuckolding common law wife with his combination of excellent tone and dominating stage presence. Peter Hoare and Joshua Ellicott were strong in the supporting roles of the Wozzeck's goon-like tormentors the Captain and Andres. Only Tijl Faveyts had difficulty making himself heard over the orchestra, though he had a commanding physical presence. Some of the children in the chorus of at the end were spookily spot-on, especially a little blond boy who spat out his lines in perfectly enunciated German and looked like a tyrannical homunculus of Dolph Lundgren.

However, all of these pluses notwithstanding, it was the music that made the performance something extraordinary. Each of the five scenes of the three acts were clearly articulated, and the quasi Rondo music for Marie and the Drum Major at the end of Act 1 was gorgeously played, transforming a work thought (erroneously) widely considered musically difficult to fathom musically into something quite clear. I'll admit to being slightly disappointed Salonen took a brief break between acts to sit for a moment and take a deep breath, but only because it stopped the momentum which he was constructing. Listening to the performance was like looking at a German Expressionist painting, (Otto Dix especially comes to mind)- one can't help but feel slightly repulsed by the subject matter but the attention to detail and the art of its construction it makes it something not easily turned away from. Salonen and the orchestra let the entire score breathe, the individual moments all came through distinctly, as they had the night before, unexpectedly turning Wozzeck into an extended symphonic delight, except of course when the orchestra pummels the audience with one of the loudest, most horrific moments in all of the operatic repertoire, which was a visceral thrill.

The next afternoon, Sunday, came the Mahler and I was surprised to see so many empty seats. Salonen took everything he'd already shown us he and this orchestra could do- masterful pacing, an almost incredible level of detail without any hint of fussiness, complete openness of expression within each section of the orchestra, and then essentially turned it all up to 11. If you missed it, it really was everything anyone who was actually there said it was, and easily one of the finest orchestral performances I've had the pleasure of attending- even if it did bring tears to my eyes.

Thankfully there was no encore, but Salonen returned to the stage an hour later to lead the UC Berkeley Orchestra through a master class in Debussy's La Mer. Working with the students for about an hour and a half, and only leaving because he had to get to the airport, Salonen, in this more relaxed atmosphere, (for him at least) proved that all the strengths exhibited in the previous four performances were no fluke. The students soared under his direction and keen observations.

Tin Hat

Tin Hat: photo by Peter Gannushkin

Do you ever stop to think about how much your life can change in eight short months? How different it is? Or not?

The reason I bring it up is because it was almost eight months ago to the day I saw Carla Kihlstedt perform for the first time. Now I was heading back to see her again. This time in a different room, but at the same venue. This time with a different set of musicians. And like last time, to hear her perform music inspired by a poet, but this time a different one than the last. It's all different, isn't it? And the Necessary Monsters who haunt me now are different than they were eight months ago, aren't they?

Then why did all of this feel so disturbingly familiar to me?

The answer is because while poets may change, monsters remain the same in their necessity. Treading the same ground once again, I felt like an observer to my doppelganger's life rather than a participant in my own. What I've really become, I'm convinced now, is The Collector- the one who vainly tries to keep all the monsters at bay by organizing them into neatly stacked boxes. But the monsters escaped their boxes this week. One by one, released by my Double, so we could lead parallel and incompatible lives together and remain cruelly apart.

Whatever.

Tin Hat began the first of two sets with "Open His Head," the first of many songs set to the poetry of e.e. cummings from their forthcoming album, due in August. Three songs later, as they were performing "yes is a pleasant country," the structure of these became apparent to me: layers of sound set down in gentle pieces, patterns emerging out of fragments, slowly building until they bloomed into melodies which suited the poetry quite beautifully, and I was captivated by how well the music evoked the tone of cummings' poems. If it took me awhile, that was more likely due to events of the day, not the musicians, all four of whom play expertly within their oddly configured musical quartet: Carla Kihlstedt on violin, Ben Goldberg on assorted clarinets, Mark Orton on guitar, and Rob Reich on accordion or piano.

Then the poetry stopped and the group performed an instrumental featuring Kihlstedt playing a Roma-inflected violin line with Goldberg on what I think was a bass clarinet- I'm not sure I've ever seen such an instrument before. An older instrumental followed, "The Last Cowboy," with Orton plucking out a novelty line on his guitar similar to the one used in Waiting for Guffman in the scene where Lewis Arquette explains Blaine's history before the cast sings the "Stool Boom" song, followed by another song before "Foreign Legion," which Orton said was inspired by fear brought on by watching an Abbott and Costello movie, concluded the first half.

The musicians let Orton assume the duties of "front man", and while there's a certain charm to the idea of using a casual approach to create the impression of we're-all-just-hanging-out-at-home-together vibe, Orton's patter didn't particularly serve the music or his fellow musicians especially well.

