San Francisco and the Bay Area have some of the world’s best-known performing arts organizations and cultural offerings. As a listener-supported station, we think it’s important to let listeners know about activities, concerts, soloists and ensembles coming through the area, and with that we offer you a new daily feature. The State of the Arts on Classical KDFC airs twice weekdays, just before 9 am, 1 pm, and 6 pm. The features are produced by Jeffrey Freymann-Weyr, a veteran of National Public Radio’s Arts Desk and Performance Today. Tune in, subscribe to the podcast, or visit this page to hear the latest edition of Classical KDFC’s The State of the Arts!
In an A-to-Z edition of State of the Arts: Fantasia and Fugue. Both allow the performer (and composer) to show off their skills, but in a different way. A fantasia tends to be virtuosic, but at the same time should sound like it's being improvised. A fugue, in order for it to work, has to also meet certain formal expectations. Especially important: the opening subject needs to be one that the listener will be able to recognize each time it enters, in ever thickening textures of other voices. Counter-subjects need to flow out of what precedes them, and be able to follow the rules of harmony and counterpoint when played at the same time as the subject. It all needs to make sense both structurally, and just as importantly, to the ear.
How one writes a fugue really depends on the starting material; there are going to be some techniques that will only be possible if the subject allows it. Bach was especially talented at knowing what permutations would be possible based on any given theme: with a fugue for three voices, he might have two counter-subjects, each showing up in a different part in turn. And then for the final statement, they might each come in earlier, ending up overlapping to build tension.
Here's a quartet of singers (plus a string quartet) performing Glenn Gould's "So You Want to Write a Fugue":
The various entrances and individual lines of the four singers are fairly easy to follow - at least at the beginning - in an animated video you can see here.
Previous Programs
Friday, May 18
The upcoming seasons of Berkeley Symphony and the Oakland East Bay Symphony feature new works and returning traditions... There will be a commissioned premiere on each of the four concerts conducted by Joana Carneiro in Berkeley, and OEBS music director Michael Morgan gets their season off to an all-American start with a concert called "Celebrating Democracy" the same week as the November election.
The composers who have been commissioned to write new works for Berkeley Symphony's 2012-13 season are Steven Stucky (who will be in residence with them), Paul Dresher, Andreia Pinto-Correia, and Under Construction alumnus Dylan Mattingly. In addition to the brand new works, there will be symphonic Beethoven, Bruckner, Schumann, Rachmaninoff; as well as concertos by György Ligeti and Witold Lutoslawski, performed by pianist Shai Wosner and cellist Lynn Harrell.
The Oakland East Bay Symphony once again will shine a geographical spotlight on one of their concerts, this time "Notes from the Middle East," including works by young Israeli composer Avner Dorman, and Palestinian-American John Bisharat, and a Grieg piano concerto played by Eliran Avni.
Their annual "Let Us Break Bread Together" holiday concert turns 20 this year.
The balance between the new and familiar continues - with recent works by Richard Danielpour, Avner Dorman and Adolphus Hailstork, and area composers Gordon Getty and Olly Wilson, joining Copland, Bernstein, Berlioz, Bach, Fauré, Handel and Franck.
Thursday, May 17
A Wild Flight of the Imagination: The Story of the Golden Gate Bridge is the name of an exhibit that's running from now until October at the California Historical Society's Mission Street museum. There are paintings, etchings, and photographs of the area before the bridge's construction, documents and news clippings that recount the long process that went into approval and design for the bridge, and the engineering breakthoughs that had to occur for it to be built.
CHS Executive Director, Dr. Anthea Hartig says the Golden Gate was the largest and the highest suspension bridge ever built when it was inaugurated in 1937. And it remained the highest until 1998.
Serving as bookends to the exhibit, are two photos by Ansel Adams; the one which welcomes the visitor in the first gallery Dr. Hartig describes this way: "This photomural has the bridge dwarfed by the magnificent clouds and the beauty of the Marin Headlands. We see Adams kind of coming to peace with the bridge that he originally opposed, along with the Sierra Club and the Department of War, and many others who thought this was no place for a bridge." The other photo was taken before the bridge was built, from near where Adams grew up.
