From our weekly diarist, violinist Anthea Kreston:
We are in the car on the way to Venice for the weekend – we are in the middle of our two weeks in the northern part of Italy, playing trio concerts and teaching at a festival in a small town in the Dolomites. In the car are my husband and our two daughters (age 5 and 7), and squeezed in-between, our pianist, Amy Yang.
Rehearsals are short and frequent – a movement of Brahms crammed between teaching students (a nice international crowd from age 10-young professionals). We are performing every night, either trio or mixed faculty concerts. The contrast of rehearsal style is stark – compared to the detailed, intense quartet rehearsals I have become accustomed to this past year. This translates into concerts which are quite carefree – the joints in the music are acknowledged, structure is secure, voicing is decided, and each member of the ensemble is in charge of guiding the flow and emotional content of their designated phrases – we all go with the flow.
Every time I agree to come to a festival where I do double duty – teaching and performing – I have a heavy wave of regret on the second day. “Why on earth did I agree to do this?This is insane – both my teaching and performing are compromised, I am exhausted, the outings I planned with my family are put off and off – let me please remember to say “no” next time anyone asks me to do this!!”
But then, around day 4, I start to get used to it.My daughters have made friends, have found all the nooks and crannies of the festival building, enjoy their daily gelato outings, staying up really late, going to the grocery store, playing in the river. I realize that this is the way memories are made. I often think of my early memories of camps – the ice cream, riding my first skateboard, my teacher’s big hair, the swimming pool.
This week, my daughters were in their first quartet – with 2 of my old students from Oregon. We met every day – we played rhythm games with fly swatters, took turns being the orchestra for each other’s solo pieces, and learned two quartets. They all brought fancy dresses, named their group (The Rainbow Spy Dodgers), made a big stack of handmade programs for the concert, and performed in the town hall to an appreciative audience – their feet dangling from their chairs, too little to touch the floor.
And now – off to Venice – I play the four seasons again with the same orchestra as a couple of weeks ago (Interpreti Veneziani), and 25 of the students will come to the concert. The entire Rainbow Spy Dodgers will be together in Venice for 2 days – and our daughters are looking forward to showing them the places they discovered last year. The building of life-time memories.
German media a re reporting that Turkeys president was the lone absentee of the G20 leaders at the Elbphilharmonie performance of Beethoven’s ninth symphony.
No reason was given for his withdrawal, together with his wife.
Read into it what you will.
Trump turned up late. The start was delayed.
The San Francisco Symphony has snatched Houston’s CEO to be its next chief.
Mark Hanson, 43, starts in September, it was announced late on Friday.
It’s a good call for San Fran, but Houston, who recently lost longtime Director of Artistic Planning Aurelie Desmarais, is looking a bit shaky.
New season.
THE RING OF POLYKRATES
&
VIOLIN CONCERTO IN D MAJOR, OP. 35
By Erich Wolfgang Korngold
February 9, 11(m), 14 and 17, 2018
Revered French violinist Augustin Dumay will be the featured soloist with The Dallas Opera Orchestra for Korngold’s sweeping Violin Concerto. Dumay is considered “an absolute master” (Fanfare) and “a violinist of remarkable individuality” (The Daily Telegraph). Paired with Korngold’s one-act domestic comedy, The Ring of Polykrates, in this once-in-a-lifetime musical event! The stellar ensemble cast includes Paul Groves, Laura Wilde, and Craig Colclough in their Dallas Opera debuts. Directed in this brand-new production by Peter Kazaras and conducted by Emmanuel Villaume.
SUNKEN GARDEN
By Michel van der Aa
March 9, 11(m), 14 and 17, 2018
Applauded by both critics and audiences as “a fantastical tale to set the ears and eyes popping” Sunken Garden, described by its creator as an “occult mystery film opera,” fuses film and live singers (including 3-D and other visual effects) to deliver what Steve Smith of The New York Times called “a bold, rewarding venture” in contemporary opera performance. Directed by the composer, Michel van der Aa, and conducted by Nicole Paiement, The Martha R. and Preston A. Peak Principal Guest Conductor, in its U.S. Premiere; Sunken Garden starsRoderick Williams, Katherine Manley, and Miah Persson in their TDO debuts.
