Update: I have made a correction in my article about classical music downloading, should you care to peruse it.
We all know Van Ness Avenue as an expansive, typically gridlocked north-south artery lined with stores, restaurants, fast-food joints, car dealerships, and heaven knows what else.
But for about six blocks just north of Market, the west side of Van Ness is also San Francisco's Lincoln Center. This is the heart of the San Francisco classical music scene, the "magic mile" (well, quarter-mile anyway) where on a busy weekend night you can indulge yourself in music to satiation, and then some.
So let's talk about Saturday night, October 4, when Van Ness will be making music like there's no tomorrow.
Just a few steps from the corner of Market and Van Ness you will find the San Francisco Conservatory of Music at 50 Oak Street. SFCM's three concert halls set the building buzzing, jiggling, and dancing every night once the school year and season have well and truly begun.
On the 4th, the Conservatory Orchestra steps out in the main concert hall. Just the room alone — a fetching blend of Edwardian splendor and compassionate modernism — is more than enough reason to attend, not to mention the fine offerings: Verdi's Overture to La forza del destino, Steve Reich's "The Four Sections", and after intermission, a little ditty called the Shostakovich Tenth Symphony in all its titanic glory.
A fine conductor (Andrew Mogrelia), a spiffy concert hall, and a bevy of gifted young artists. Who could ask for anything more?
Well, if you absolutely must ask for something more, then perhaps you might enjoy what's going on a few blocks north at the Opera House: Wolfgang Erich Korngold's Die Tote Stadt, one of the 20th century's more intriguing operatic items. Korngold is nowadays best remembered as the quintessential old-school movie composer who gave us The Adventures of Robin Hood, Captain Blood, and The Sea Hawk, among other signature scores. (You may peruse my article about Korngold's film music here, should you be so moved.) However, he was also a composer of concert music; in fact, both his concert and movie scores tended to intertwine, such as his Sursum corda providing material for Robin Hood while The Prince and the Pauper served as the foundation for the finale of the Violin Concerto.
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In Die Tote Stadt, Korngold's flamboyantly opulent tonal language paints a colored sheen over a — there's no point in being mealy-mouthed about this — bleak, sodden and pretentious libretto. The production goes in for bravura stagecraft that complements Korngold's score while helping to ameliorate the prevailing dourness of the plot.
Should neither the SFCM feast nor the Korngold banquet-cum-torture-chamber appeal to you, perhaps you might prefer something along the lines of a radiant soprano in a vocal-orchestral recital?
One more block north on Van Ness will do the trick, as you enter the Herbst Theater for a concert from Isabel Bayrakdarian and the Manitoba Chamber Orchestra.
The program of modern and nearly-modern music includes works by Bartók, Ravel, and Nikolaos Skalkottas, but of particular interest might be the works by Armenia's national composer Gomidas Vartabed: Songs of Yearning, Songs of Nature of Love, Dances for Piano, and Songs for children and humor. The program also includes Moravian composer and Holocaust victim Gideon Klein's Partita for Strings and Variations on a Moravian Folksong.
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Bayrakdarian's voice may be familiar to you from The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, the MTT/SFS recording of the Mahler Second Symphony (she shared the vocal honors with Lorraine Hunt Lieberson), or perhaps you have seen some of her remarkable performances, which include Julie Taymour's production of The Magic Flute at the Met and the world premiere of Jake Heggie's one-act opera To Hell and Back. If you have been indulging in the "M22" set of Mozart opera videos from the Salzburg Festival, you will recognize her as that glamorous Zerlina who slinks around Thomas Hampson's playboy/lowlife Don Giovanni.
Or I suppose you could just stay home...watch the tube...stare at the wall...rusticate...(sigh)....
Here's how to pick up tickets and more information about all of these dandy events, all of 'em on Saturday night, October 4:
- San Francisco Conservatory of Music — concert information and tickets
- San Francisco Opera — tickets and more information about Die Tote Stadt
- San Francisco Performances — tickets and more information about Isabel Bayrakdarian and the Manitoba Chamber Orchestra
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