There is a diving helmet, worn by those who pioneered underwater construction, with only a four-inch glass screened opening, and connection points for air to be pumped in through hoses from above. There's also a pair of the shoes with 16-pound lead soles that they would wear to help keep them underwater. There's an early hard hat - part of the safety precautions (such as the net underneath the construction site) insisted upon by Chief Engineer Joseph Strauss, which kept injuries and fatalities very low (of eleven deaths during construction, ten men were lost in a February 1937 accident when heavy equipment fell through the safety netting.
Wednesday, May 16
The Silicon Valley Symphony is joined by a soloist this weekend who's played four major violin concertos with them already, despite the fact that he's only 15 years old. Stephen Waarts will be playing the Sibelius Violin Concerto with the ensemble. Conductor Michael Paul Gibson has been following the violinist's career since they first worked together, performing the Tchaikovsky concerto when Waarts was only 12. And the instrument that he'll be playing for the concerts in Menlo Park and Palo Alto is a Stradivarius from the early 1730s, on loan for the occasion.
Since their first concert together, Waarts has also played the Brahms, Mendelssohn, and the Saint-Saëns Concerto No. 3 with the SVS.
The Stradivarius he'll be playing this weekend doesn't have a name, although it's known as the "twin" to an instrument known by the name of its former owner, the "Lord Wilmotte". Conductor Michael Paul Gibson points out that the loaned Strad is available for sale, if someone wants to give it a name (and, he suggests, loaning the instrument to Waarts would be a wise investment, since they become more valuable as they're played in front of orchestras around the world.)
Here's video of Waarts playing the finale to the Saint-Saëns' Third Violin Concerto, from last November:
Tuesday, May 15
The Berkeley High School Jazz Ensemble has been fundraising throughout the year, in their efforts to go on tour to Cuba this summer. Director Sarah Cline, who visited the country several years ago, hopes that her players will be able to experience the spontaneous music-making that she witnessed there, and looks forward to the students having a chance to play with students at a Cuban music conservatory. The ensemble, as well as other combos from the BHS Jazz program, will be taking part in Sunday's "Jazz on Fourth" festivities.
There's more information about Sunday's event at the Fourth Street website, and about the ensemble at Berkeley High School Jazz website. Also performing Sunday afternoon are the Dick Conte Quartet, blues singer Lady Bianca, and salsa band Rumbaché.
Monday, May 14
The Santa Rosa Symphony had a chance to take their future home for an acoustic spin last Thursday night, rehearsing in front of a large audience, that was there not only to hear the orchestra, but also to act as a real-life test for how reverberant the Green Music Center's Weill Hall is with a room full of people. Conductor Bruno Ferrandis was looking forward to experiencing the sound of the hall as it actually will be, now that the seats are in, and sonic treatments such as panels and absorbant materials are being tweaked for the best sound.
There's more information about the hall's construction, and the upcoming season at the Green Music Center's website.
Acoustician Larry Kirkegaard described the evening as "really the first performance the Santa Rosa Symphony has had in the hall. We've heard the San Francisco with a few people in foldeing chairs in a totally bare room, the Santa Rosa Symphony has played here for a couple of rehearsals. So this is really the first full-time, full-seating, ready to go concert, and we're all looking forward to it." He described other types of ensembles that had been playing in the hall - several from Sonoma State University, exams permitting - jazz and wind ensembles, with various solo instruments in different positions on stage.
The gala season- and hall-opening weekend takes place at the end of September, with a line up that features pianist Lang Lang.
Friday, May 11
Composer Ellen Taaffe Zwilich has used characters from the traditional Commedia dell'Arte as inspiration for a new violin concerto with that as its name, getting its world premiere this week in performances by Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg and the New Century Chamber Orchestra. The movements depict the Arlecchino (or Harlequin), the tambourine-carrying Columbina and the boastful Capitano. Along with fiery and virtuosic writing for the violin solo, Zwilich has given some members of the orchestra percussion instruments to play.
