Author Archives: Leslie

Itzhak Perlman & Friends, Nov. 10, 2024

Itzhak Perlman & Friends: It was the Top of musical performance. Itzhak Perlman is the great violinist who is also the Great Human. He clearly loves to make each note, they are always perfect, and loving the music is the same as his love of the audience. The audience feels that in each note that they hear and absorb. If you are Itzhak Perlman, your friends are breath taking artists, too. In this phenomenal performance his friends were two of the world’s greatest pianists, Emanuel Ax and Jean-Ives Thibaudet, and the Juilliard String Quartet. This is a new generation Juilliard String Quartet. Bringing these gifted musicians onto the stage to make music with Perlman expands his repertory possibilities.

Itzhak Perlman, Violinist, humanitarian, mentor, founder of the Perlman Music Program which mentors “gifted young string players.”

The program presented two works from the 18th century: Sonata for Two Violins in E minor, Opus 3, no. 5, by Jean-Marie Leclair, written ca. 1734; and Piano Quartet inE-flat major, K.493, by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, written 1786. A 19th century masterpiece filled the second half of the program: Concert in D major, Opus 21, by Ernest Chausson, written in 1889-91. What is the main thing these three compositions have in common? Each piece is amongst the most difficult of its kind.

Areta Zhulla, Violinist, first violin of the Juilliard String Quartet

Jean-Marie Leclair, composer (1697 – 1764)*

Leclair left his home in Lyon to publish his compositions of violin sonatas. In Lyon, he became a master of the violin, dancing, and lace-making, a thorough artist. In Paris, his violin compositions were praised with one slight problem; they were so hard to play. A writer of Leclair’s time called them “a sort of musical algebra capable of rebuffing the most courageous of musicians.” The duet performance by Areta Zhulla and Itzhak Perlman was dazzling. I especially admired the way the music weaved between each violin. There would be a place where one violin would find a place to enter and play into, with, or around the other one. !8th century dances had intricate patterns; sometimes it is the music that follows the dance. As a dance master, he would have the music in his body. Now that I know he was a lace-maker, I feel sure that the design of the music and the playing of the violins were tracing movements of the needle and thread in and out to make a challenging, mathematical, beauty. It is there physical to touch in lace, audible and seen in the playing of the music.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, composer (1756 – 1791)*

Emanuel Ax, pianist

Mozart’s Piano Quartet in E-flat major, K. 493 was a stunning marvel. The musicians are perfection, a word I rarely use. I have loved this particular quartet for a long time. I went to Tower Records – I did say a long time ago – in North Beach and read through album covers. I chose a record (stop laughing) of Mozart’s quartets. When I heard the opening notes of this performance, I felt myself smile all over. The performers were truly perfection: Itzhak Perlman, violin; Molly Carr, viola; Astrid Schween, ‘cello; Emanuel Ax, piano. When Mozart had a publishing deal for three quartets, the publisher paid Mozart not to compose more. In fact, the publisher thought the first piano quartet was not well received. Fortunately for Mozart and all of us, he had finished the second Piano Quartet. It must have been a very good time for Mozart’s composing as this work entered Mozart’s catalogue just after the Marriage of Figaro. Although its brilliance was obvious, this Quartet was too difficult. A writer for a German journal wrote this: “Many another piece keeps some countenance, even when indifferently performed; but, in truth one can hardly bear listening to this product of Mozart’s when it falls into mediocre amateurish hands and is negligently played.” The performance I heard kept me on the edge of the seat. It is lush, sometimes mysterious with changing rhythms, and a fascinating exchange among the players. Is it possible to translate musical talk to spoken English? No, that is why it is music. The final movement features the pianist and first violin. What an experience to hear this from them.

Jean-Ives Thibaudet, Pianist

Ernest Chausson, composer (1855 – 1899)*

Chausson’s Concert in D major, Opus 21 is powerful and full of wonders. Concert is not a typo; it is a name for chamber music in the late 18th c. I knew his name, may have heard other pieces and may have not. Surely, I had never heard this. It is a gigantic and altogether successful creation performed by Itzhak Perlman, violin; Jean-Ives Thibaudet, piano; and the Juilliard Quartet. The music pays attention to the combinations that are well knit for all six instruments becoming one while each is heard. James M. Keller cites Chausson’s mentoring by Caesar Franck, and yet this work is still Chausson’s. Each of the four movements – Decide, Sicillienne, Grave, and Finale – added drama and character with their strong presence. The Sicillienne is beautiful in its sweeping lyricism. Grave lowers one’s feelings to a mysterious sense of loss. The energetic Finale reminds the listener of the themes of all three that came before. This listener felt her eyes open wide at the sensational Thibaudet playing precisely and powerfully. He was brilliant; Perlman was brilliant. Having both together made me want to jump up and down, but I only stood and applauded like the entire audience kept doing for many curtain calls. Many. I thought I would count, but I gave up. All six of the performers joined in an extraordinary encore and more bows and applause. Someone turned the lights back on, and, reluctantly we got the message that we had to go home.

*These composers share dreadful and inexplicable deaths. I am inserting this here so that it will not be the sad subject at the end of this post. No interpretation of the deaths from me. Jean-Marie Leclair was murdered. He lived in a bad neighborhood. He had been stabbed three times and was found in a pool of blood. It is still an open case in Paris. Three suspects: his gardener found the body; his nephew wanted Leclair to help him become a violinist but Leclair did not; Louise, an ex-wife who inherited his estate and sold off his property. Mozart died of illness; there are more than 100 theories of how he died. Chausson was trying out the new gizmo: a bicycle. He lost control of the bike, ran into a brick wall, cracked his skull. Imagine that each one would have composed more wonderful music; I am grateful for what I heard.

EMANUEL AX: A NIGHT TO REMEMBER

The great pianist, Emanuel Ax, performed a great program at San Francisco’s Davies Symphony Hall. The audience was completely packed with music lovers, and Ax has dedicated classical groupies. He certainly made more on October 27. The program contained wonderful music by Beethoven and Schumann, pieces many in the audience thought they knew, and two pieces by Arnold Schoenberg, which Ax helped the audience to know better and enjoy them.

