Conference of Birds at the Mexican Heritage Theater, 9/9-911

An exciting dance theater event opens this Friday, September 9, at the Mexican Heritage Theater, and runs for four performances through the weekend. It is a grand program drawing on the skills of ten different dance traditions to tell its story. The cast includes fifteen actors and thirty dancers.The performance is presented by Sangam Arts and EnActe. Its artistic director, Antara Bhardwaj, has been at work on the project for nearly two years. The mission of the producers and directors is to promote multicultural understanding through the arts.

The story is based on the work of 12th century Persian poet, Farid ud-Din Attar. It is about the quest of humanity for understanding of the world and god and humanity’s place in relationship to it. Playwrights Jean Claude Carriere and Peter Brook first adapted it to the modern stage. The production team for this event includes Production Head Usha Srinivasan, Director Vinita Belani, Dance & Music Director Antara Bhardwaj, Composer Randy Armstrong.

Dance styles include Ballet, Bharatanatyam, Aztec, Afro-Brazilian, Chinese, Folklorico, Hula, Persian, Kathak, Odissi, Belly Dance.

Tickets are available now. Visit facebook/sangamartsorg and enacte.org/production/the-conference-of-the-birds Performances are Friday afternoon, Sept. 9 for schools; Friday evening at 8 p.m.; Saturday matinee at 2 p.m. & evening at 8 p.m.; Sunday matinee at 4 p.m. This promises to be an extraordinary theater event.

EnActe Photos: Antara Bhardwaj dancing Kathak, Folklorico dancers

Antara Bhardwaj: Tale of a Kathaka in Mountain View

Kathak dancer, Antara Bhardwaj, presented by Sangam Arts and EnActe Arts, performed Tale of a Kathaka, an exciting program, July 9, 2016, at the Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts. She demonstrated her mastery of the classical Indian dance with its origins in Northern India, and her ability to captivate an audience with her interpretations of the tradition. The enthusiastic audience found much to applaud and also much to think about. Ms Bhardwaj’s program included collaborations with other artists. It is her special focus to work with artists of other traditions. The first dance on Tale of a Kathaka combined Andrea Sendek’s Belly Dance group, Khepri Dance Company, with Kathak dancers from Ms Bhardwaj’s new group, Antara Asthaayi Dance. The contrast of the Khepri dancers’ silky, translucent costumes with the Kathak dancers in jewel tone costumes added visual pleasure to the dancing. The two dance forms share movement themes of spiraling, vivid turning. Named Deewani Mastani and based on a character from a popular Bollywood film, Bajirao Mastani, the dance was an exuberant beginning.

Ms Bhardwaj wisely chose outstanding musicians to accompany her work and perform selections of their own. The Sarangi-Sarod Jugalbandi, a duet for Sarangi artist Pankaj Mishara and Sarod artist Ben Kunin, was fascinating in its own right and also a great program choice between dances. A sitar solo by Rajib Karmakar was an excellent addition to the program. It was a treat to be in the audience for Salar Nader, renowned Tabla artist, as well. Vocalists included Vaishali Bhardwaj, Leah Brown, and Divya Chandran.
Among Ms Bhardwaj’s strengths as a performer is her comfort addressing her audience verbally or through dance. She deepened appreciation for her work by explaining aspects of Kathak. For example, she demonstrated the counts of the complex rhythms. On a more personal level, she talked about falling in love with the movie dances she saw as a youngster and her determination to dance in “twirly skirts.” She communicates her understanding of her art and a confident presence which could light up all of Silicon Valley. One selection, Journey of the Steam Engine, had special resonance for this viewer. It was a signature piece of Pandit Chitresh Das, Ms Bhardwaj’s guru, and had been created by his guru, Pandit Ram Narayan Mishra. As she told its story and danced, I remembered my first meeting with Chitresh Das and could see him in that moment. His energy seemed to expand the stage. Ms Bhardwaj is Dance & Music director of The Conference of the Birds, which appears Sept. 9-11, at the Mexican Heritage Plaza, San Jose. A production combining diverse ethnic dance groups, it promises an extraordinary event.

