Three-Course Cultural Feast - Tetzlaff, Amour and Nijinsky

Last week, I attended three incredible cultural events - two live performances and one cinema, all were very stirring and thought-provoking in their distinctive ways, starting with a relative becalming night at Berkeley's First Congregational Church, on February 12, Tuesday, a solo violin recital by German artist Christian Tetzlaff, under the aegis of  Cal Performances.

Several years ago, I had heard Tetzlaff performing Brahms' Violin Concerto with San Francisco Symphony and was deeply impressed by his austere musicianship and for this recital, he offered something both familiar and more readily accessible, to me, (Bach and Ysaÿe), and something off the beaten track and more challenging (Kurtág and Bartók.  Of these music, I found Kurtág and Bartók most satisfying, perhaps due to the unfamiliarity and my joy of hearing these strange music fresh.  Kurtág's music consisted of strings of short fragments but very eloquent and coherent, and quite lyrical  Tetzlaff's virtuosity of playing these challenging music was extremely impressive, yet, what impressed even more was the stylistic accomplishment he demonstrated for the entire evening, and his seriousness, his unflagging concentration and intensity, though his playing was not without lighthearted humor at the appropriate moments.  He produced beautiful and sweet, and sometimes very unusual tones but these sounds all served a purpose, the coherent statement of the music.  His piano, pianissimo playing would live on forever.

The programed pieces he played were:

• Eugène Ysaÿe - Sonata for Violin in G minor
• György Kurtág: "A choice" out of Signs
• Johann Sebastian Bach - Sonata for Violin in C major
• Béla Bartók - Sonata for Violin

After the exhilarating but somewhat challenging program (even for some audience), he awarded us with a flashy Paganini 16, which and the lullaby of the “Heartbeat” movement from Bach’s A-Minor Sonata.

As for me, I'll start to listen to Kurtág when I paint.


Christian Tetzlaff plays Bach

On Friday, I finally made time to see the much talked-about film Amour written and directed by Michael Haneke, who had made many unforgettable films such as Caché, The Piano Teacher, and The White Ribbon.

Amour, a story on love and death, was a beautiful movie, confidently made and very difficult to watch.  It stared at the difficult situation one is bound to face at certain time, unflinchingly, and the result was wrenching but not depressingly so.  We took comfort in the humanity and obvious love the main characters, a cultured old Parisian couple, demonstrated in front us, gesture by gesture, syllable by syllable.


Amour by Michael Haneke

Since the main character was a piano teacher, we had several glimpse of her star pupil, the real-life great pianist, Alexandre Tharaud, who played himself in a very natural way and I kept wondering if this was his life story or not but was reluctant to find out.  One way or another, it wouldn't change the perception of this great movie about love and death in old age.  And if it was not Tharaud's teacher's story, it would be other people's stories. 

Was the movie depressing?  No.  Disturbing?  Yes; but a must-see.


Alexandre Tharaud in Amour

On Sunday, 17th, I dived into one of the most disturbed mind and heart of a great dancer - Vaslav Nijinsky, via the modern ballet by John Neumeier, who had created many modern classics and was touring with his Hamburg Ballet, as part of the regular season program offered by San Francisco Ballet.

I was very grateful to be able to see any full-length ballet created by John Neumeier.  If his ballets were not as pure balletic as those from Imperial Russia, they were unfailingly probing and intense, such as his dark-hued The Little Mermaid presented in San Francisco several seasons before.

The first act of the ballet mostly concentrated on Nijinsky's life and creative experience, with many of his famous roles invoked by various dancers, juxtaposing with important people in his tumultuous relationships.  It was often amusing but somewhat prosaic.  Act two led us into his troubled inner world, with his mind descending to madness while the exterior world was a living hell of World War I.  I found the corps of soldiers and the solo turns of the pathetic Petrushka unbearably moving.  Another great creation was the shadow of Nijinsky (in white brief in the pictures below), whose surreal, insistent and twisted presence put both Nijinsky and the audience on edge.  The hallucination went on and on and I was utterly exhausted and became impatient for it to be over, despite the amazing dance on stage.  The gesture and motif did become repetitive and eventually monotonous.  Perhaps, that was by design?  The music of Chopin, Schumann, Rimsky-Korsakov and Shostakovich were played with thrilling brilliance.


Nijinsky by John Neumeier - Hamburg Ballet in San Francisco


Nijinsky by John Neumeier - Hamburg Ballet in San Francisco

What an exhaustive week, and what an extraordinary week. 