You’ll never see these in New York.
From the Strasbourg Philharmoic Orchestra:
The Orchestre Philharmonique de Strasbourg has just returned from a very successful tour in Korea under their music director Marko Letonja. For the trip from Frankfurt to Seoul, the Korean producer insisted that the musicians whose instruments were portable should take them in the cabin, and said that he had cleared everything with the airline. We were understandably in light of peoples’ experiences with other airlines – somewhat nervous; but in the interests of goodwill and good relations with our producer we agreed.
Asiana Airlines (based in South Korea) was superb. All the instruments were boarded, they were properly stowed and no one had any problems whatever. The only glitch was the trombone cases, which were a little larger than the permissible dimensions. We found a solution for the outward trip, but for the return trip, where Asiana had been alerted in advance to the issue, they went to the extent of calling our trombonists to board first so that they could properly stow their instruments before everyone else boarded. The service was top notch, and I think the airline really deserves some recognition for their effort in light of what their competition seems to be doing.
The second concerto for cello by Dmitri Shostakovich is the least ingratiating of the six he wrote, two for each major instrument. Opening with a gloomy, growling monologue, the solo part is matched in misery by the orchestra. The concerto was written in 1966 and first performed by Mstislav Rostropovich at a Moscow concert to mark the composer’s 60th birthday. Knowing that public pessimism was an offence in the Soviet Union, Shostakovich held nothing back….
The violinist and conductor Franco Mezzena is in mourning for the death of his father, the widely cherished pianist Bruno Mezzena.
Friends and students are reporting the death, from a rapid cancer, of Professor Edward Francis – pianist, teacher and influencer of innumerable musicians.
From his official bio:
Ohio born, he moved to California in 1965, where his major teachers were Mildred McGowen-Ryan, and Peter Yazbeck. He entered CSU Northridge, (where…) his principal teacher was French pianist Francoise Regnat. He was an invited participant in the master classes of Polish Pianist Jakob Gimpel for six years…. Shortly after completing his master’s degree he was hired as music faculty at Oxnard College in Ventura County. …In 1998 he was invited by CSUN to replace his former piano professor Francoise Regnat, while she took a one-year sabbatical.
He founded and was chairman of the Thousand Oaks Philharmonic, which produces concerts featuring a professional orchestra with exceptional young artists as soloists.
Edward Francis was 61. A memorial mass will take place on Tuesday at St. Julie Billiart Catholic Church in Newbury Park.
Dmitry Rachmanov writes:
It is with with the greatest sadness and sorrow that we have to announce the loss of our dearest colleague and friend, Professor Edward Francis, which occurred last night at 2:30 AM, PDT.
Rest In Peace, dear Edward, you were a truly unique human being, one of a kind, universally admired and deeply respected and loved! We will forever miss you!!!
Edward Francis was a great friend and supporter from my first steps upon moving to California in 2007. His collegiality, generosity and a sense of goodwill were omnipresent and provided an incredible support on so many levels! His magnanimous nurturing spirit helped and embraced so many fortunate enough to know him. He was a larger-than-life presence in the pianistic world of Southern CA and far beyond, a friend and colleague of great many pianists, educators, professionals. He is irreplaceable and will be sorely sorely missed!
Zsolt Bognar writes: The important and beloved piano teacher Edward Francis has lost his battle with cancer. He touched the lives of so many, from students who went on to have major careers to others he met and nurtured. I met him in Atlanta and will never forget his almost radiant and unassuming kindness. He seemed to embody love and dedication. He was so self-effacing when I met him that I didn’t even realize until later his magnitude in the musical world. He will be missed.
Carlos Gardels writes: Tributes to the legendary Edward Francis. It was impossible to be a pianist in Southern California to do anything or go anywhere without running into him, or feeling his energy. It’s because of people like him that things get done. His life was cut tragically short, but his legacy is as big as someone who lived 5 lives.