SF Symphony: Mahler & Michael Tilson Thomas

Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 2 in C minor, often called the “Resurrection” Symphony, made up the entire program at San Francisco’s Davies Symphony Hall, Saturday, July 2. There is more than enough beauty, mystery, passion, and inspiration to fill multiple performances of this one masterpiece. Music Director and Conductor Michael Tilson Thomas led his orchestra through a lifetime in ninety minutes of experience, poetry, struggle and sublime music.

Mahler:MTT Michael Tilson Thomas conducting Mahler

MTT has established a reputation as a profound artist and interpreter of Mahler. The many Grammy awards for his Mahler recordings with the SF Symphony attest to that. However, there is never anything “been there, done that” about his performances. At this one, the SFS and its Maestro were truly imbued with Mahler’s energy and spirit. It was as though they channeled the composer and brought him back to us. As Mahler wrote in the poetry sung in the triumphant last movement, “With wings that I have won/in the heat of love’s struggle/I will soar/to the light that no eye can comprehend.” In this performance of the Resurrection symphony, it was Mahler himself who rose again. For the audience, his vision became our vision. We were lifted beyond ourselves.

KarinaGauvin Mezzo-Soprano Kelley O’Connor; Soprano Katrina Gauvin

The last two movements were aided and fulfilled by the soloists, Kelley O’Connor and Katrina Gauvin, and the San Francisco Symphony Chorus. When the Chorus rose as one in the loft seating above and behind the orchestra, it was one of the powerful theatrical moments of the symphony’s performance. Mahler created great, majestic music, but he did not write it to be in artistic isolation. The voices extend the life of the instruments, the presence of the singers and the chorus enlarges the community from which the music arises and in which it dwells. There are other events in the symphony that leave such a powerful image of the making of music and the mission of the music that one can see the extension of life through this art. When the percussionists all beat on their drums, both hands holding drumsticks and beating rapidly, when the horn players quietly walk off stage in order to play from afar out of sight, even when the chorus members steadily turn their pages in unison and we see the turning of the white pages against their black clothes: it is all the total theater that Mahler made in order to make his art in as many dimensions as life. Reading the descriptions of the movements suggests this: “In quietly flowing motion,” “Very solemn but simple, like hymn,” “Bursting out wildly.” The descriptive power of the music calls forth every emotion, but in the end, “Slow. Misterioso,” there is mystery. On a cd, it will sound wonderful, but being there while Michael Tilson Thomas, the San Francisco Symphony, singers and Chorus live it is totally different.

Pictures from top, Gustav Mahler; picture of Michael Tilson Thomas by Kristen Loken, courtesy of the SF Symphony; Kelley O’Connor; Katrina Gauvin.

Luisotti, Verdi, Don Carlo: Opera Greatness in San Francisco

The San Francisco Opera presented Don Carlo, Giuseppi Verdi’s tragic masterpiece of political and personal puzzles, June 29. It was beautiful and terrifying. Led by SF Opera Music Director Conductor Nicola Luisotti, the performance went to the heart of Verdi’s great music and captured the hearts of the audience.

Special excitement in this Don Carlo was seeing two leads in role debuts. Michael Fabiano, American tenor, made an impressive debut as Don Carlo. He had critical and audience praise for his Rudolfo in SF Opera’s Luisa Miller, fall, 2015. In addition to leading roles from Paris to New York, in 2014 he won the Richard Tucker and Beverly Sills Awards. Ana Maria Martinez made her debut as Elisabetta, Don Carlo’s beloved who married the King, Don Carlo’s father. She has sung starring roles for the SF Opera: Pamina in Die Zauberflote, 2003, and Micaela in Carmen, 2006, Amelia Grimaldi in Simon Boccanegra, 2008. She has starred in productions at the Met in NYC, Houston Grand Opera, Lyric Opera of Chicago, and through Europe.

Ms Martinez excelled at portraying the agonizing sadness of the young woman who becomes Queen and must choose between duty and personal feelings. This is a constant theme of the opera showing public, political struggles and the interior, personal struggles faced by players in the games of state. The opera is set at a time when the Spanish Inquisition is the face and power of the Catholic Church and the political Church has out-maneuvered the ambitions of the state. While Spain is killing people in Flanders, “defending the Faith” by destroying the country in the newly Protestant Low Countries, the Church rules by the Inquisition’s terror.