Related posts on Art · 文化 · Kunst:

- Angelic Voice - Philippe Jaroussky at Hertz Hall, UC Berkeley

- High Romanticism - German Tenor Jonas Kaufmann's Recital in Berkeley

- A Striking Film - "The White Ribbon"

- Rethinking Hans Christian Andersen's "The Little Mermaid"

Angelic Voice - Philippe Jaroussky at Hertz Hall, UC Berkeley

Philippe Jaroussky,
2011 Misteria Paschalia Festival,
Kraków Philharmonic

French countertenor Philippe Jaroussky joined Apollo's Fire, a Baroque orchestra founded in 1992 and based in Cleveland, for a concert of music by Handel and Vivaldi this afternoon as a Cal Performances presentation at Hertz Hall, University of California, Berkeley, in a journey through the gamut of human emotions, as experienced through the roles created for the great castrato singers of the 18th century.

The program included: Handel: Chaconne from Terpsichore (Il pastor fido) • Arias from Oreste, Imeneo, Il Parnasso in Festa and Ariodante • Handel/arr. Sorrell: Prelude in A major for Solo Harpsichord • Vivaldi: Violin Concerto in E-flat major, Op. 8, No. 5, "Tempesta di Mare" • Arias from Catone in Utica, Giustino and Tito Manlio • Vivaldi/arr. Sorrell: Concerto Grosso "La Follia" ("Madness") • Allegro from Concerto Grosso in D major.

Cal Performances is often praised for presenting local debut performances by top talents from all over the world, especially the recital series of classical music, such as mezzo-soprano Cecilia Bartoli, and tenor Jonas Kaufmann. Last year, I attend the more heroic voiced Kaufmann recital at the larger Zellerbach Hall, the more ethereal voiced Jaroussky graced us at the more intimate Hertz Hall. 

Jaroussky had been singing in the Baroque repertoire for a long time and has long been praised highly for his angelic voice and his keen musicality.  His performance in Hertz Hall confirmed such reputation and I state again that I had never heard a sweeter voice before.

More crucially, unlike the reputation associated with the voice type of countertenor, Jaroussky had good amount of coloration at his disposal therefore his sing was never monotonous or glassy.  His agile voice was very impressive in the Handel and Vivaldi's pyrotechnics but he was also able to invest the music with true emotions, firm and focused tone, and wonderful flexibilities.  He was also able to connect with audience in an immediate way and any doubts due to the unfamiliarity with Baroque era dissipated as soon as he let his voice ripple through the hall.

All of his offerings - seven announced arias and three encores (The three encores were an aria by Porpora, "Venti, turbini" from Händel's Rinaldo, and "Ombra mai fu" from Händel's Serse) were of highest quality but I enjoyed the most was the slow and soulful music such as the Handel recitative and aria Ho perso il caro ben for Orfeo from Il Parnasso in Festa, mourning the death of his beloved Euridice and the romance encore.  He simply convinced me that Orfeo should sound just like him, nuance after nuance.

He was full of grace, not only in his bearings but in his willingness to share the stage.  The Apollo's Fire treated the delighted audience several music in various emotions and was greeted just as enthusiastically. 



Pity that San Francisco Opera never saw fit to engage starts like Bartoli, Kaufmann and Jaroussky.  Would it be nice to have a Vivaldi opera staged for the talents like Jaroussky and Bartol?


Philippe Jaroussky - Opium (Mélodies Francaises) - EMI Classics


Philippe Jaroussky - Carestini: Story of a Castrato - EMI Classics

Financial Troubles of Classical Music Institutions

In economic tough time, classical music institutions suffer greatly.  New Yorker tallied a partial list of such casualties:

The classical-music business lives in perpetual fear of the future. The last great shiver of foreboding swept over the city at the end of the nineteen-sixties, when it appeared that the new generation—the boomers—had no interest in classical music. The classical industry made a strong recovery, but the economic collapse of 2008 diminished both attendance and donations, and as a result several institutions are teetering or failing outright. What’s new about the current crisis is its sharply political edge, mirroring bigger battles that are taking place across the country. Managements and governing boards have often adopted an anti-union tone, charging that the costs of employing up to a hundred musicians year-round have become insupportable. That classical music could still draw a crowd was made clear in March, when YouTube Symphony drew an electronic public of thirty-three million people. Two orchestras that nearly went bankrupt in 2001—the St. Louis Symphony and the Toronto Symphony—are now thriving. The problem cases tend to show multiple symptoms of poor management: dubious real-estate moves, ham-fisted labor relations, klutzy P.R., and, above all, a lack of artistic focus. The classical business needs to start thinking of itself not as luxury but as an essential part of the average thinking person’s life. 

