New Season Opens for Symphony and Opera

By Eman Isadiar

Much like the turning of the leaves or the migration of the pelicans, there is a certain September week that signals the yearly progression of life in San Francisco. Yet it marks more than the mere passage of time. It is a moment of civic pride, of joyful celebration, and of being dressed to the nines for two extravagant opening nights.

On September 9, music director Michael Tilson Thomas inaugurated San Francisco Symphony’s 98th season at Davies Symphony Hall–and his own 15th anniversary at the podium–with works by Liszt, Ravel and Rodgers, and Prokofiev’s monumental Third Piano Concerto with keyboard legend Lang Lang.

Across the street at the War Memorial Opera House, Nicola Luisotti led a cast of stars in Verdi’s Il Trovatore on September 11–this time not as the favored returning guest conductor from Italy, but as San Francisco Opera’s newest music director.

The Public Goes Ga-Ga for Lang Lang

Maestro Tilson Thomas opened the symphony’s program with a series of three waltzes, each boldly different from the rest in style and character.

Mephisto Waltz No. 1 by Hungarian composer Franz Liszt is a fleshed-out symphonic version of his better-known work for the piano. The title is apparently derived from the character of Mephistopheles, who is an incarnation of the devil in the legend of Faust.

Far from the title’s reference to the underworld, the waltz expresses man’s rather innocent longing for youth and vitality in a perpetual struggle with moral issues. This, the orchestra communicated in a thrilling performance with bursts of supersonic tempos and stunning technical brilliance.

Then came La valse – simply, “The Waltz” – by French composer Maurice Ravel. The work was originally conceived for dance, but was made into a stand-alone concert piece after a dispute between composer and choreographer.

Being exceptionally gifted at orchestration, Ravel creates sensual tonal textures that, while being uniquely his own, are also an unmistakable musical salute to the great master of the Viennese waltz, Johann Strauss.

If Liszt’s waltz speaks of valiant youth and vigor, Ravel’s speaks of princes, fairy-tale castles and chivalry.

The third and final waltz on the program – taken from the Broadway musical Carousel by American composer Richard Rodgers – speaks simply of tender affection.

One might find the harmonies of the opening bars by Rodgers surprisingly sophisticated for a Broadway production. A brief detour into polytonality hinted at the composer’s interest in the emerging musical trends of his time on both sides of the Pond, which made this piece a particularly intriguing specimen for the waltz sample three-pack.

The evening’s principal attraction, however, followed intermission, with Prokofiev’s Third Piano Concerto played by one of the most popular performers of our time, Lang Lang.

Pianist Lang Lang shines in San Francisco Symphony’s opening night concert on September 9, 2009 (photo courtesy of San Francisco Symphony).

Despite being billed primarily as a Chinese sensation, Lang was a student of Graffman at Philadelphia’s Curtis Institute, and could be equally considered a product of American training. At 27, he has played the great concert halls of the world many times over, and already demonstrates the rare sensitivity and skill of a veteran of the stage.

After years of polarized reviews, Lang Lang’s flawless execution has now aged into soulful art, right before our very eyes.

It was not the technical demands of Prokofiev’s concerto, but rather its unexpected romanticism that revealed the breadth of Lang’s interpretive canvas.

After endless applause and four returns to the stage, Lang Lang finally relented to an encore – Chopin’s Etude in A-flat, Op. 25, known as the “Aeolian Harp.”

If you think you’ve heard this piece before, think again!

To breathe new life into the single most commonly played Chopin Etude for over 160 years – now, THAT takes more than anything taught in a music school; American or Chinese.

So, who deserves credit for producing the world phenomenon that is Lang Lang? China and the U.S. may well have to fight this one out, too, along with the trade deficit and carbon emissions.

'Il Trovatore' Marks New Beginning for San Francisco Opera

Since San Francisco Opera’s public announcement of its new music director exactly two years and eight months ago, the enigmatic Nicola Luisotti has been the talk of the town as the man next in line to bear the mantle of his illustrious predecessors, the English Sir John Pritchard and the Scottish Donald Runnicles.

Nicola Luisotti conducts his first production as San Francisco Opera’s new music director (photo by Terrence McCarthy).

It is also a compliment to our city and to our opera that a European conductor of Luisotti’s stature should dismiss multiple offers, no doubt, from highly prestigious opera companies on the continent in favor of San Francisco.

Rivers of ink have flowed in Luisotti’s mention since he conducted last year’s production of La Bohème, and was featured as a guest conductor of the San Francisco Symphony in March. Naturally, this year’s season-opener with Verdi’s Il Trovatore was laden with excitement with perhaps a dash of skepticism.

