Fall Music Preview: Classical Edition

The opera season goes on with a rare feat by Patricia Racette, another superlative diva and Merola alumna: she'll sing the lead in all three of the one-act mini-operas which together form Il Trittico. Check out the rest of the season here.

The Philharmonia Baroque orchestra opened its season last night, and if we could physically attend back-to-back-to-back-to-back concert nights, we would have been there. Performances of the Haydn and Beethoven program repeat this week-end. We are especially looking forward to a later series in October with Susan Graham in Dido and Aenas. That promisses to be spectacular. Susan has been a baroque queen in SF: she just killed in Iphigénie en Tauride, topped that one with a stellar Ariodante, we can't wait to see her there.

The New Century Chamber Orchestra will have its Civic Center gala this week, as it beckons to any legitimate music ensemble in SF. This Saturday, Nadia Salerno-Sonnenberg leads the NCCO in Bach and Mussorgsky (the familiar Pictures at an Exhibition in a scaled down chamber arrangement by Clarice Assad). You can catch this program tonight in Palo Alto, or Sunday in San Rafael as well. We have been enjoying the NCCO's latest CD release, a hodgepodge of pieces from the 20th (and 21st!) century. It sounds edgy, but it's actually quite easy to listen to, with tango tinged Piazzola pieces, and a Gershwin orchestration. The website listed on the back cover is NSSmusic.com and there is not reason why NSS shouldn't be as familiar to us all than MTT. The November concert series pairs Richard Strauss with William Bolcom, who returns in May with the world premiere of a violin concerto: exciting stuff.

The SF Symphony season continues with a Mahler festival (link pdf), with spectacular performers (Susan Graham, Thomas Hampson) joining MTT for the next three weeks. Unlike for the gala, exiting after three minutes and intemperate applause will be frown upon then, especially since some performances will be recorded and released on CD as part of the Mahler cycle. Talking about which, the recording of the 8th Symphony ("of a Thousand") is now available. It has been spinning on our turntable for a couple weeks. Unlike most others who came on different nights, we did not enjoy much the performance of the Mahler 8th during the live recording: MTT seemed disinterested and the chorus sounded shrieky to us. They probably did not include stuff from that night in the CD, we can fault this compelling recording. Other highlights of the season: the ubiquitous Yo-Yo Ma as artist-in-residence (including our fav cello concerto, Shostakovich's), a triplets of new works commissioned by the SF Symphony for pianist Emanuel Ax, MTT- (and SFist-)darling Yuja Wang, a visit by the Berlin Philharmonic with Sir Simon Rattle, an Osmo Vanska pairing with Vadim Repin, Itzhak Perlman conducting from his violin. David Robertson and brother-in-law Gil Shaham headline a concert with John Adams' Doctor Atomic Symphony, and Adams'City Noir will be performed by conducting prodigy Gustavo Dudamel with his new orchestra, the LA Phil. Maybe we'll get to score that elusive John Adams interview we've been chasing for, like, ever.

John Adams used to teach at the SF Conservatory of Music, which too opens its performance season tomorrow. We are looking forward to the bluepring series, put together by artistic director Nicole Paiement, and in particular the re-orchestration by John Rea of Alban Berg's Wozzeck. We'd love to see the original opera at The Opera, but sadly, that won't happen until the economy finds its next irrational exhuberance. The Master Classes at the Conservatory are open to the public, and include conductor Sir Simon Rattle, venerated pianist Menahem Pressler or SF Symphony concertmaster Sasha Barantschik. You can see baritone Thomas Hampson lecture on Walt Whitman and the American song. And you have all the performances by the excellent faculty members and their student recitals, and most of them are, hang on for it, free.

Hampson will be in town for his SF Performances concert with a Song of America recital (he's part of the SF Symphony Mahler festival as well), opening the 30th season of SF Performances. The celebration will last all year long, with an impressive line-up, including Joyce Broken Leg DiDonato, and superhot barihunk Nathan Gunn bringing despair to many a stalking admirer by having is wife Julie Gunn accompany him at the piano. SFist interviewees -a high recognition, we hereby declare- Jennifer Koh, Alisa Weilerstein, Alex Ross, Yuja Wang and Marc-André Hamelin will hit the Herbst theater stage.

Cal Performances calendar, at Zellerbach Hall in Berkeley, is no less impressive: America's Soprano Renée Fleming, DC subway basking Joshua Bell, the incontournable Yuja Wang, and outside of the classical world, tenor legend Sonny Rollins, jazz legend Wayne Shorter, Wynton Marsalis, or Dan Zanes. Aren't we lucky to live here or what?