Emanuel Ax, Piano

Ax opened with Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No. 13 in E-flat major, Opus 27, no. 1, Quasi una fantasia. In his first 11 sonatas, Beethoven presented sonatas which adhere to the Classical form: 3 or 4 movements which are made of exposition, development, and recapitulation. Beethoven broke the form in Sonatas 12, 13, and 14. The Sonatas number 13 and 14 are put together as Opus 27; both were written in 1801. They are different from each other except for the freedom of composition they share. Ax’s approach to Sonata No. 13 was masterful. This Sonata is seldom given great attention because its sibling, The Moonlight Sonata, is bigger, beautiful in different way, and toweringly difficult. No. 13 could be heard as a sonata with breaks between the movements or played with each running through the next, in fantasia style. It is a bright musical experience which I treasure for exactly the way program author James M. Keller describes it: “this is such a willfully eccentric piece that one may reasonably prefer to consider it a single onrushing conception, more fantasy than sonata.” I choreographed this music as a solo dance and felt that in the final movements the dance would need to just keep going up; so I flew before an eccentric, rhythmic, somewhat folkish finale. It is Beethoven’s imaginative fantasy: playful, joyful, shining a serious light on the sonata.

Ludwig van Beethoven, composer ( 1770 – 1827)

The Piano Sonata No. 14 in C-sharp minor, Opus 27, no. 2, Moonlight brought us into another musical world. This sonata begins with nature at dusk. We hear the night fall into the music, the branches sway, the spirits float above a lake. Through decades after Beethoven’s death, writers wrote that the sonata is about night near a lake with moonlight shimmering on the water. It is nearly impossible to shake the 19th century writers’ impression, now in the 21st. It is emotional while the sounds touch on the clarity of moonlight. This sonata also uses the fantasia style for breaks between movements; that style being not to have a break between movements. That happens between the first movement, Adagio sostenuto, and the second one, Allegretto. Mr. Keller quoted Liszt that the Allegretto is a “flower between two chasms.” There is a normal break before the Presto agitato ending. We are not left Romantically alone by a lake, perhaps feeling just a little glum, aware of the beauty around us, but realizing one can feel the spirits floating around the dark pines only so long. The final movement picks up the rhythms with force. It dances to the quickly rising and falling music as moonlight beams. Emanuel Ax played the delicate, powerful, gorgeous music with perfection. He seems to understand what is in the depths of the music.

Arnold Shoenberg, composer, (1874 – 1951)

Fortunately for the audience, Emanuel Ax spoke to us to explain what happens in the two selections by Schoenberg. The first one, Drei Klavierstucke, Opus 11 (1909), was played between the two Beethoven sonatas. The second opened the second half of the concert. Ax played Sechs kleine Klavierstuck, Opus 19 (1911) before Schumann’s Fantasy in C major, Opus 17. He advised the audience that one does not need to think these approaches to music require mathematical brilliance. Instead, Schoenberg lets expression, emotion, even the concept of free association into the tightly composed sounds. That changed everything about listening to Schoenberg. In both pieces, I tried to hear the single musical sound and imagine what it was. Both of the pieces were intensely packed with memories, visions, experience. Schoenberg’s thoughts and attitudes were there for us to look at from every direction and begin to understand that sound can be real atoms of life.

Emanuel Ax, 2015

Robert Schumann, composer, (1810 – 1856)

It made me happy to know that Schumann’s Fantasy in C major, Opus 17 was the anchor of the program. It is a big work. Passionate, poetic, inventive music rolls forward and embraces its creator. He is forever the Romantic composer of the Romantic era and the romantic man who was in love with Clara Wieck. Her father forbid her to see her dear Robert. She was widely recognized as the finest pianist of Europe. Her father sent her off on another tour to Dresden to keep her well known and away from her love. That was 1836. In 1838, he wrote to her about the Fantasy he was writing: “the first movement is the most passionate thing I have ever composed –a deep lament for you.” The next year he wrote, “In order to understand the Fantasie you will have to transport yourself into the unhappy summer of 1836, when I renounced you.” While their married life was a triumph for both of them, I was happy to hear this major work from Schumann because some classical music fans seem to be fascinated by Schumann more for the mysteries of his mental illness than the grand music he made. I think he is being championed by several artists and conductors now. Schumann described two imagined characters in his essays and compositions. Florestan is the more aggressive one, and Eusebius is often off in a dream or aligned with more tranquil music. In this Fantasy, the Florestan rules the first movement and Eusebius is also there for a section named The Sound of a Myth. The poetry of this music is not always dreamy and calm; poetry can be powerful, too. Schumann placed a poem by Friedrich Schlegel at the beginning of this score. “Through all the sounds in earth’s motley dream, one soft note can be heard by him who listens stealthily.” For the pianist, this Fantasy is an extreme challenge to the best of technicians. Emanuel Ax played it as Schumann would want it to be. It was thrilling.

The audience went crazy for Emanuel Ax. He gave us two encores. After several curtain calls, he played Schubert’s Standchen, a song which Franz Liszt transcribed for the piano. Everyone continued applauding. Ax left again and came back to play Chopin’s Nocturne Opus 27, No. 1. It was beautiful. No one wanted to leave.

AMERICAN MUSIC AT DAVIES SYMPHONY HALL & Rhapsody in Blue’s 100th Year

October 25 and 26 were spectacular nights of music. Nights of what George Gershwin called “our undiluted national pep.” The San Francisco Symphony’s program included Suite from Candide, by Leonard Bernstein; Rhapsody in Blue, by George Gershwin (orch. Ferde Grofe); Wood Notes, by William Grant Still; and Porgy and Bess, A Symphonic Picture, by George Gershwin (arr. Robert Russell Bennett). Each piece was thrilling and innovative. Each one came out of a different decade: Candide, written in 1956 (arr. Charlie Harmon 1998); Rhapsody in Blue, composed in 1924 (rev. 1926); Wood Notes, composed in 1947; Porgy and Bess, A Symphonic Picture, written in 1935 (arr. 1943).

The pianist for Rhapsody in Blue was Michelle Cann. She is an astounding soloist who gave us all the rhythm, excitement, and gorgeous music possible in this heroic composition.

The conductor was Thomas Wilkins. In addition to being handsome with an elegant presence, he absolutely kept the SF Symphony at their best throughout the concert. It is easy to visualize each composer nodding his head in gratitude for Maestro Wilkins’ loyalty to exactly what each one wanted his music to be. A conductor par excellence: the principal conductor at the Hollywood Bowl, artistic advisor to the Boston Symphony, principal guest conductor of the Virginia Symphony, and the Henry A. Upper Chair of orchestral conducting at Indiana. There is more. He was the director of the Omaha Symphony until 2021. And more. We hope the SFS will bring him back soon.

