Today's Birthdays

Georg Anton Benda (1722-1795)
Laszlo Lajtha (1892-1963)
John Duke (1899-1984)
Lena Horne (1917-2010)
James Loughran (1931)
Giles Swayne (1946)
Stephen Barlow (1954)
Esa-Pekka Salonen (1958)

and

John Gay (1685-1732)
Czeslaw Milosz (1911-2004)

Review of Britt Festival concert featuring Tines and Abrams published in CVNA

Last weekend, I heard Davóne Tines give a superb concert with the Britt Festival Orchestra under Teddy Abrams. The orchestra followed that in the second half of the program with an outstanding Shostakovich 10. You can read all about it here in Classical Voice North America. 

Today's Birthdays

Aarre Merikanto (1893-1958)
Nelson Eddy (1901-1967)
Leroy Anderson (1908-1975)
Frank Loesser (1910-1969)
Bernard Hermann (1911-1975)
Rafael Kubelik (1914-1996)
Sylvia Olden Lee (1917-2004)
Ezra Laderman (1924-2015)
James Dick (1940)
Joelle Wallach (1946)
"Little Eva" Boyd 1945-2003)
Anne-Sophie Mutter (1963)

and

Antoine de Saint Exupéry (1900-1944)
James K. Baxter (1926-1972)
Oriana Fallaci (1929-2006)

Today's Birthdays

Napoléon Coste (1805-1883)
Joseph Joachim (1831-1907)
Richard Rodgers (1902-1979)
Arnold Shaw (1909-1989)
Sergiu Celibidache (1912-1996)
George Lloyd (1913-1998)
Giselher Klebe (1925-2009)
Robert Xavier Rodriguez (1946)
Philip Fowke (1950)
Thomas Hampson (1955)

and

Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640)
Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778)
Luigi Pirandello (1867-1936)
Eric Ambler (1909-1989)
Mark Helprin (1947)

Today's Birthdays

Friedrich Silcher (1789-1860)
Toti Dal Monte (1893-1975)
Karel Reiner (1910-1979)
George Walker (1922-2018)
Ruth Schönthal (1924-2006)
Anno Moffo (1932-2006)
Hugh Wood (1932-2021)
Daniel Asia (1953)
Nancy Gustafson (1956)
Magnus Lindberg (1958)
Robert King (1960)

and

James Smithson (1765-1829)
Paul Lawrence Dunbar (1872-1906)
Helen Keller (1880-1968)
Frank O'Hara (1926-1966)
Lucille Clifton (1936-2010)
Alice McDermott (1953)

Today's Birthdays

Big Bill Broonzy (1893-1958)
Hugues Cuénod (1902-2010)
Wolfgang Windgassen (1914-1974)
Giuseppe Taddei (1916-2010)
Syd Lawrence (1923-1998)
Jacob Druckman (1928-1996)
Claudio Abbado (1933-2014)

and

Pearl S. Buck (1892-1973)
Walter Farley (1916-1989)

Today's Birthdays

Gustave Charpentier (1860-1956)
Arthur Tracy (1899-1997)
Bill Russo (1928-2003)
Kurt Schwertsik (1935)
Carly Simon (1945)

and

Antoni Gaudí (1852-1926)
George Abbott (1887-1995)
George Orwell (1903-1950)
Sonia Sotomayor (1954)

Interview with Kelley Nassief, PSU's new director of opera, published in OAW

My interview with Kelley Nassief, the new director of opera at Portland State University, appears in Oregon ArtsWatch here. Who says you can't go home again?

Today's Birthdays

Harry Partch (1901-1974)
Pierre Fournier (1906-1986)
Milton Katims (1909-2006)
Denis Dowling (1910-1984)
Terry Riley (1935)

and

Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914)
John Ciardi (1916-1986)
Anita Desai (1937)
Stephen Dunn (1939)

Today's Birthdays

Carl Reinecke (1824-1910)
Mieczyslaw Horszowski (1892-1993)
George Russell (1923-2009)
Adam Faith (1940-2003)
James Levine (1943-2021)
Nigel Osborne (1948)
Nicholas Cleobury (1950)
Sylvia McNair (1956)

and

Anna Akhmatova (1889-1966)
Michael Shaara (1928-1988)
David Leavitt (1961)

Salonen and Sellars and pics from the SF Conservatory of Music

 A couple of weekends ago, I met my colleagues from MCANA in San Francisco. We had a chinwaggle with Esa-Pekka Salonen and Peter Sellars with Rich Ginell, one of our critics from Los Angeles as the moderator. 