The second set began with the 24th of 95 Poems and closed with "sweet spring." In between, something odd must have been happening that I missed, as Kihlstedt remarked that out in the audience "a conflagration" was taking place. I didn't see it, but the second set did have some incredibly sensuous music, and I couldn't help but wonder what it would have sounded like in my apartment, with the light of the bright, full moon shining in through open windows on this cold, crisp night.

On a side note, the same two people who made a hash of the sound for the Sierra Maestra concert in this same location the night before were on the job again, and this time, to my surprise, they filled the room with a warm and beautiful sound. It sounded terrific.

The concert was presented by SFJazz.

More, please! Joyce DiDonato, Jake Heggie, & the Alexander String Quartet perform Camille Claudel: Into the Fire

Camille Claudel

The Alexander String Quartet celebrated their 30th anniversary by sharing the limelight with others- a trait that probably plays no small part in their longevity as a performing ensemble. Long considered something of a "house band" for San Francisco Performances and San Francisco State University, they marked the occasion at a concert last night at the Herbst Theater which was simply brilliant. In the program notes Jake Heggie, composer of Dead Man Walking and Moby-Dick among other works, relates the story of how SF Performances' Ruth Felt asked him about composing a piece to mark the quartet's upcoming anniversary and how he then managed to involve mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato and librettist Gene Scheer in the creation of a song cycle based on the story of Camille Claudel, about whom Heggie has been interested in creating an opera.

That was a fortuitous bit of networking, judging by last night's resulting program.

It began with Heggie accompanying DiDonato in Reynaldo Hahn's Venezia song cycle, which I heard Christopher Maltman perform just two weeks ago in the same theater. My thoughts on Maltman's recital were mixed, perhaps unenthusiastic, for a performer of obvious vocal abilities and for awhile I wondered if I had been unduly critical of the performance. DiDonato's performance re-assured me I was not- in fact after watching and hearing her sing the same material I think I may have been more generous to Maltman than his performance merited. DiDonato was completely engaged, continuously making eye-contact with seemingly everyone in the house from the moment she began, performing each song with a unique and distinct character, alternating between tenderness in one to bright sass in another. And her voice? Splendid. The last long, lovely legato note of "La Primavera" was gorgeous. Heggie looked like he enjoyed every moment of accompanying her, but more than that I can't say about his performance because DiDonato was so mesmerizing to watch and hear all I really noticed was his ear-to-grin at the conclusion of each song. There's a reason it's recently been said she's at the apex of her career and last night was evidence of it.

Then the Alexanders came onstage to perform Debussy's Sting Quartet in G minor. On paper this seemed like almost too-safe of a choice for the occasion, but they managed to uncover new tones within the familiar territory and delivered an impressively thoughtful performance. Cellist Sandy Wilson brought the morose tone of the first movement to the forefront and it colored everything in its wake. Violist Paul Yarbrough picked up the thread from Wilson in the second movement, adding a quizzical element, and the violins of Zakarias Grafilo and Frederick Lifsitz performed the pizzicato ending with exceptional finesse.

As a unit, they seemed intent to remove the "impressionist" sheen off the composer's reputation, especially in the Scherzo, which sounded uncharacteristically Romantic, and the fourth sounded almost Modernist. But every movement was performed with its own distinct emotional current, with the players cognizant of the themes occurring in each, yet treating each one as a unique entity. It's also the only time I've ever heard it where parts reminded me more than just a little of the late Beethoven quartets.

L to R: Zakarias Grafilo, Frederick Lifsitz, Jake Heggie, Joyce DiDonato, Paul Yarbrough, Sandy Wilson. Photo by Brian Byrne.

While the first half of the concert had been quite good to this point, what followed was truly exceptional. DiDonato and the Alexanders returned, with DiDonato placed in the center of the strings. Camille Claudel: Into the Fire is a song cycle which takes place on the day the title character is taken away to an asylum.  However, it feels much larger than that due to the brilliance of Gene Scheer's lyrics, which manage to convey a complete character arc in just six songs spread over thirty-five minutes (the seven songs include an instrumental). Each song title refers to a sculpture by Claudel (yes, she was a real person) except the last one, which is an epilogue to what's come before.

The devotion to inhabiting the lyrics she exhibited in the Venezia song cycle turned out to be just an appetizer compared to the fully developed character DiDonato brought to Camille Claudel. It made me long to see this work developed into a full-length opera as a vehicle for her.  Beginning with "Rodin," who was Claudel's lover and perhaps artistic rival, Heggie and Scheer have created a portrayal of a woman undone by her lover's abandonment and its subsequent destruction of her mind and soul. "La Valse" and "Shakuntala" carry the narrative forward, the first as lament and the second turning into a mini "mad scene" with an acapella ending which was chilling.