Moments into the music, one could faintly hear a qualitative change in the orchestra’s sound. Whether a result of the new chemistry between conductor and orchestra, a side-effect of the slightly raised pit, or simply a musical placebo effect caused by the massive publicity in advance of Luisotti’s arrival – it is hard to know for sure.

Whatever the case, this is definitely a positive change.

The opera itself is a tragic tale of love, cruelty and murder, set to music by the master of Italian opera Giuseppe Verdi based on the work of Spanish playwright Antonio Gutierrez.

Sometime in fifteenth century Spain, Count Di Luna is convinced that his young son is ill from witchcraft, and orders a certain gypsy woman burnt at the stake in order to break the evil spell. The gypsy’s daughter named Azucena – herself the mother of a young boy – kidnaps the count’s son in a desperate attempt to trade his life for that of her mother, but arrives too late.

As the flames devour Azucena’s mother, she throws the count’s abducted son into the fire in a fit a vengeful wrath, only to realize in chilling horror, that she has instead burned her own son alive by mistake.

Azucena raises the count’s son as her dead boy Manrico, who grows into a handsome troubadour – trovatore in Italian – and whose sweet melodies capture the heart of a certain Leonora.

The count’s second son becomes the new Count Di Luna after his father’s death, and also falls in love with Leonora. Being a powerful and wealthy man – not to mention lethally jealous – the count manages to capture Manrico, whom he intends to kill over the woman they both love.

Leonora vows marriage to the count in exchange for Manrico’s life, but soon commits suicide to get out of the bargain. This enrages the count, so he hangs Manrico, upon which Azucena reveals to the count that he has killed, not a rival, but his own long-lost brother.

The story ends in a perfect example of operatic justice when the count pays the price for the long-ago death of a gypsy woman, and has to live out his days knowing he has killed his own flesh and blood, eerily sharing Azucena’s fate.

Verdi’s Il Trovatore opened San Francisco Opera’s 87th season on September 11, 2009 (photo by Robert Kusel).

American soprano Sondra Radvanovsky was ravishing as Leonora. Her perfectly controlled high notes in the aria “D’amor sull’ali rosee” (“On the Rosey Wings of Love”) of Act 4 – where Leonora sings of her concern for Manrico while pacing outside the prison – drew the evening’s loudest cheers.

Singing the troubadour’s part was Italian tenor Marco Berti, who did a fine job carrying the added burden of – not only being the leading tenor – but being a leading tenor who happens to be a singer in the story itself.

Berti’s aria “Ah, sì ben mio” (“Ah, My Beloved”), was one of the opera’s highlights, in which Manrico longs for death knowing that Leonora has agreed to marry the count.

Russian baritone Dmitri Hvorostovsky, who appears frequently in important roles with the San Francisco Opera, sang the part of Count di Luna with command and authority. First-timer mezzo soprano Stephanie Blythe, made a lasting impression in the complicated and disturbing character of Azucena.

Under chorus director Ian Robertson’s leadership, the band of gypsies, nuns, and ordinary fifteenth century Spaniards played a crucial part in the opera’s success.

Each scene was treated as though a delicately balanced painting, where the interplay of shadow and light filled open spaces, creating a kind of picture book to accompany the story.

David McVicar and Walter Sutcliffe co-directed the production with the finest of sets, costumes and choreography at their disposal.

Clearly, San Francisco Opera is charting its own artistic course through the rough waters of the world’s worst economic crisis ever. In contrast, this opening night was nothing but smooth sailing all around.

Of course, with Captain Luisotti now at the helm, San Francisco Opera may as well be the QE2.

---

Eman Isadiar teaches piano at the Peninsula Conservatory and writes about music in the San Francisco Bay Area.

San Francisco Symphony Welcomes New Opera Director

By Eman Isadiar

San Francisco Opera's new music director Nicola Luisotti leads San Francisco Symphony in music by Kodaly, Bloch and Brahms (Photo by Dario Acosta)

So far this season, we have seen a host of distinguished guests from far and wide on the conductor’s podium at Davies Symphony Hall. But one man in particular stands out for the prominent position he will soon occupy in the city’s cultural life. In its latest concert, the San Francisco Symphony was led by the charismatic Italian conductor Nicola Luisotti, who has been named as San Francisco Opera’s next music director.

The stylistic variety of the program offered ample proof that Luisotti’s musical skills extend far beyond the realm of opera. The concert had a pronounced ethnic flavor with Kodály’s Dances of Galánta followed by Bloch’s Hebraic Rhapsody with cellist Michael Grebanier. The evening culminated with a symphonic monolith of the Romantic repertoire—Brahms’ Fourth.