When he first came to LA, Salonen had the chance to by Stravinsky's house, which was up for sale. After much thought, he declined to purchase the house. Sellars lives in LA, and he has never learned how to drive a car. 

We also got a tour of San Francisco Conservatory's new building. It is right across from Davies Hall. 

You can see the War Memorial Opera House to the right.

This next photo has a nice view of SF City Hall.

Yes, that's a balcony with large windows. 

The conservatory is quite impressive, and all of the rooms, including practice rooms are acoustically separated/isolated. 

We also took in an excellent Don Giovanni at the opera house with Bertrand de Billy on the podium.

San Francisco Symphony presents odd mashup of two Stravinsky pieces

 Two weekends ago, the San Francisco Symphony, under the baton of Esa-Pekka Salonen, paired Stravinsky’s Oedipus rex and his Symphony of Psalms at Davies Symphony Hall in an intriguing semi-staged production by Peter Sellars. I experienced this double-bill on June 10^th as a benefit of the Music Critics Association of North America (MCANA), which held its annual meeting in the city by the bay.

The two works were separated by just a few years. Stravinsky completed Oedipus rex in 1927 and the Symphony of Psalms in 1930. Both pieces, revised in 1948, featured sung texts in Latin and both were interlaced with narration that was adapted by Jean Cocteau from Sophocles’ play about a man who unknowingly murdered his father, solved a riddle to save the town from the plague, then married his mother but later understood what he had done and in despair blinded himself and became a beggar.

For Oedipus rex, a row of throne-like chairs in an African motif stretched across the front of the stage at Davies. The orchestra and Salonen was positioned behind that arrangement, and the men of the San Francisco Symphony Chorus, in modern everyday clothing, took their places in the choir loft.

Breezy Leigh in the role of Antigone declaimed the dire situation for the town of Thebes, beset by the plague. Her gripping delivery jolted the orchestra and chorus with the latter employing gestures that amplified the situation. Tenor Sean Panikkar terrifically conveyed the rise and fall of Oedipus. Mezzo  J’Nai Bridges created a stricken Jocasta. Baritone Willard White delivered an ocean of empathy in a trio of roles as Creon, the Messenger, and the seer Tiresias. Tenor Jose Simerila Romero distinguished himself as the Shepherd. The orchestra and chorus added superbly to the drama with a crisp and dynamic performance.

The Symphony of Psalms began with Leigh proclaiming “Praise the Lord” and “Who will be kind to Oedipus tonight?” Panikkar appeared as the blind Oedipus, staggered to a place where he laid himself down as if in a grave. Later he got up and walked off the stage. Was that a resurrection?  It seemed that Sellars, in trying to link the Oedipus story to the Old Testament psalms went a bridge too far and fell off.

Nevertheless, the orchestra sounded robust and the chorus (with men and women in street dress) sang passionately with outstanding blend and diction. The Alleluia from Psalm 150 was especially soothing.  

Today's Birthdays

Francesco Manfredini (1684-1762)
Étienne Nicolas Méhul (1763-1817)
Frank Heino Damrosch (1859-1937)
Jennie Tourel (1900-1973)
Walter Leigh (1905-1942)
Sir Peter Pears (1910-1986)
Hans-Hubert Schönzeler (1925-1997)
Pierre Thibaud (1929-2004)
Libor Pešek (1933)
Pierre Amoyal (1949)
Christopher Norton (1953)

and

Harriett Mulford Stone Lothrop (1844-1924)
Erich Maria Remarque (1898-1970)
Billy Wilder (1906-2002)
Joseph Papp (1921-1991)
Meryl Streep (1949)
Elizabeth Warren (1949)