It went on to discuss recent productions by the financially troubled City Opera and gave a brief review of Wagner's "Die Walküre" at the Met, which cost enormous amount of money but brought little to the drama.

Last week, San Francisco Chronicle reported that San Francisco Opera's (SFO) general director, David Gockley

just renewed his contract for another five-year term as general director of the San Francisco Opera, but he's not taking any victory laps. Instead, he's using the occasion to sound an unusually urgent alarm about the company's financial future.

"I look at this company as teetering," he said during a recent interview in his office at the War Memorial Opera House. "The annual expenses are about $7 million more than we can reliably fund, and half of our annual gifts are made by just 11 individuals who are over 65 years old.

"That is sleep-depriving."

Among the perils besetting the company, Gockley says, are a $136 million endowment only half as large as it needs to be; dauntingly high fixed costs, particularly for health care; a punishingly compact performance schedule in a technologically antiquated facility; and a geographically scattered patchwork of office space, rehearsal venues and storage facilities.
Candid essays

Gockley began raising these issues last fall, in a startlingly candid series of essays that appeared in the company's program book. In those "Notes From the General Director," he described the Opera as standing at an economic "precipice."


The basic problem, as Gockley and Chief Financial Officer Michael Simpson lay it out, is stark enough. The company's annual budget runs to roughly $70 million, covered by ticket sales of $24 million (assuming ticket sales of 90 percent of capacity, which is as high as planners can rely on), contributions of $33 million, and a $6 million draw on the proceeds from the company's endowment. That leaves what Gockley calls "a $7 million hickey" that is not being covered up in any structural way.

Gockley is intent on building the endowment - and particularly on relieving the company's reliance on a small number of aging donors.

"People say not to worry about the graying of donors, because there are people in their 40s who are graying and they'll replace the grays," he said. "To a certain extent I embrace that idea, that people become more consistently wedded to attending an art form like symphony or opera when they get older.

"But it's hard to see the new generation of grays becoming our big contributors, given what I know of what the 40- and 50-year-olds are doing with their money. What we need to do is for each wealthy donor, to find 10 people who are interested in opera and get them to give one-tenth of what their parents gave."

Yes, indeed.  He needs to worry, despite the fact that SFO is still a strong and vibrant institution.  As a long time opera goer, and a cultural life observer, I would like to voice some thoughts of mine on how to improve the situation.

1. Building relationships with business world and business schools.  Like it or not, money does concentrate in that sector and engage them is crucial for maintaining and enlarging the donor base.  I have worked in world-renown company and university they tend to give tickets to baseball games for their business partners and employees, but not art institutions.  Try it.  Give tickets to business schools and large companies.  SFO has wonderful theater and beautiful box seats can be very satisfying.
2. SFO has done much to reach out, such as opera in the baseball park.  However, it does not translate into bring them into opera house.  What SFO can do is giving out door prizes and winners would be invited to experience opera in the theater.
3. SFO cannot compete with the MET in cinemas.  What SFO can do is recording their performances and made DVDs to order and sell them to the audience after the performances.  People love souvenirs.
4. Using social media to engage.  San Francisco Ballet has made some efforts worth trying - such as giving out free tickets to Facebook fans. 
5. Engage young people - giving more CD/DVD/mp3/mp4 to school libraries.
6. If Gockley's plan of enlarging office space takes place, make room for a year-round art gallery, feature theater-related art, or art work done by musicians, and exhibit scenery, costume, wig designs, production histories, etc.  When the theater is dark, maintain a light on SFO somewhere else.
7. SFO tried to reach out to Chinese audience by producing opera based on Amy Tan's book.  Unfortunately the drama and music were sub-par. Chinese audience come to "Turandot" or Japanese audience come to "Madama Butterfly", not because these stories took place in China or Japan, but because of engaging drama and beautiful music.  Don't shortchange them.  If SFO is to try, Pulitzer winnder "Madame White Snake" by Zhou Long might be a good start.
8. It's important to reach out to Chinese and other ethnic groups, because the tourists from China will grow fast.  Try to connect with Chinese tour groups - bring them to the house, let them see some recorded performances during the theater tour and sell them DVDs.
9. Do some more edgy and acclaimed works, such as "Handmaid's Tale", "Tempest", "Minotaur", etc.  Some people do like the intellectualism of European conviction.  They don't need to be Euro-trash.  
10. Find a small space for Baroque or chamber works. Hiring resident artists to sing parallel productions in the smaller space in English, or comparable works, such as Busoni's "Turandot" when the main stage present Puccini's.
11. Better PR campaign.  For example, during Ring cycle period, SFO can show the amazing movie "Die Nibelungen" by Fritz Lang in the opera house, and invite people would might not come for the 16-hour saga.