The first performance was in Berkeley last night, they'll be in Atherton, San Francisco and San Rafael tonight through Sunday. Details are at the New Century Chamber Orchestra's website. Also on the program are Grieg's Holberg Suite, Schoenberg's Verklärte Nacht and Peter Heidrich's Happy Birthday Variations.
Zwilich says she was inspired by Salerno-Sonnenberg's playing, and the NCCO, which she says "is not your staid, old, 19th Century white European male orchestra, everbody sitting stiff and playing stiffly. This is a group that's up for everything." Including putting down a cello for a tambourine, or a violin for a toy drum. Zwilich was the first woman to win a Pulitzer in music, for her Symphony No. 1 in 1983. She drew on her (admittedly now out of practice) background as a violinist when she was writing the Commedia dell'Arte concerto, which includes fiery tempos and technique, a lyric slow movement, and a fiendish cadenza.
Thursday, May 10
The Golden Gate Bridge is the most-photographed bridge in the world. And that magnetic attraction for cameras extends to Hollywood, too. Whether it's as a backdrop, a pivotal plot point, or being attacked by the elements (or giant sea-creatures) the bridge has proved irresistible to film makers.
You can listen to last week's Golden Gate anniversary feature about Rob Kapilow's Chrysopylaehere.
Here's a trailer for Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo, which features the bridge prominently...
And It Came From Beneath the Sea, which pits a giant octopus against the Golden Gate:
Wednesday, May 9
On an A-to-Z edition of The State of the Arts, it's Edward Elgar's Enigma... The set of variations he composed, each depicting one of his friends. But it's no mystery who is represented in each section. It's the elusive theme that Elgar said was not stated, but implied throughout all of the variations.
There are many theories about what the "hidden" theme is: Mozart's "Prague" Symphony, God Save the Queen, Auld Lang Syne, even the mathematical constant pi (3.1415 rounded up to 3.142, which corresponds to the opening four notes of the theme). This would-be sleuth thinks the answer is "Ein feste Burg" (A Mighty Fortress is Our God).
Another theory ties in with the "Nimrod" variation... Elgar said that when he wrote it, he was remembering a conversation that he had had with his friend and publisher Augustus Jaeger. Elgar had been depressed with the circumstances of his life, and Jaeger sang the theme to the slow movement of Beethoven's "Pathetique" sonata, which the opening of "Nimrod" hints at.
The other mystery that remains unsolved is the "Dorabella Cipher" - this note that Elgar wrote to his friend, Dora Penny in 1897. Although some claim to have broken the code, the arguments are a little dubious, and impossible to prove: Elgar didn't tell, and although he assumed Dorabella would be able to make sense of it, she never could.
Tuesday, May 8
The San Francisco Symphony recreates and tells the story of the artistic landscape in the time between the Gold Rush and the Panama-Pacific Exposition (1915) in a program called Barbary Coast and Beyond. As director James Robinson explains, the great artists of the day were attracted to San Francisco for its "nutty, culture-hungry" residents, and their ability to spend lavishly on entertainment. The host of the show will be Bay Area staple, actress Val Diamond, and guests include Laura Claycomb, Vadim Gluzman, Cameron Carpenter, and the US Air Force Band of the Golden West.
Director James Robinson describes the evening as "a celebration of the sort of wild and wacky musical and cultural scene that was San Francisco from the Gold Rush to the founding of the Symphony." In the spirit of wackiness, there will also be a trio of guest banjo players, along with musical saw virtuoso Caroline McCaskey. Musical selections will include works by Camille Saint-Saens, Louis Moreau Gottschalk, Sousa, Wieniawski (who all visited the city), Meyerbeer, Verdi, and Tchaikovsky.