Leonard Bernstein, composer, (1918 – 1990)

Bernstein must have studied Voltaire’s 18th century book or at least knew what it was about. There was a popular philosophy at that time that this is “the best of all possible worlds.” Candide was a young man who was relentlessly optimistic. His reward was being beat up by a huge flood and mean humans. Since it was an operetta, I have wondered why I had only heard a section of the music on the radio but not a single lyric. The Broadway show was a flop. A major problem was the lyrics. The playwright, Lilian Hellman, was the source of the concept, but it did not work. When it was being written, the McCarthyism of the early 1950s cast a long and scary shadow. Other outstanding authors contributed lyrics for the songs. It died by Hellman’s seriousness. Bernstein thought he would have a comic operetta. After years, one could applaud Bernstein’s optimism and determination. Candide came back to life in 1973 with new librettist and director. Bernstein himself created a concert version of his Candide. The music is 100% Bernstein: touching, satirical, rhythmically complex, with salutes to the international dance styles of Tango and waltz. It has jazz bones and tips its hat to moments of Rossini, Gounod (which I did not hear), and Gilbert and Sullivan. I am eager to hear the whole operetta.

Rhapsody in Blue. A few years ago, Rhapsody in Blue won as the number one most favorite music when SF’s classical music station ran its California play list competition. Oh, there was a lot of complaining: Why not Beethoven’s 5th? Why not Beethoven’s 9th? Why this beloved American music which is still exciting and fascinating? It is now celebrating its 100th anniversary. It is possible that Beethoven’s 5th and 9th supporters duked it out and that led them out of the top. It is also possible that the Rhapsody in Blue will thrill you and move you each time you hear it. In about 7th or 8th grade my friend Michelle and I would sit in my parents’ den and listen to that music. I realized on Oct. 26, that I probably had never heard it live. Definitely be there in person next time there is an opportunity. There is so much life in the music. I waited for that sliding clarinet glissando that gave me a chill down my back at the same time it gave me a feeling that the music was not describing sitting quietly. Gershwin said that while on a train the music came to him. “And there I suddenly heard — and even saw on paper — the complete construction of the Rhapsody, from beginning to end…. I heard it as a sort of musical kaleidoscope of America – of our vast melting pot, of our unduplicated national pep, of our blues, our metropolitan madness.” It is exactly all of that. There is not a moment when one loses interest. I was eager to know what was next, how the music went from one sensation to another. Michelle Cann just owned the Rhapsody. From the moment she appeared at the piano, took hold of her translucent, yellow, floor length cape, and flicked it over her shoulders to let it drape over the piano bench everyone in the full house had glued their eyes on Ms Cann. The dress was great, the playing was powerful and full of the Rhapsody music. The audience would not stop applauding and shouting. Ms Cann rewarded us with an encore: Rachmaninoff’s Prelude in C-sharp minor – that’s how it started – and then she played it in Hazel Scott’s jazz improvisation on that piece. It was dazzling. Thank you, Georgiana Du, for telling me it was Hazel Scott’s improv.

William Grant Still, composer, (1895 – 1978)

William Grant Still did not take lessons to play a violin until he was 14 years old. He then taught himself the viola, ‘cello, double bass, clarinet, oboe, and saxophone. He attended Wilberforce University, and while there he directed the band. From there he attended the Oberlin Conservatory. He had received a scholarship, but he had to leave for military service in the Navy. After that, he was a sideman for W.C. Handy who took him onward to Memphis and New York. He never wasted time; somehow he also studied with Edgard Varese, the avant garde composer. Wood Notes is thrilling in its own way. It is tranquil but moving. The first movement , Singing River, lets the listener see and feel the river. Slightly, it meanders and the onlooker feels as though part of the river. The music focuses on strings and muted trumpets. Floating and still in motion, this first movement musically lets one know what a river is. The second movement, Autumn Night is a storm, but a gentle storm. There is enough wind to make the tree limbs sway back and forth, but not enough to bother anyone. It is like spending a night outside. There is a breeze and some rain to remind one that there is weather that can be a soothing story. Moon Dusk stars an oboe solo and more strings. The instruments are beautiful in their balance. Balance is an essence in the entire work. It ends with Whippoorwill’s Shoes. Syncopated rhythms and quick changes of the melodies make a surprising scene jump and dance. It is a bit of folk music, but not entirely. William Grant Still gives us a peaceful scene but that does not mean its music is immobile. It touches natural gifts. Still wrote more than 150 works, including 8 operas, and 5 symphonies. He was the first African American to write a symphony that was performed by a major orchestra and first to conduct a major orchestra. This was the first performance of Wood Notes by the SF Symphony. In program notes for Wood Notes’ premiere at the Chicago Symphony with Artur Rodzinski, Still declares his position: “Wood Notes has a social significance because it is a collaboration between a Southern white man and a Southern-born Negro composer, in which both of the participants were enthused over the project.” He dedicated Wood Notes to Friedrich J. Lehmann, his composition professor at Oberlin.

George Gershwin, composer, (1898 – 1937)

The opera, Porgy and Bess, Gershwin described as an “American folk opera.” It was based on a novel by DuBose Heyward. Heyward became the librettist. Ira Gershwin, the endlessly original lyricist for his brother’s songs, supplied some of the lyrics for this opera. George Gershwin moved to an island off of Charlestown, South Carolina, to write in order to keep the accent of the place. Gershwin and DuBose insisted that all the major roles would be filled by African American actors/singers. The opera opens with “Summertime,” considered to be the most recognizable tune in all of 20th century music theater. The story is about a tragic love between Porgy, a disabled, impoverished, and good hearted man; Bess, an abused woman who was addicted to cocaine; and Crown, a violent dockworker who drops her when he murders a man and decides to run. Bess begs Porgy to protect her, but when Crown returns to take Bess with him, Porgy kills Crown. Then, Bess goes to New York with Sporting Life, a dope dealer. Ever true to his love, Porgy follows them to New York. Five years after George Gershwin’s death, Robert Russell Bennett, a friend and colleague to Gershwin, arranged a medley of Porgy and Bess music for the Pittsburgh Symphony’s conductor, Fritz Reiner. As I listened to the “Symphonic Picture,” I felt the deep emotion and pain painted by the music. Even the satirical “It Ain’t Necessarily So,” sung by Sporting Life, has a heart full of blues. There are various commentaries about a white composer writing about a community of African Americans. I feel that Gershwin wanted to include not only the actors/singers but their community. The opera Carmen, focused on impoverished women and bullfighters, was written by a Frenchman. Curiously, Gershwin was thrown to the hungry lions on at least two sides. Writers of the ’20s and ’30s called him an ape from the jungles and denigrated his music; to them it was jazz, music from Africa. In addition to the antisemitism targeted at him, the bigots against African Americans added him to their list of hatreds. To them, he was just another low life African American. Gershwin died young, only 39. His music? It will not die.