Hungarian Dances

The Dances of Galánta opened in a slow and lavishly orchestrated movement, evoking gypsy music with haunting melodies from ancient times. Traveling to the remote corners of his native Hungary, Kodály seems to have amassed an impressive collection of folk songs from various regions, which he brought back to life in an entirely new form through his ground-breaking orchestral techniques.

Each of the five dances was progressively livelier and more colorful than the preceding one, leading to an exciting and rhythmically invigorating finale. Since the individual movements were performed attacca (with no significant pause in between), the dances merged together in a kind of musical patchwork, not unlike a symphonic counterpart to Liszt’s familiar Hungarian Rhapsodies for the piano.

Kodály’s Dances of Galánta feature an especially prominent part for the clarinet, which the symphony’s own Carey Bell played brilliantly. In comparison to other guest conductors, Luisotti seemed to take extra care to show his appreciation for the orchestra by acknowledging Bell and other musicians with important solos at length during the applause.

Grebanier Shines as the Voice of Solomon

Then came a stunning piece by Swiss-born American composer Ernest Bloch (not to be confused with German philosopher Ernst Bloch). Having served as director of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, Bloch the composer is forever associated with the Bay Area’s musical heritage. He also taught composition at UC Berkeley, and was for a time a resident of Mill Valley.

Schelomo—Hebrew for Solomon—is a single-movement rhapsody for cello and orchestra inspired by Jewish texts attributed to King Solomon. The composer had originally intended the work for voice and orchestra, but could not decide between English, French, German or Hebrew as its language. He finally chose the cello over the human voice.

Bloch’s Hebraic Rhapsody clearly displays Jewish-inspired melodic motifs with the emblematic augmented second intervals of Middle-Eastern and Eastern European folk music. The work as a whole, however, contains no trace of any known authentic Jewish tunes.

Predating the golden age of American cinema by about four decades, Schelomo nevertheless evokes the rich orchestral sounds of the great biblical sagas produced by Hollywood in the mid to late 50s. In fact, much of the music for American films was written by European-born composers of Bloch’s generation, who may have shared some of the same formative influences.

San Francisco Symphony’s Michael Grebanier is no stranger to Schelomo, having appeared as the soloist ten years ago under Roberto Abbado. His sensitive interpretation conveyed at once majestic grandeur and gentle poetry, while bringing out the most soul-stirring tones a cello can produce.

Grebanier’s broad range of color—from his delicate overtone brush to his powerful and grainy bowing action—gave an especially vibrant voice to the fabled prophet-ruler of the Old Testament. A voice that elicited endless applause, multiple returns to the stage and a standing ovation fit for a king.

Luisotti’s Trump Card—Brahms’ Fourth

The final piece on the program, namely Symphony No. 4 by Johannes Brahms, was a worthy conclusion to an evening of successive symphonic delights. This highly dramatic and passionate work seemed especially well-suited to Luisotti’s musical temperament, and once again refuted any notion that he is strictly a conductor of opera.

Nicola Luisotti gave us a bold, extroverted Brahms with higher peaks and deeper valleys than most. While at times he seemed to physically draw out gushing symphonic waves with all his might, at other moments his conducting was distilled to the subtle movement of his head during the instrumental solos.

From Brahms’ thick orchestral textures, Luisotti often brought to the foreground a melodic line or fragment that would otherwise have gone unnoticed, making the audience aware of the interplay among the many layers of music.

If Luisotti’s rendition of music by Kodály and Bloch prompted the audience to sit up and take notice, his stellar performance of Brahms firmly earned their respect and admiration.

A Distinctive Style

From the first flick of his baton, Nicola Luisotti intrigued and fascinated the audience with his flamboyant, highly expressive conducting style. He brought a clear and evident measure of drama to the music being performed—perhaps a function of his operatic background.

But what exactly is this “conducting style” that sets one conductor apart from another, one might ask. It is a complex and mysterious concept, having to do with the knowledge of how music works, and the ability to somehow project this knowledge onto the musicians.

In addition to the established conducting gestures of entrance and exit cues, tempo and dynamics, every conductor also develops a set of his or her own highly individual signals, ranging from precise instrumental articulations to very abstract musical ideas.

Although the motions are aimed at the musicians, they can also have a profound influence on the public’s perception of the music by providing visual clues indicating humor, gravity, passion, serenity and so on.

This is where Luisotti’s gift truly came to light. His conducting is a kind of sign language that is nearly as comprehensible to the least musical member of the audience as it is to the highly trained musicians of the orchestra.

It is almost a shame that such a uniquely rich gesticular vocabulary should be confined to the dimly-lit War Memorial orchestra pit come September.

---

Eman Isadiar teaches piano at the Peninsula Conservatory and writes about music in the Bay Area.