The piano team known as ZOFO duet (Eva-Maria Zimmermann and Keisuke Nakagoshi) play "one-piano-four-hands" - that is, side by side, rather than on two separate pianos. They've got a new CD out, called "Mind Meld", which describes the way they play... it involves a certain amount of choreography too, since their parts frequently cross or overlap.
There's more information about the CD and the players at ZOFO duet's website.
The pair began with solo careers, but a little over two years ago, an injury sidelined Nakagoshi for several months, during which Zimmermann played several of his booked concert dates. As he turned pages for her, he liked her playing, and suggested they try a long held dream of his: to read through the piano reduction of Stravinsky's Rite of Spring, which the composer did with Claude Debussy in Paris a hundred years ago.
ZOFO actually stands for 20FO, or "Twenty Finger Orchestra", which you can see on display here, as they are playing the "Hesitation Tango" from Souvenirs by Samuel Barber:
Friday, May 4
On an A-to-Z edition of The State of the Arts, it's a look at Diminished Chords... A Swiss-Army knife for the composer, they're chords that desperately need to resolve, and can go in several different possible directions. Because of the way the chords are formed (building up in minor thirds) there are only three different diminished-seventh chords you can play before you repeat yourself.
The reason for this is that it takes 12 half-steps to make an octave - the white and black keys from C to C, for example. And each minor third is three half-steps (C, C#, D, E-flat). This means that there's a diminished chord that starts on C that contains C, E-flat, G-flat, and A (technically it's B-double-flat). There's also one beginning on C#, with E, G and B-flat; and one that's D, F, A-flat, B (really C-flat). The next in the series would start on E-flat, but contain the same notes as the first.
The "tritone" - sometimes called the Devil's interval (the first two notes of "Maria" from West Side Story) is known as either a diminished-fifth, or an augmented-fourth... That's because it's exactly half of an octave, which is why the diminished chords work the way they do. There are actually 2 tritones in each of the chords... C to G-flat, and Eb to A, and depending on which way the ear is listening (or is fooled into hearing by the composer) either of them can resolve in different directions.
Thursday, May 3
Composer Rob Kapilow's world premiere that celebrates the 75th Anniversary of the Golden Gate Bridge is coming together... The Marin Symphony and the Marin Symphony Chorus, under the direction of Alasdair Neale, have been rehearsing Chrysopylae, and working out the kinks of the sound-rich piece. By the second rehearsal with the orchestra, Kapilow was feeling much relieved and optimistic - after an initial rehearsal that he described as "absolute chaos" and plagued by technical difficulties.
Part of the reason for the first rehearsal's problems is the scope of the piece - for orchestra, chorus, and an accompanying sound design track that needs to be played and mixed with the other elements on the fly. There are special instruments that need to be tuned, and played in a certain way to blend properly with sound effects recorded at the site of the Golden Gate Bridge.
The San Francisco Conservatory of Music is going to be presenting "Trio Appassionato: The Lives of Robert & Clara Schumann and Johannes Brahms" in two sold-out performances this Sunday and Monday. It's the brainchild of Lotfi Mansouri, the former General Director of San Francisco Opera, who wanted to tell the story of the celebrated trio and their complicated lives using the music they wrote. With the help of singers from the Conservatory, and "Hostess" Frederica von Stade, the feeling is less of a recital, and more of a conversation about the twists and turns of the intertwined lives.
Mansouri says that he hopes audiences will become curious enough about the Schumanns and Brahms to seek out biographies and recordings. But he also sees the value in the students getting to know the songs they're singing. "It's an incredible learning process for these young artists to go through this repertoire," he says. "And all of a sudden they learn about communication, they learn about how to use the text, how to really use a prelude, an interlude. All of these details, musical details have a dramatic function. "
Frederica von Stade says she was new to much of the repertoire the students are singing. She describes the entanglements of Clara, Robert and Johannes (which included forbidden love, fidelity, a suicide attempt and Robert's ultimate insanity) this way: "It's three geniuses, and geniuses never go in a predictable way. Whatever part of it contributed to their compositional inspiration is magic. If they sparked one song, it's already a gift to the world."