“Still Our Own Indian Selves”

On November 8, Dr. Tria Blu Wakpa will share her research findings through her talk: “Still Our Own Indian Selves: The Decolonial Possibilites of Student Theatrical Productions at a Former Indian Boarding School.” This program begins at Noon and ends at 1:00. PACIFIC TIME. The presentation is only on Zoom in order to make it available to everyone regardless of time zone. IF you want to attend, please send a message to livelyfoundation@sbcglobal.net so that we can send you the Zoom codes. The event is presented by The Lively Foundation. It is FREE. IF YOU ARE ABLE, please consider making a donation of $10 – or any other amount – to support Lively’s programs. The following information is Dr.Tria Blu Wakpa’s Abstract and Biography in full.

Dr. Tria Blu Wakpa, Assist. Professor, UCLA’s Department of World Arts & Cultures/Dance

Abstract:

In this presentation and workshop, I will first share research that examines student performances that occurred at St. Francis Mission School between the 1930s and 1950s and then offer a workshop that incorporates movement and mindfulness practices based on these findings. Founded by Jesuit officials in 1886, St. Francis operated as an Indian boarding school until 1972 on the Rosebud Indian Reservation, located in South Dakota on the lands of the Rosebud Sioux Tribe, who are Sicangu Lakota. I posit that officials invested an immense amount of time and resources into staging these productions, because they fulfilled institutional aims by attempting to assimilate and convert Lakota people while shaping and disseminating discourses related to the purported legitimacy, sanctity, and benevolence of St. Francis and its alleged contributions to Lakota people and futurities. I term these methods settler colonial choreographies. Meanwhile, working within material and structural confines, Lakota people found ways to sustain their practices and identities, navigate settler colonial stereotypes and institutional policies, document their experiences and contributions, and otherwise nurture their wellbeing, freedom, and futurities. I refer to these actions as decolonial choreographies. Ultimately, I show that the productions simultaneously supported the self-determination of St. Francis—and by extension the U.S.—and Lakota people. To conclude the session, I will guide attendees in movement and mindfulness practices that are in conversation with the tactics that Native people used to reinterpret student theatrical performances at St. Francis and support their holistic health.

Bio:

Tria Blu Wakpa is an Assistant Professor in the Department of World Arts and Cultures/Dance at UCLA. She received a Ph.D. from the Department of Ethnic Studies at UC Berkeley. Her research and teaching center community-engaged, decolonizing, and movement analysis methodologies to examine the history and politics of dance and other holistic practices—such as theatrical productions, athletics, and yoga—for Indigenous peoples in and beyond structures and institutions of confinement. She is a mother, scholar, poet, and practitioner of Indigenous dance, Indigenous Hand Talk (sign language), martial arts, and yoga. In addition, she is the Co-Founder and Editor-in-Chief for Race and Yoga, the first peer-reviewed and open-access journal in the emerging field of critical yoga studies. Her first book project, Choreographies in Confinement, contextualizes dance, theatrical productions, basketball, and/or yoga at two sites for Native children on the Rosebud Indian Reservation in South Dakota: a former Indian boarding school and a tribal juvenile hall. Her writings have been translated into French and Portuguese and appeared in academic journals and books. In 2023, Professor Blu Wakpa’s article, “From Buffalo Dance to Tatanka Kcizapi Wakpala, 1894-2020: Indigenous Human and More-than-Human Choreographies of Sovereignty and Survival,” won the American Society for Theatre Research’s Gerald Kahan Scholar’s Prize “for the best essay written and published in English in a refereed scholarly journal or edited collection.” This same year, she was named the Fulbright Association’s Selma Jeanne Cohen Dance Lecture Awardee. She has held major fellowships from the Ford Foundation, the Fulbright Program, the Hellman Fellows Fund, and the UC President’s Postdoctoral Program.

Shostakovich & Brahms: Amazing Performance

The San Francisco Symphony performed the Shostakovich Violin Concerto No. 1, in A minor, Opus 77(99) and the Brahms Symphony No. 4 in E minor, Opus 98, October 5, at the Davies Symphony Hall. This listener is still standing to applaud it was such great music performed majestically. Music Director, Esa-Pekka Salonen, conducted with strength and understanding of masterpieces of two great composers

Dmitri Shostakovich, composer (1906 – 1975)
From the very first sound from the violin, my whole being straightened up in attention to the exquisite music made by one draw of bow across instrument. Sayaka Shoji, the soloist, plays the “Recamier” Stradivarius violin, ca. 1729, loaned to her by Ueno Fine Chemicals Industry, Ltd. The violin may have been played by other outstanding musicians, but I believe it had been waiting four centuries for its ideal partner, Ms Shoji. Shostakovich made this concerto a marathon challenge for the violinist. She performs continuously. She must run a rocky path and up a steep mountain, something like climbing Half Dome. There is a small sign requiring the violinist to meditate; she climbs high enough to bring the music to stillness but never to a stop. There are moments she shares with a flute and a clarinet both supporting her pilgrimage. If you love Shostakovich’s music, and I do, this is a profound message. It is alive with the philosophical melody of the first movement, Nocturne. The Scherzo contains the composer’s laughs at a dictator’s cruelty. Folk dance is suggested, but it is not for jolly folk. It is rough and creepy. The third movement, Passacaglia, blossoms into nine variations led by the horns and more wind instruments. Their wind blows through each variation turning into a funeral call. Ms Shoji’s cadenza has a wild sadness and brings more of the folk dance back onto the stage as though the energetic dancers are crazed by loss. From the cadenza the music pours into rousing bagpipe sounds and a non-stop party of all the musicians, folks, and roaming strangers, a revel of jumping, running, and celebrating joy in this moment.