Today's Birthdays

Henry Holden Huss (1862-1953)
Hilding Rosenberg (1892-1985)
Harry Newstone (1921-2006)
Lou Ottens (1926-2021)
Lalo Schifrin (1932)
Diego Masson (1935)
Philippe Hersant (1948)
Judith Bingham (1952)
Jennifer Larmore (1958)

and

Alexander Pope (1688-1744)
Reinhold Niebuhr (1892-1972)
Donald Peattie (1898-1964)
Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980)
Mary McCarthy (1912-1989)
Ian McEwan (1948)

and from the Composers Datebook:

On this day in 1890. Richard Strauss's tone-poem "Death and Transfiguration" and "Burleske" for Piano and Orchestra were given their premieres in Eisenach, at a convention of the General German Music Association, with the composer conducting and Eugen d'Albert as the piano soloist in the "Burleske".

Review of OSO season finale published in OAW

My review of the Oregon Symphony's grand finale is now posted. Okay, I didn't care for the super-quick pace of the Beethoven 9, and I wanted the men of the choirs to have more vocal heft, but the concert was a worthy to experience, and conductors have to experiment. 

 

Today's Birthdays

Joseph Martin Kraus (1756-1792)
Jacques Offenbach (1819-1880)
Wilfred Pelletier (1896-1982)
Chet Atkins (1924-2001)
Ingrid Haebler (1926
Eric Dolphy (1928-1964)
Arne Nordheim (1931-2010)
Mickie Most (1938-2003)
Brian Wilson (1942)
Anne Murray (1945)
André Watts (1946)
Lionel Richie (1949)

and

Kurt Schwitters (1887-1948)
Lillian Hellman (1905-1984)
Josephine Winslow Johnson (1910-1990)
Vikram Seth (1952)

Today's Birthdays

François Rebel (1701-1775)
Johann Wenzel Stamitz (1717-1757)
Carl Zeller (1842-1898)
Alfredo Catalani (1854-1893)
Sergei Taneyev (1856-1915)
Guy Lombardo (1902-1977)
Edwin Gerschefski (1909-1988)
Anneliese Rothenberger (1926-2010)
Elmar Oliveira (1950)
Philippe Manoury 1952)

and

Blaise Pascal (1623-1662)
Pauline Kael (1919-2001)
Tobias Wolff (1945)
Salman Rushdie (1947)

Today's Birthdays

Antonio Maria Bononcini (1677-1726)
Ignaz Pleyel (1757-1831)
David Popper (1843-1913)
Sir George Thalben-Ball (1896-1987)
Edward Steuermann (1892-1964)
Manuel Rosenthal (1904-2003)
Eduard Tubin (1905-1982)
Paul McCartney (1942)
Hans Vonk (1942-2004)
Anthony Halstead (1945)
Diana Ambache (1948)
Eva Marton (1948)
Peter Donohoe (1953)

and

Geoffrey Hill (1932-2016)
Gail Godwin (1937)
Jean McGarry (1948)
Chris Van Allsburg (1949)
Amy Bloom (1953)
Richard Powers (1957)

Today's Birthdays

John Wesley (1703-1791)
Charles Gounod (1818-1893)
Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971)
Hermann Reutter (1900-1985)
Einar Englund (1916-1999)
Galina Ustvolskaya (1919-2006)
Sir Edward Downes (1924-2009)
Christian Ferras (1933-1982)
Gérard Grisey (1946-1998)
Derek Lee Ragin (1958)

and

M. C. Escher (1898-1972)
John Hersey (1914-1993)
Ron Padgett (1942)

Today's Birthdays

Niccolò Vito Piccinni (1728-1800)
Helen Traubel (1899-1972)
Willi Boskovsky (1909-1990)
Sergiu Comissiona (1928-2005)
Lucia Dlugoszewski (1931-2000)
Jerry Hadley (1952-2007)
David Owen Norris (1953)

and

Geronimo (1829-1909)
Joyce Carol Oates (1938)