I am sure, SFO have been trying hard to sustain the high artistic level and maintain healthy fiscal footing, and I wish this glorious institution will shine brighter.

San Francisco Opera 2009-10 Season

I just finished annual ritual of renewing my half-season subscription to San Francisco Opera. The 2009-10 season boasts a few exciting productions and singers and some "chestnuts" to save the company in these financially challenging times.

I'm looking forward to seeing Verdi's Il Trovatore. I've seen it before but the new David McVicar production inspired by Goya's paintings boasts a cast that's hard to resist: Dmitri Hvorostovsky, Sondra Radvanovsky, Stephanie Blythe. I don't know much about tenor Marco Berti, hopefully, he won't let his colleagues down.

Ewa Podleś tries for the second time to make her SFO debút, alas, in a minor role in Il Trittico by Puccini, a composer I often find too emotionally manipulative. I'll trade this production for Verdi's Otello.

For the second time, I'll skip Mozart's Die Entführung aus dem Serail - I love the opera but it stubbornly stayed at the bottom of my wish list - too little time.

La Fille du Régiment by by Donizetti will bring Diana Damrau and Juan Diego Flórez together, with the well traveled production by Laurent Pelly. I had the good luck to hear Juan Diego Flórez twice, but on both occasions his original female leads canceled due to illness. I really hope to hear the amazing Damrau. This opera was not in the half-season series I signed up for, so I purchased added-on single tickets in order to beat the crowd. Count this opera as a possible sold-out.

Delicious Salome will finally be staged for the first time since I moved to the San Francisco area. The combination of Oscar Wilde and Richard Strauss is irresistible. My favorite mezzo-soprano Irina Mishura (I saw her as Carmen in Cincinnati and Adalgisa in SFO) will return as Herodias. The beautiful Nadja Michael will sing Salome. I hope her voice will be as beautiful.

Otello was not in my series but I don't want to miss Johan Botha's Otello. He might be stiff but I do hope his voice will knock me out. I'm also looking forward to hearing his co-stars Svetla Vassileva and Marco Vratogna, all making their respective local debút.

I love Gounod's Faust - call me old fashioned. I do hope they keep the Walpurgisnacht ballet.

Another Puccini of the season is a spaghetti western - La fanciulla del West. Even Deborah Voigt won't be able to entice me to see that one.

The last offering is Richard Wagner's Die Walküre, conducted by Donald Runnicles. The first installment of the Francesca Zambello production was terrible. She might have done wonders elsewhere to earn her huge fame, but all her works here are mediocre. Even the good nights, such as Jenůfa, were due to composer's and singer's strength. I'm so envious of Los Angeles where people can see an Achim Freyer's amazing production. The only reason I want to keep this is Runnicles and his forces - Christopher Ventris (Siegmund), Eva-Maria Westbroek (Sieglinde) and Nina Stemme (Brünnhilde). I'm not taken by Mark Delavan's Wotan in Das Rheingold but he was at least competent.

Die Walküre will be conducted by my favorite Wagnerian Donald Runnicles, who is deserting us, as Pamela Rosenberg did. But who can blame them? This entire season had no edgy works, no contemporary opera, unless you count Salome. The few new works Gockley is considering all stay in the vicinity of Bernstein, Copland, Menotti and Barber - tuneful Americana, unchallenging, inoffensive. Or, we got the silly east-meets-west The Bonesetter's Daughter. Where are the proven masterworks by Thomas Adès, Harrison Birtwistle, Osvaldo Golijov, Hans Werner Henze, Poul Ruders , Kaija Saariaho, Aulis Sallinen and Mark-Anthony Turnage, to name a few?

Maybe I am being too harsh. At least Gockley gave us Erich Wolfgang Korngold's Die Tote Stadt. Hopefully, more.