Tuesday, May 1
Pianist Lara Downes brings the set called 13 Ways of Looking at the Goldberg to the Old First Concerts Series this Friday: thirteen contemporary composers revisiting and re-imagining their own responses to the Aria that forms the start and end to Bach's Goldberg Variations. The project was originally commissioned by the Irving S. Gilmore International Keyboard Competition in 2004, and was intended to have 13 new pieces, but one of the original composers wasn't able to write a short enough work to be accepted as a submission; instead, Bach's own 13th variation had been substituted.
When she decided to play the collection, Lara Downes turned to San Francisco composer Ryan Brown and commissioned a new variation. "I had heard another piece of his," she says, "that he had written uniquely in the top two octaves of the piano, and I loved that soundscape of the extreme treble, and I thought it would make such an interesting contrast with the rest of these pieces and with the aria itself, which is so firmly located in the middle register of the piano." Ryan Brown's effort, called "Ornament", plays with the turns and appogiaturas of the aria. Some of the other composers from the original commission include Lukas Foss, Jennifer Higdon, Bright Sheng, David DelTredici and William Bolcom.
Bolcom's variation (entitled Yet Another Goldberg Variation) was written for his friend Gary Graffman, and so only for the left hand. Downes describes it as having "twists and turns" but being a fun piece to play. With a single running line, it follows Bach's original example, and explores the bassline of the aria as the point of departure. Downes also likens its texture as "echoing the other Bach" - the suites he wrote for unaccompanied cello.
Here's a taste of 13 Ways of Looking at the Goldberg, from a performance last fall at the Mondavi Center for the Performing Arts at UC Davis:
.png)
In an A-to-Z edition of State of the Arts: Fantasia and Fugue. Both allow the performer (and composer) to show off their skills, but in a different way. A fantasia tends to be virtuosic, but at the same time should sound like it's being improvised. A fugue, in order for it to work, has to also meet certain formal expectations. Especially important: the opening subject needs to be one that the listener will be able to recognize each time it enters, in ever thickening textures of other voices. Counter-subjects need to flow out of what precedes them, and be able to follow the rules of harmony and counterpoint when played at the same time as the subject. It all needs to make sense both structurally, and just as importantly, to the ear.
The upcoming seasons of Berkeley Symphony and the Oakland East Bay Symphony feature new works and returning traditions... There will be a commissioned premiere on each of the four concerts conducted by Joana Carneiro in Berkeley, and OEBS music director Michael Morgan gets their season off to an all-American start with a concert called "Celebrating Democracy" the same week as the November election. 
A Wild Flight of the Imagination: The Story of the Golden Gate Bridge is the name of an exhibit that's running from now until October at the California Historical Society's Mission Street museum. There are paintings, etchings, and photographs of the area before the bridge's construction, documents and news clippings that recount the long process that went into approval and design for the bridge, and the engineering breakthoughs that had to occur for it to be built.
The Silicon Valley Symphony is joined by a soloist this weekend who's played four major violin concertos with them already, despite the fact that he's only 15 years old. Stephen Waarts will be playing the Sibelius Violin Concerto with the ensemble. Conductor Michael Paul Gibson has been following the violinist's career since they first worked together, performing the Tchaikovsky concerto when Waarts was only 12. And the instrument that he'll be playing for the concerts in Menlo Park and Palo Alto is a Stradivarius from the early 1730s, on loan for the occasion.
The Berkeley High School Jazz Ensemble has been fundraising throughout the year, in their efforts to go on tour to Cuba this summer. Director Sarah Cline, who visited the country several years ago, hopes that her players will be able to experience the spontaneous music-making that she witnessed there, and looks forward to the students having a chance to play with students at a Cuban music conservatory. The ensemble, as well as other combos from the BHS Jazz program, will be taking part in Sunday's "Jazz on Fourth" festivities.