"La Petite Chatelaine" has Claudel turning the anger and rage of "La Valse" upon herself, her own identity cracking under the weight of remorse for the child she aborted at Rodin's request. The song is imbued with conflicted penitence, and while it's impressive on many levels, perhaps its most amazing quality is how the pleas of Claudel over her lost child never become maudlin. Instead, a moment of distinct discomfort is felt through the audience- as if we're complicit in the tragedy by being observers of the result.

Musically, "The Gossips" take the work to a heightened level of intensity as rivulets of notes descend like so many false accusations against Claudel's resigned admissions of "I know. I know." The drops keep falling, and the song closes with a sense of irretrievable loss.

Heggie wisely takes a step back emotionally at this point with an instrumental, "L'age Mur (Maturity)," a fugue begun by the viola, followed by cello, then the violins, evolving into one of the most memorable themes I've heard from a contemporary composer. The theme returns in full at the conclusion of the final song, "Epilogue: Jessie Liscomb visits Camille Claudel, Montevergues Asylum, 1929," which begins with a sprightly dance containing fragments of the theme weaving underneath. The lyrics of the song, and DiDonato's singing of them, are the inevitable conclusion of all that's come before as Claudel, now old and alone, happily receives a visit by an old friend which gives her an opportunity to reminisce, remember, and finally, to regret and submit.

Fantastic. Now can someone please commission an entire opera of this brilliant beginning?

Heggie, DiDonato and the Alexanders returned for an encore of Richard Strauss' "Morgen"- beautifully performed, but also a nice touch given that Heggie noted in the program how he remembered the superb performance of the piece given by this same quartet when he saw them perform for the first time twenty years ago.

Nameless forest

Photo by Julieta Cervantes

Dean Moss' Nameless forest is better experienced than described- a success on multiple levels defying a single interpretation, touching the audience in so many places, it's a work that keeps expanding within the mind long after it's over.

Moss is the former curator of dance and performance at The Kitchen in New York, a guest lecturer at Harvard and Yale, and a guest professor at Hunter College and the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music. The inspiration for his most recent work comes from the sculptural self-portraits of Sungmyung Chun, a Korean artist whose work deals with alienation, identity, and violence. Working together, the two men have transformed Chun's solid and heavy works into a piece of living theater, which incorporates 12 members of the audience into its core of six dancers, ensuring no two performances are ever quite the same.

Taking place under and around an exploded figure based on Chun's work, with its pink neon guts dangling in mid-air at the center of it all, Nameless forest has three parts.

The first begins with a dark stage floor, the dancers and participants seated on opposite ends of the square space. Stephen Vitello's compelling score begins a snarling lion moving through a jungle (or forest), creating a sense of unease and impending violence. The lights come up revealing a man lying face-down at the edge of the floor. He begins to flop across the floor like a limbless creature emerging from the water to make land for the first time. It also looks like a birth, and as soon the initial struggle to emerge is over, others pile upon him like the dead weight and ghosts of ancestors and expectations, smothering and eclipsing him from view. The newly emerged being soon finds himself within recognizable societal situations- uncomfortable, awkward, confusing, ritualistic and soon no longer the center of the audience's attention.

Photo by Paula Court

The second part is an arresting visual and aural cacophony- the being is emerged in a world of alienation, violence and sex, enhanced by Michael Kamber's recordings and images reflecting his experience as a war correspondent.

The last part takes the audience inside the exploded being- the neon guts (by Gandalf  Gavàn) are illuminated, and the participants are revealed in new ways. Reflecting the audience back on itself, Kacie Chang leads them through one of our culture's most banal forms of self-expression (and self absorption) and turns it into something unexpectedly poignant (and in this performance quite funny). Now blurring the line between performance and reality, the fourth wall knocked down (or is it?), coupled with the knowledge that as a member of the audience it could have been you on that floor, Nameless forest concludes on a heady and engaging note.

Photo by Paula Court

The excellent performers at the core of the work are Kacie Chang, Eric Conroe, Aaron Hodges, Pedro Jiménez, DJ McDonald and Sari Nordman, all of whom possess unique identities and express a wide range of physical and dramatic abilities. Moss requires them to give a lot during the show and together they form a fearless and bold troupe.

During a Q & A with Moss and the performers which followed, one commented that after working on the piece for two years, there is now more left out of it than what is currently presented onstage. That leanness and refinement shows- there's nothing in the work that feels redundant or unnecessary, and its remarkable how the core ensemble integrates members from the audience so seamlessly into the performance. Provocative, intelligent and completely engaging, it's definitely worth seeing.

The final performance is tonight at YBCA, which once again has succeeded in presenting something quite extraordinary for Bay Area audiences. Check out their website for upcoming events featuring a broad spectrum of work from contemporary artists across the globe.