San Francisco feels so provincial.


Limelight - 36" x 30", Oil on Canvas
© Matthew Felix Sun

Remembering My London Trip (2004)

The newly identified likely Shakespeare portrait, reminded me my wonderful trip to UK, along with the Netherlands and Belgium, in 2004.

Since this was my first trip to UK, I naturally visited other prominent landmarks, such as Parliament, Westminster Abbey, etc., but museums and theaters were definitely the highlights of the London visit.

On the very first day, I tried to catch the Edward Hopper retrospective, which ended that very day (5 September 2004), in the newly opened Tate Modern, metamorphosed gloriously from a former power plant. Unfortunately one of the Underground lines was closed on weekend, so it took much longer for me to get to our hotel; and when the proprietor offered a nicer room after we checked in, we were detained further. The bus we took to the museum stopped off the regular route so we had to walk a long stretch and when we breathlessly reached the window, they had just stopped selling tickets to the Hopper exhibit. The consolation was the Tate itself. Honestly I don't remember the collection much, except for some enormous sculptures in the front hall. The museum itself was a masterwork, with a breathtaking view of the Thames.

The main place for paintings was National Gallery. It had way too many treasures for me to recount. My favorite was "The Doge Leonardo Loredan" (1501-4) by Giovanni Bellini, and "The Arnolfini Portrait" or "Portrait of Giovanni (?) Arnolfini and his Wife ('The Arnolfini Portrait')" (1434) by Jan van Eyck. Incidentally, when we moved on to Brugges, Belgium in the same trip, we stayed in Hotel Lucca, built by the very same Arnolfini.



National Portrait Gallery boasted many important portraits and I was equally fascinated by their Tudor portraits and contemporary ones.
















I was very moved by the Parthenon Frieze (aka Elgin Marble) Room in The British Museum. The great reading room was stunning and I looked for the footprint supposedly left by Karl Marx. The newly covered grand courtyard was visually stunning and I stayed there for a long while, as if time ceased to exist. I also loved their Babylonian and Egyptian collections. I felt disoriented after the visit.

I stumbled upon the Wallace Collection, which was the "finest private collection of art ever assembled by one family" according to their own website. I honestly, though, cannot remember a particular piece, only the general musty and mysterious atmosphere. According to Frommer's, "the art collection includes works by Watteau, Boucher, Fragonard, and Greuze, as well as such classics as Frans Hals's Laughing Cavalier and Rembrandt's portrait of his son Titus. The paintings of the Dutch, English, Spanish, and Italian schools are outstanding."

The last museum in London I visited was Tate Britain, which featured British art, particularly Turner's.

Our day trips in UK included a rain-drenched trip to Stonehenge and an excursion to Cambridge, highlighted by the mandatory punting on the Cam. The permanent collections at Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge contained remarkable antiquities from ancient Egypt, Greece, and Rome. Again, I cannot pinpoint any specific piece of work. I only remember that I felt exhausted and exulted.

In other cities, besides fine arts, cathedrals and cemeteries, I might go for classical music. In London, I went for drama. It was Olympic year in Greece so we were blessed with two remarkable plays by by Euripides -- Iphigenia at Aulis at Royal National Theatre and Hecuba at Donmar Warehouse. The former was good and it was wonderful to see one play at Royal National Theatre but the later was an experience as remarkable as the opening night of Spring Festival in Prague, with President Václav Havel in attendance. I rank Hecuba as the best drama experiences I ever had, period. It turned out that the actress Clare Higgins won Laurence Olivier Best Actress Award for this portrayal. I had never heard of Donmar Warehouse before but a little searching yielded some information: Since 1992, Donmar original productions have received 27 Olivier Awards, 17 Critics' Circle Theatre Awards, 9 Evening Standard Awards, as well as 12 Tony Awards from eight productions transferring to Broadway (wikipedia.com).

I had a certain trepedation when I approached Shakespeare's Globe Theatre for Measure for Measure by Shakespeare. Kitsch! I was afraid. Jesters opened the curtain and trumpets rang out. Kitsch! I murmured. It turned out to be a nice surprise. It was a high quality performance, not the tourist trap at all. A few hours' standing and looking up the raised stage tired me, though in our general standing "seats" I did feel that I had experience a little bit resembled those of the great Elizabethans.

I was surprised that I loved London more than I cared to admit. The Queen was in Scotland for her summer holiday therefore she didn't deign to receive me. Alas.