Johannes Brahms, composer, (1833 – 1897)

Brahms. The long wait for him to produce his first symphony is a familiar story. He terrorized himself thinking of Beethoven following him, intimidating his writing. He began making notes and sketches in 1850, but the tremendous, glorious Symphony No. 1 debuted in 1876. His Symphony No. 4 was a triumph and the last of his symphonies. The performance by SF Symphony, October 5, led by Esa-Pekka Salonen, affected the listener’s heart while emotion was spoken by beautiful, quiet, lyrical passages, Allegro non troppo. Behind the first movement, and behind each movement, there is always something that cannot be named: a texture, interactions of instruments, a thought for the world. Brahms was a great intellect as well as a great musician. His writing found ways to allow us to hear the music with all our attention and yet be aware that there is something we will never see. In his writing, he broke some classical ways. In the program’s essay,, the late, wonderful writer Michael Steinberg explains how a seemingly small step changed every thing. “Almost everyone was upset over what appears now one of the most wonderful strokes in the work, the place where Brahms seems to make the conventional, classical repeat of the exposition but changes one chord after eight measures, thereby opening undreamed-of harmonic horizons….” This must be what a master of the technique as well as of the sound can do. “One small step” could change everything. Then, it is like breathing, something also easy, complicated, and brilliant. Brahms mines the Baroque and Renaissance music for something new, inspired by Bach’s Cantata No. 150. He did not try to do “authentic” ancient music; he discovered how he could understand it and then do it but differently. The entire symphony is full of energy even when the music is quiet. Passion drives the music, but it never colors outside the lines. Great and true passion lets us learn many possibilities and unifies the world.

JASMINE JIMISON: Lovely Person, Fabulous Dancer

Talking with Jasmine Jimison was a treat. I have seen her dance with the San Francisco Ballet in roles in The Nutcracker (Helgi Tomasson: choreographer) and A Midsummer Night’s Dream (George Balanchine: choreographer). Her onstage presence is a delight as she is able to embody roles as different as The Snow Queen and a wandering, love lorn lady lost in an enchanted forest in A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

Jasmine Jimison: Principal Dancer, San Francisco Ballet

She selected her life’s direction, stuck with it, worked hard, and now has arrived at the top of the top. Ms Jimison told me that she started out as a figure skater and began to study dance to help with her skating. Her skating teacher advised her to add the ballet movements, especially the arms, for her work on the ice. That was when she was “around 10 or 12.” The dancing gradually took over the skating. At 12 years old, she entered the SF Ballet School. She had started taking summer intensive programs at San Francisco Ballet and School of American Ballet, in New York, and others, but she stayed with the SFB school. A native of Palo Alto, she was happy to be near home.

Her family had no other dancers or artists of other kinds, but they were supportive in her training and career. I asked if her family was surprised by her dedication. The answer was no; they were “very supportive

Jasmine Jimison being promoted to Principal Dancer on stage after a performance of Ashton’s Marguerite and Armand // © San Francisco Ballet, photo by Lindsey Rallo

She loved figure skating and was very good at it, but even at the young age of making big decisions, her decision was practical. Jasmine said that figure skating is a short career, skaters stop at 15 or, if lucky, maybe 20. Compared to that, ballet, notorious for the brevity of a dancer’s career, seems like a long, life time career.

Ms Jimison has helpful suggestions for young dancers and not so young dancers. She said that “Everyone has a unique time line for training and dancing. The old rules that a person cannot start to dance seriously after 12 years old are no longer in place. So much depends on the individual’s efforts and the quality of training.” In addition to studying at the SFB, Jasmine studied privately with Kristine Elliot – a beautiful dancer, soloist in the American Ballet Theater. Ms Elliot gave Jasmine significant training. Jasmine feels certain that being in one on one classes with Ms. Elliot gave her a significant boost in learning.

A recent thrill for SF audiences and for Ms Jimison was her role as Odette/Odile in Swan Lake. Jasmine said being cast in the double role is usually set on “veteran” ballerinas with great experience. However, the new Principal Dancer was given the role. Odette, the good princess, was turned into a swan by the evil wizard, Von Rothbart. Odile, the bad “princess,” daughter of Von Rothbart, puts a spell on Prince Siegfried. The Prince had fallen in love with Odette by the romantic Swan Lake. In the picture below, she is Odette.

Jasmine Jimison in Tomasson’s Swan Lake // © San Francisco Ballet, photo by Lindsey Rallo

I asked Jasmine if she preferred one of the parts. She thought that Odette’s personality was closer to hers, it felt more natural, but it is exciting to delve into characteristics that are completely different.

She has appeared in many different roles but she said that Juliet is her favorite, so far. She likes knowing that the audience understands the feelings of the characters. That means that they are with Juliet as she goes through so many challenges. Also, the music is wonderful. It is the “most important in shaping the quality of the movement.”

Jasmine Jimison and Mingxuan Wang in Tomasson’s Nutcracker // © Reneff-Olson Productions

She will not know what ballets or roles she will be in until much closer to the season. She is now learning Grosse Fugue and will learn Clemence in Raymonda. The San Francisco Ballet will go on tour to Madrid, October 1st. Ms Jasmine Jimison, Principal Dancer, is excited about the company’s first international tour with her. I asked her what it is about dance that drew her in to make it the center of her life. She answered that she loves the physical aspect of it, but it also gives her a way of expressing herself and the feelings from the music and characters. She said that these were things she could not express verbally. However, she expressed herself clearly and articulately in our conversation just like the clarity and meaning she puts into her dance.

Photographs compliments of the San Francisco Ballet.

Mahler Symphony No. 3: A Whole World

June 28, Davies Symphony: The San Francisco Symphony performed Mahler’s Symphony No. 3 in D Minor. It was a stunning presentation. Each movement was full of surprises, emotions, music that inspired our imaginations. San Francisco has been Mahler territory from the beginning of Michael Tilson Thomas’ tenure as Music Director. The Muni had Mahler painted on the sides of buses. MTT brought us great performances. Now, it is Music Director Esa-Pekka Salonen’s time to make the audience marvel at the music and the brilliance of conductor and musicians. This concert was the last of the regular season. It was another great musical experience from the SF Symphony.

Esa-Pekka Salonen, Music Director, San Francisco Symphony.