The Santa Rosa Symphony had a chance to take their future home for an acoustic spin last Thursday night, rehearsing in front of a large audience, that was there not only to hear the orchestra, but also to act as a real-life test for how reverberant the Green Music Center's Weill Hall is with a room full of people. Conductor Bruno Ferrandis was looking forward to experiencing the sound of the hall as it actually will be, now that the seats are in, and sonic treatments such as panels and absorbant materials are being tweaked for the best sound.
Composer Ellen Taaffe Zwilich has used characters from the traditional Commedia dell'Arte as inspiration for a new violin concerto with that as its name, getting its world premiere this week in performances by Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg and the New Century Chamber Orchestra. The movements depict the Arlecchino (or Harlequin), the tambourine-carrying Columbina and the boastful Capitano. Along with fiery and virtuosic writing for the violin solo, Zwilich has given some members of the orchestra percussion instruments to play.
The Golden Gate Bridge is the most-photographed bridge in the world. And that magnetic attraction for cameras extends to Hollywood, too. Whether it's as a backdrop, a pivotal plot point, or being attacked by the elements (or giant sea-creatures) the bridge has proved irresistible to film makers.
On an A-to-Z edition of The State of the Arts, it's Edward Elgar's Enigma... The set of variations he composed, each depicting one of his friends. But it's no mystery who is represented in each section. It's the elusive theme that Elgar said was not stated, but implied throughout all of the variations.
The San Francisco Symphony recreates and tells the story of the artistic landscape in the time between the Gold Rush and the Panama-Pacific Exposition (1915) in a program called Barbary Coast and Beyond. As director James Robinson explains, the great artists of the day were attracted to San Francisco for its "nutty, culture-hungry" residents, and their ability to spend lavishly on entertainment. The host of the show will be Bay Area staple, actress Val Diamond, and guests include Laura Claycomb, Vadim Gluzman, Cameron Carpenter, and the US Air Force Band of the Golden West.
The piano team known as ZOFO duet (Eva-Maria Zimmermann and Keisuke Nakagoshi) play "one-piano-four-hands" - that is, side by side, rather than on two separate pianos. They've got a new CD out, called "Mind Meld", which describes the way they play... it involves a certain amount of choreography too, since their parts frequently cross or overlap. 
On an A-to-Z edition of The State of the Arts, it's a look at Diminished Chords... A Swiss-Army knife for the composer, they're chords that desperately need to resolve, and can go in several different possible directions. Because of the way the chords are formed (building up in minor thirds) there are only three different diminished-seventh chords you can play before you repeat yourself.
Composer Rob Kapilow's world premiere that celebrates the 75th Anniversary of the Golden Gate Bridge is coming together... The Marin Symphony and the Marin Symphony Chorus, under the direction of Alasdair Neale, have been rehearsing Chrysopylae, and working out the kinks of the sound-rich piece. By the second rehearsal with the orchestra, Kapilow was feeling much relieved and optimistic - after an initial rehearsal that he described as "absolute chaos" and plagued by technical difficulties.
The San Francisco Conservatory of Music is going to be presenting "Trio Appassionato: The Lives of Robert & Clara Schumann and Johannes Brahms" in two sold-out performances this Sunday and Monday. It's the brainchild of Lotfi Mansouri, the former General Director of San Francisco Opera, who wanted to tell the story of the celebrated trio and their complicated lives using the music they wrote. With the help of singers from the Conservatory, and "Hostess" Frederica von Stade, the feeling is less of a recital, and more of a conversation about the twists and turns of the intertwined lives.
Pianist Lara Downes brings the set called 13 Ways of Looking at the Goldberg to the Old First Concerts Series this Friday: thirteen contemporary composers revisiting and re-imagining their own responses to the Aria that forms the start and end to Bach's Goldberg Variations. The project was originally commissioned by the Irving S. Gilmore International Keyboard Competition in 2004, and was intended to have 13 new pieces, but one of the original composers wasn't able to write a short enough work to be accepted as a submission; instead, Bach's own 13th variation had been substituted.