Nadia Krasteva, Bulgarian mezzo, in her debut with the SF Opera, was outstanding in her role as Princess Eboli. In love with Don Carlo, she defames him and the Queen, hoping to catch him as he falls. From her first appearance, singing in the Queen’s garden, one feels she makes schemes even as she dances. Ms Krasteva was so good at being bad, a female Iago who regrets too late.

Mariusz Kwiecien as Rodrigo, Don Carlo’s devoted friend, was the soul of the opera. His voice was true, strong and beautiful. His optimistic proclamation of allegiance to liberty may reflect part of Verdi’s own hopes. Mr. Kwiecien, a Polish baritone, was superb. His character gives the audience someone to admire without equivocation, and yet, in this atmosphere of dread, he is doomed.

When Rodrigo dies, something of Verdi dies, too. Associated with the Risorgimento movement in Italy, Verdi loved not only Italy, but also the ideals of the Rights of Man (we may take “man” to mean the rights of Humanity). At the request of Prime Minister Cavour, the leader of the Italian unification movement, Verdi was a member of Parliament. When he died, in 1901, a quarter of a million Italians went into the streets, marching to the music of the Chorus of Hebrew Slaves from Verdi’s Nabucco, conducted by Toscanini. June 29 was perhaps the third time this Verdi fan had seen Don Carlo. So much can depend upon the time in which one sees it. The second time was a different era in the US.* Either what the directors chose to emphasize or what I felt most was the struggle for freedom against the totalitarian weight of the political, murderous Church and the murderous State. There was endless conniving, spying, and absence of respect for human life. This time, I absorbed the hopelessness of individuals striving for change and the loss of private lives. Perhaps the directors found more truth in cynicism in this election year.

Ferruccio Fulanetto sang the role of Philip II. He was superb. Rodrigo asks the King to end the Flanders war. The King decides he can trust Rodrigo. When Mr. Fulanetto warned Rodrigo to beware the Inquisition, it was one of the most terrifying moments of theater I can remember. In excellent voice, Mr. Fulanetto’s King Philip is in a position of supreme power and yet suspicious of his wife and overwhelmed by the Inquisition’s reign of terror. Exiting to the so-called real world in the first intermission, I could not shake the feeling of fear.

Nicola Luisotti announced his depature from leadership of the SF Opera. Lovers of Verdi should plan ahead: Maestro Luisotti will conduct Aida, Nov.5-Dec. 6, 2016, and Rigoletto, May 31-July 1, 2017. These performances are an opportunity to cheer him for the joy in music he has brought to San Francisco. Photos, except the unattributed portrait of Verdi at the top, are all ©Cory Weaver/SF Opera. *I first saw Don Carlo in a school group. We went to the Paris Opera. Seats were too expensive; we took turns going in a box. I do not think I knew the story. It didn’t matter. The gorgeous setting, beautiful voices, enormous bouquets all added up to dazzling Theater, an impact like the first time one sees a mountain.

SPECTACULAR: SF OPERA ‘S JENUFA

San Francisco Opera’s performance of Jenufa by Leos Janacek was spectacular, June 28, at the SF Opera House. There will be one more performance of this powerful, emotion grabbing, musically fascinating work. It’s Friday, July 1; don’t miss it. The SF Opera Orchestra, conducted by Jiri Belohavek, has never played better. The voices of the singers were stunning. Not content with making beautiful sound, the singers made their sound perfectly fit the characters they presented. Karita Mattila, pictured above, performed the role of Kostelnicka Buryjovka. From the first moment she is seen onstage, her presence becomes the tragic center of action. Her voice, suffused with knowledge and emotion, reaches into every listener. A brilliant opera star, this is her onstage debut in this role (she performed it in concert with the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Jiri Belohavek, in April). She has made it her own.

Czech composer Janacek began work on Jenufa, in 1895. It was premiered in 1904, in Brno, and in Prague in 1916. Janecek came from a village much like the one in his opera. He collected and studied music and songs from Moravia, his home region, as well as its speech patterns and expressions. In Jenufa, the characters live in a tightly knit community, isolated from outside culture. Jenufa is a young woman who loves Steva, a handsome man who owns the mill and is also a drunk and a flirt. At the beginning of the opera, she reveals that she is pregnant and prays that Steva will not be drafted but will marry her, saving her reputation and her life. Laca, another villager, has loved her all his life, but she is blind to him, especially now. The village does not offer a lot of options for an intelligent young woman. She teaches others how to read, but she cannot read the facts that Steva will only bring her trouble.