Grange Park Opera was founded on a banker’s estate in Hampshire. When the landlords fell out last year with Wasfi Kani, the founder, she took the company – lock, stock and seats – to a green field in Surrey, made over to her on a 99-year lease by the broadcaster Bamber Gascoigne. Bamber had just inherited the site from a deceased duchess and was thrilled to do his bit for art.
It took no more than half a year for Wasfi to knock up a brick opera house with a semi-circular interior, modelled on La Scala. The seats once belonged to Covent Garden – Wasfi bought them when the ROH was redeveloped – and the place smells pleasantly of fresh carpentry. Patrons eat their picnics in large tents and mint tea is served between the second and third act. Could you get more English country garden than that?
And it’s just 50 minutes by train from central London, much closer and quicker than Glyndebourne.
The Jenufa I saw was a 1988 production borrowed from Welsh National Opera but epically well cast with the rising Natalya Romaniw in the title role and Susan Bullock as her unyielding foster-mother. Romaniw is utterly winning as the village good girl who gets involved with a drunken rotter. Bullock starts out almost too stern to be believed (Anja Silja once captured the austerity to perfection), but her granite exterior is an ingenious front, giving way, layer by layer, to a woman broken by life’s betrayals, desperate to save Jenufa from mistakes she herself had made. It is Bullock who draws the most tears in this overwhelming production.
Even more than the women, the two male rivals are richly characterised. Nicky Spence is the bluff seducer with a weakness for the bottle, irresistible and pitiable at once. Peter Hoare is possibly the best Laca I have ever seen or heard, rejected in love and quick with a knife yet compelling as a loser who turns his life around. The BBC Concert Orchestra played well for William Lacey and the small chorus sounded like the Red Army on Grange Park’s confined, claustrophobic stage.
Next year, Wasfi, promises, the exterior will be tiled and the balconies painted. Meantime, she asks patrons to give back the programme books they bought because they have exhausted the print run and can sell them again.
Love it.
Paul E. Kwak, MD, laryngologist and laryngeal surgeon at the NYU Voice Center, has written a fascinating view of current vocal myths for the excellent Schmopera site.
Sample:
We who care for singers are certainly not unused to the chatter, the gossip, the verbal bile that can flow so freely and unbidden in these circles. But at a moment of a singer’s self-professed greatest vulnerability, this kind of backlash is insulting and disgraceful, and blemishes the stone-throwers far more tellingly than it tarnishes Adele’s contributions. This kind of commentary seeks to divide rather than unite those who should work collaboratively to care for and support singers. I constantly reiterate in seminars and conversations with young singers-in- training the importance of multidisciplinary care – as I like to say, the importance of having a voice “squad.” I respect the wisdom of so many voice teachers and coaches, who have built methodologies based on years of experience and training. One of the forefathers of academic laryngology, Manuel Garcia, was himself first a great singing teacher, and indeed, also a forefather of vocal pedagogy. It is right that medical and artistic practitioners should be partners in the education and cultivation of a singing voice. However, what I am addressing here is rather the danger of opinion offered without knowledge of the specific case, or indeed in the absence and disregard of vocal science. This amounts to an insidious vocal fear-mongering that seems to arise out of antiquated anecdotalism, centering on the following myths…
Over the past three weeks, we have heard from hundreds of readers that their daily email summary of Slipped Disc stories was not arriving. We have finally isolated and adjusted the fault and the emails should arrive normally from today onwards.
This is a free service for the time being. (It may not always be so.)
If you wish to subscribe to the daily email, please insert your preferred email in the box at the foot of the Slipped Disc front page, here, where it says ‘sign up’.
If you are an existing subscriber who is still not receiving emails, please resubscribe under a different address.
In view of the sheer volume – we have 1.4 million monthly readers – we cannot respond to individual issues.
Thank you for your understanding.
TIP: If you want to be sure you are not missing any Slipped Disc posts, do as the professionals do – make www.slippedisc.com your computer’s home page.