Before Gustav Mahler began to compose his Symphony No. 3 in D minor, he wrote a scenario in five parts, like sketching the story behind a play. He gave a title to each part. At first, the titles were following this theme: What the Forest Tells Me, What the Trees Tell Me, What Twilight Tells Me, but he changed the titles five times during his summer retreat. He removed the trees, the twilight, and the rest. He switched to Summer entering the symphony, and he wanted to add something Dionysiac, possibly scary. The various images that came to him worked. In less than three weeks he had written the 2^nd, 3^rd, 4^th, and 5^th movements. When Symphony No. 3 premiered in 1902, none of the titles were on the program. Mahler wrote to conductor, Josef Krug-Waldsee the reason why he removed them.

“Those titles were an attempt on my part to provide non-musicians with something to hold on to and with a signpost for the intellectual, or better, the expressive content of the various movements and for their relationships to each other and to the whole. That didn’t work (as, in fact it could never work) and that it led only to misinterpretations of the most horrendous sort became painfully clear all too quickly.”*

I was glad to read another quotation from Mahler in a conversation with Sibelius about what a symphony is because I have often thought that Mahler’s symphonies encompassed the world. He said, “a symphony must be like the world. It must embrace everything.”* Symphony No. 3 surely demonstrated that.

The first movement is nearly a half hour on its own. That is because Mahler sees so much. The beginning is joyful but a change comes immediately, something sad, more than sad has been released. We hear what might be funeral music, wailing, anger at the undoing of the human. Then, there are marches which are followed by what could be popular music that plays with a gentle hand that turns to enthusiasm. Yes, it is the whole world. Each of us lives all of the turns of experience which Mahler recalls for the listener and for the listener to re-live right now right here whether in a concert hall or hiking past a small town. This first movement, Part I, Kraftig, entschieden (Powerful, determined) is the full first part giving us moments of danger and loss as well. He does not abandon us to loss but reminds us of love.

Part II includes four briefer movements, each with its own identity. The first one is a minuet: Tempo di menuetto. Sher massig (Moderate). Then, the music is placed out doors with a song by Mahler, Ablusung im Sommer. He awaits “Lady Nightingale’s” song once the cuckoo stops. The trumpet becomes a post-horn with a beautiful tune which is carried by the flutes. Arnold Schoenberg observed, “at first with the divided high violins, then, even more beautiful if possible, with the horns.”* The symphony continues to a song by Nietzsche. It is the Midnight Song from also sprach Zarathustra. This song begins by warning humanity. Then, it explains the depth of eternity. “The world is deep–/deeper than the day had thought!/Deep is the pain!/Joy deeper still than heart’s sorrow!/Pain says: Vanish!/ Yet all joy aspires to eternity,/ to deep, deep eternity.” Soloist Kelley O’Connor, mezzo-soprano, sang the first. Her voice fit well with both songs. Her presence communicates authority and, even as a sinner, attracts empathy.

Kelley O’Connor, mezzo-soprano

Next the sopranos and altos of the SF Symphony Chorus plus young boys of the Pacific Boychoir Academy sang the text of The Boy’s Magic Horn (Des Knaben Wunderhorn) with added text by Mahler: “But you mustn’t weep.” The SF Chorus sounded wonderful. O’Connor joined in this song as the sinner. The children made bell sounds and joined the SF Symphony Chorus in “Liebe nur Gott!” Love only God.

Mahler did a daring thing – when did he not do a daring thing? – and ended his symphony with an adagio. The music runs into the terrible, nameless event of the first movement. The interruption of his forward motion leads his music to spiritual directions. The duet of kettle drums was astonishing. The percussionists used drumsticks with large heads of something looking like cotton on the striking end. Side by side the percussionists, each with two drums sticks, struck the drums simultaneously, loudly, and powerfully. Side to side over and over. It created chills, questions, a mystery. The composer instructed the drums should be played “not with brute strength (but) with rich, noble tone” and that “the last measure not be cut off sharply”* in order to produce softness and a silence in the hall and in each listener. Mahler’s No. 3 has the fullness of life. This was Mahler’s world.

*quotations are quoted from the SF Symphony article by Michael Steinberg.

A Romantic Program: Schumann & Bruckner

June 21, 2024: Do not be upset. I know that Bruckner is not labelled a Romantic composer, but he gave his Symphony No. 4 in E-flat major, Romantic. the name “the Romantic” after he completed it. Schumann, was a Romantic in his music and his life. His Piano Concerto in A minor, Opus 54 was his only piano concerto, but it is a perfect one. Why are these two composers on the same program? Each one created a change in the art. Schumann’s significant change is a new way to make a concerto. Bruckner made lasting changes in the development of symphonic movements. There are stories behind each innovation.

Robert Schumann, composer (1810 -1856)

THE COMPOSER

He looks so troubled in this picture. For a long time I have felt that Schumann did not get enough attention in our modern and/or post-modern era. Very unfair. As you see in his dates, he lived only 46 years. Mozart and Mendelssohn both died before they reached 40. Sadly, that is one of the facts people will note. Surely, Mozart and Mendelssohn deserve every possible praise, but the brevity of their lives, and of Schumann’s, should be on some kind of celestial list. And Schumann spent the last part of his life in an asylum. He fell in love with Clara Wieck, widely recognized as the great concert pianist of Europe. To complete the romantic story, her father would not allow them to marry. However, they married anyway. She continued to perform, to teach, and to compose. Her work supported the family. She had eight children. She performed her husband’s music and would listen to the new works. Schumann was very intelligent in other arenas, too. He founded a journal, the Neue Zeitschrift fur Musik, in 1834, and wrote for it and edited it for ten years. He had studied law at Leipzig and Heidelberg, but he was a musician. Music and Clara were his life.

His Piano Concerto in A minor, Opus 54 was something new. He began a work he called Phantasie, in 1827. In 1839, he published an essay about piano concertos in the Neue Zeitschrift fur Musik. He did not like the existing concerto form of the orchestra and soloist being separated mainly to show off the virtuoso piano performance. He imagined more interaction of the orchestra and soloist making the music together.

Clara Schumann, pianist, composer, wife of Robert Schumann (1819 – 1896).

THE CONCERTO

Schumann wrote that “the orchestra, no longer a mere spectator, may interweave its manifold facets into the scene.” He wrote four more attempts at the new concerto, but they were only attempts. Clara played the piece and declared the Phantasie good. “The piano is most skillfully interwoven with the orchestra; it is impossible to think of one without the other.” Schumann was not there yet. It did not get published; Schumann felt something was missing. Schumann revised the Phantasie in 1845, making it a three movement concerto. It may not be the most challenging concerto, but he brought together orchestra and soloist together to make music. It is an act of beauty. The “interwoven” sources of the music also weave a spell for the listener.

Yefim Bronfman, Pianist

The San Francisco Symphony, led by Music Director, Esa-Pekka Salonen, and the soloist, Yefim Bronfman, made the music play above merely wonderful. Schumann would be happy to know how seamlessly the music came through the team work of all. When the piano introduces itself at the beginning, the oboe and bassoon present the theme. Schumann made the work without the usual orchestra and soloist’s separate excitement. The idea of connecting the roles of soloist and orchestra is present throughout. Schumann himself wrote the piano’s cadenza, and it is glorious. None of the orchestra’s instruments is lost. The first violins swell as the piano presents a second theme. A solo clarinet is heard clearly over the quiet playing of the strings. This concerto shows what is created when every instrument’s character plays itself and is part of the company as well as having its own, individual, musical life. There is little one might write about Yefim Bronfman. His performance was beyond extravagant superlatives. He plays the soul of the music. There are places in the Concerto when the piano is delicate, almost quiet, small. Those moments were some of the biggest experiences of the Concerto. The audience could not let him go. There were, maybe, six encores. After the first two or three, Bronfman played a Rachmaninoff piece, Prelude in G minor (op. 23 no. 5), it had unique rhythms and a changing pattern. Fascinating and strange. The audience carried on applauding and shouting bravos until a few at a time gradually trickled to the exits.

Anton Bruckner, composer, organist 1824-1996

THE SYMPHONY

The SF Symphony led by Music Director, Esa-Pekka Salonen, gave a powerful and insightful performance of Anton Bruckner’s Symphony No. 4 in E-flat major, Romantic. The orchestra represented Bruckner’s unique approach to every note. This is a great symphony in every sense of the word; the music is marvelous and the symphony is a long one. Bruckner gives the listener new sounds and new roles for particular instruments. There are dissonant notes and momentary rests. They are surprising. Then, the listener realizes that these novel aspects are part of Bruckner’s mystery. Here is a master of orchestration and counterpoint who knows the use of an out of the way path wins the music lover’s attention. The Symphony No. 4 has musical references to hunting in its Scherzo and other movements. The horns are the stars of this Symphony. One can picture the “nobility” riding through a forest. This is part of the Romanticism that was sweeping across Europe. Movements develop slowly; there will be a change to lively dance music; then a wistful encounter of characters. Bruckner must have surprised himself so much as his audiences were surprised when, long after the Symphony’s debut, he wrote a note of what images could float before one’s eyes:

“Medieval city- dawn-morning calls sound from the towers-the gates open-on proud steeds the knights ride into the open-woodland magic embraces them-forest murmurs-bird songs-and thuse the Romantic picture unfolds.”*

There are more wind instruments playing music that does suggest the natural world awakening, and, through the grandeur of the Symphony, there are suggestions of folk music. Bruckner’s view is broad as though he looks across all directions for the vast earth, brooks, and trees and stretches his musical vision to encompass the living world and even beyond. He takes our breaths away in a dazzling finale that draws together darkness and distant light.

THE COMPOSER

Bruckner’s life could have followed his father’s and grandfather’s paths as a schoolmaster and organist in the Austrian village of Ansfelden When his father died, his mother took him to St. Florian’s, a monastery-school. Bruckner’s attachment to St. Florian’s lasted throughout his life. He began teaching music at St. Florian’s soon after his education there ended. Before St. Florian’s he had music education through his father and, when his father was ill, Anton played the organ in the church. He spent ten years on St. Florian’s music faculty. He left to live in Linz, 1856, and began to write seriously. There was a popular song for male-voice chorus, “Germanenzug,” 1863; Psalm LX11, for soloists, chorus, and orchestra, 1863; Symphony in F minor, his first symphony, 1863; a great Mass in D major, his first mass, 1864. Beginning in 1855, he studied counterpoint and harmony with Simon Sechter. Bruckner felt he was not sufficiently prepared for composing. Sechter was considered the best teacher, and Bruckner spent six years studying with him although Sechter was in Vienna and Bruckner in Linz. Then, he took up the study of orchestration and musical form from Otto Kitzler, also considered the best teacher in these areas. Assigning himself to these studies reveals Bruckner’s hunger for learning and perfectionist tendencies.

Life in Linz was obviously more stimulating for Bruckner than his previous home. In Linz, he wrote two more symphonies; one in D minor -called Zero Symphony – and Symphony #1 in C minor. He wrote two great Masses: one in E minor, 1866; and one in F minor, 1867-1868. The E minor mass kept to strict polyphonic style for an 8 part chorus and brass instruments. The F minor established a new kind of “symphonic mass,” for orchestra and chorus.

If Linz was a helpful atmosphere for him, when Bruckner moved to Vienna, 1868, he began a period of creative production. He had been studying his music theory lessons and still taught music and played the organ. It was a hard working life. When he arrived in Vienna, he was able to succeed Sechter’s position as professor of harmony and counterpoint at the Vienna Conservatory and had private students. The University of Vienna gave him a position in their faculty, too. Before Vienna, he had had a nervous breakdown. Overwork or something physical? There is no answer, except that Vienna gave him so much more. All his training and work opened the door to important positions. Starting in 1868, he was the court chapel organist, and from 1875 onward he was Vice Librarian and Second Singing Master for the choristers. These positions lack lofty names, but they added to his financial security and visibility.

Bruckner saw Wagner’s The Flying Dutchman and Tannhauser, in Linz, and traveled to Munich to see Tristan and Isolde. He met Wagner in 1865 and became a Wagnerian. This placed him in the midst of battles between followers of Wagner and those who preferred Brahms. Some leading critics, especially Eduard Hanslick, made it difficult for Bruckner’s work to get the approval and attention needed to move his work forward.HNe toured as an organist. He performed in Paris and Nancy, 1869, and London, 1871, performing at the Crystal Palace exhibiton five times. His virtuoso organ playing and his improvisation on the organ fascinated audiences. It is said that his improvisations were spectacular. Later he made journeys within Germany: Leipzig, Munich, and Berlin were frequent venues. There were also conductors who were enthusiastic about his music. These were Nikisch, Levi, Mottl, Mahler, and Ochs. His symphonies and masses were greeted with admiration or dislike, again because of the politics of Wagner vs. Brahms. Mahler especially supported Bruckner’s work. He made the first pianoforte arrangement of Symphony No. 3 and conducted the first performance of Symphony No. 6, in 1899.

Anton Bruckner’s made changes that contributed to the development of symphonies. As he was a dedicated student of orchestration, harmony, counterpoint, the changes will mean the most to musicians and students, but the changes affect what an audience hears. (A) he introduced a third subject in the exposition. (B) A tendency to telescope development and recapitulation which make the movement split into 2 main parts. This is most noticeable in the first and fourth movements of his Symphony No. 9. (C) shifting the power center to a finale which can end with repetition of the main themes of early movements (D) linking movements by shared themes as in Adagio and Scherzo in Symphony No. 5 and Scherzo and Finale of Symphony No. 4.

These innovations stepped away from the classical forms of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven. Bruckner broadened the possibilities of great symphonies.

*Quotation taken from SFS program note by james M. Keller.

San Francisco Symphony Explores New Music from 1861-2023

May 16, San Francisco Symphony presented a concert that showed delight in the new and even in the older new music. Each excursion into a different world of sound let the audience enter surprising terrain. The program itself was innovative as its mixture of instruments and completely different ways of composing allowed all of us to realize there are countless approaches to music.

Conductor Ryan Bancroft led the SFS through centuries of music with care and enthusiasm for his program and fellow artists. He grew up in Los Angeles and gained international attention when he won the first prize and audience prize at the Malko Competition in Copenhagen, 2018.

Unsuk Chin wrote Alaraph ‘Ritus des Herzschlags’ (Alaraph: Rite of the Heartbeat) in 2022. She was fascinated to learn about “heartbeat stars.” They have regular pulsations. Alaraph is a “heartbeat star” “in a binary star systems in eccentric orbits with vibrations caused by tidal forces.” The composer has said that she “cannot and I do not need to describe my music..You have to listen to it and everybody has to understand it in their own way.” Despite that desire, it is a big help to have a couple of her hints. Curiously, the “star’s light curve is similar to what a heartbeat looks like through an electrocardiogram when its brightness is mapped over time.” The heartbeat stars therefore have both the pulsating force and their light curve to match the heartbeat concept. While there are traditional orchestral instruments – flutes, oboes, clarinets, bassoons, contrabassoons, horns, trumpets, trombones, tuba, contrabass tuba, and timpani, the percussion list is long. In fact, the list of the instruments is nearly two inches tall. Some of these are familiar: the cowbell, the tam tam, piano strings, for example. There are a lot of drums: wood drum, bongos, snare drum, tom toms, tenor drum, bass drum, but there are also stranger percussion resources, like bamboo tree and binzasara. This was not meant to be something one would hum on the way to the garage. It is sound for the stars, planets, and space. Ms Chin also notes that traditional Korean music is knit into this universe. Having heard Korean music for traditional dance, it is a powerful presence. I was told that one must be careful when such things are playing as the sounds bring out spirits which could rock the chair one had assumed was not going to move or jump, and it might.

As the program had opened with a composition of 2022, the next performance was Violin Concerto No. 5 in A minor, Opus 37, by Henri Vieuxtemps, written in 1861. Vieuxtemps was Belgian and performed his first concert at age six. Throughout his life he was celebrated by the elite of violinists and music critics. This Concerto shows why. In addition to his extraordinary greatness as a violinist, he was also a remarkable composer. Fortunately for the San Francisco audience, Joshua Bell was the soloist. The performance was astounding. One could not compare this performance with any other; it was only played by the SFS once before, in 1932. The virtuosity required by the soloist is not easy to describe; everything about the piece was designed to keep the mind and fingers moving more and more quickly with more and more brilliance. Berlioz reviewed Vieuxtemps’ Concerto No. 5 in A minor and found it “grand and new;” the “whole is admirably combined to let the solo instrument shine, without its domination ever becoming oppressive.” There was nothing oppressive about it. Seeing and hearing Bell with the SFS lifted us up. Being a witness to the best can do that and also can expand one’s life in the best way.

Thanks go to Joshua Bell for the third selection. He had commissioned a group of new works called the Elements project. “They all have something in common, said Bell: “They all have a tendency toward tonality and melody, which I like.” He wanted to commission “something about the natural world.” On this program, the element was Earth, a ten minute performance with Joshua Bell’s solo violin and flutes, oboes, clarinets, bassoons, horns, trumpets, trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, harp, and strings. The composer, Kevin Puts, wrote Earth in 2023. The music had a natural sound though did not imitate the sounds of nature. It was calming and steady. This was Earth without volcanoes or tsunami or hurricanes. This earth endures. While experiencing the music, I thought about our earth. Toward the closing minute, I felt closer to earth but, suddenly, also afraid for Earth.

Claude Debussy composed La Mer from 1903-1905. It sounded like new music, musical, imagistic, gorgeous, and also understated music. The wonderful writer, Michael Steinberg, called La Mer “this not-quite-symphony.” There are three movements or one might call them pictures: De l’Aube a midi sur la mer (From Dawn Till Noon on the Sea); Jeux de vagues (Play of the Waves); Dialogue du vent et de la mer (Dialogue of the Wind and the Sea). Actually, calling them pictures cannot work. While the visual world of the sea comes forward, the rhythm and movement which Debussy creates feels like the real movement of the sea and the wind. Debussy contributed so much to music; a listener now hears his music as a natural phenomenon. It is entirely his own originality like an element of nature that has lasted and always will. It is different from any other work. Michael Steinberg mentions “the swell and retreat” of the cellos’ theme “echoed” quietly in the timpani and horns. All of us breathe in swell and retreat. Being near the sea, one’s breath synchronizes with the waves and then yearns to be in the water to float on the surface which will lift one and let one down while moving forward. La Mer does present tempestuous conditions, but Debussy loves all of the sea’s movement and rhythm. This is new music.

#Quotations from artists are quoted from SF Symphony program.

REUNION DAY SALE!

June 1 is a great day to purchase books by Leslie Friedman. The Dancer’s Garden and The Story of Our Butterflies will be available at big discounts. JUNE 1st is The Day.

The Dancer’s Garden can be purchased for $30.

The Story of Our Butterflies: Mourning Cloaks in Mountain View can be purchased for $20.

If you purchase these books, on June 1st, AND if there are books on hand, you will not pay postage and handling. It’s $5 for postage & handling. Purchase by cash or check or – if you want to use a credit card, please go to the landing page of this blog, scroll down the page to see the PaypPal logo, click on it and follow directions. Add $1.50 to the total.