Steva brags to his friends that all the girls want him. Tenor Scott Quinn as Steva was both completely self-centered and too frightened of responsibility to have anything to do with Jenufa and her problem. In excellent voice, he performed splendidly enough to earn boos at the curtain call. He was also frightened of the Kostelnicka, village sacristan, who demanded he spend one year sober before she could let him marry Jenufa, her stepdaughter. At a loss for what to do, Jenufa hides in her stepmother’s home to have her child. Only 8 days after the birth, her stepmother has invited Steva to visit in order to convince him to marry. He refuses. In a fit of jealousy, Laca cut Jenufa’s face. She is less beautiful now and has a baby. He will marry the Mayor’s daughter instead. Laca visits and declares his love again. Desperate, the Stepmother finds a way to make this match work.

Lovely Soprano Malin Bystrom, making her debut in the role as Jenufa, experiences changes through the events of the opera. An international star, she certainly must keep Jenufa in her repertory; she was exquisite. When she enters in Act I, she is a vision of happy youth. Her movements suggest a sought after young woman whose love is fulfilled. She enters through the bright sunlight of the upstage image of ripe grain. However, the set is built so that two high walls nearly connect to each other at the point where the outside world is seen. Production Designer Frank Phillipp Schlossmann did a wonderful job of creating the enclosed, separate world of the villagers. He also uses the visual theme of stones to match the frequent mention of stones in the text. There is a possible millstone, mysterious and extra large, on stage in Act I. In Act II a stone takes up the entire interior of the Stepmother’s home. When we see Jenufa after the birth, she is weak, frightened of what will become of her, and yet loves her baby. The world of the opera might seem as distant and peculiar to 21st century San Franciscans as life on Mars. Public shame and hopelessness, real and powerfully portrayed, are the future for Kostelnicka, Jenufa and the baby.

Laca agrees to marry Jenufa. Sung with great success by tenor William Burden, Laca also goes through changes from angry, violent outcast, to pacified, hopeful helpmate. This is where the internet tradition of “spoiler alert” should appear in this Hedgehog Highlight. Terrifying events will occur: the Kostelnicka confesses to her crime, the crowd tries to stone Jenufa using Designer Schlossmann’s very believable, rugged decor. Out of this terror, there is something nearly like a happy ending. In classical theater, it’s a comedy if it ends with a marriage. Order and harmony return that way. While commentators have noted that the Kostelnicka confesses in order to spare her beloved stepdaughter and because she recognizes that she acted as much for herself as for Jenufa, for this observer it is necessary to note that none of the tranquility that is achieved for Laca and Jenufa could have happened without the actions of the suffering Kostelnicka. The cast was wonderful. It was a great night for music, a triumph for theater. Do not wait; buy your tickets now.

The loving sinner Stepmother, blesses the nearly happy couple before the truths are found out. For another Hedgehog observation of Karita Matilla, please go to http://www.livelyfoundation.org/wordpress/?p=758 Ms Matilla made her debut with the San Francisco Symphony, in the Beethoven Festival, June 17, 2015, singing Ah! Perfido Scene and Aria, Op. 65. In this Jenufa post, photos except the unattributed ones of Ms. Matilla and Janacek, are ©Cory Weaver/SF Opera.

James Conlon & S F Symphony: Triumphant Concert

James Conlon led the San Francisco Symphony in a bracing, thought provoking, thoroughly satisfying performance, June 11, at Davies Symphony Hall. The varied program included Sinfonia da Requiem, Op.20 (1940), by Benjamin Britten; Piano Concerto No. 22 in E-flat Maj., K. 482 (1785), by Mozart; Symphony No.8 in G maj., Op. 88 (1889), by Antonin Dvorak. In addition to great works from the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries, the selections offered a range of emotions and connections to human experience. The SF Symphony seemed completely in synch with Maestro Conlon. Bravo Bravo Bravo–one for each performance. And Bravo times two to the SFS and James Conlon.

Before beginning the Sinfonia da Requiem, Maestro Conlon addressed the audience to explain the origin of the composition. The Japanese government sought a European composer to create music for the celebration of the Imperial family’s 2600th anniversary as the ruling dynasty. The British Council, cultural arm of British diplomacy, approached Britten. Although Britten had been assured that he need not write nationalistic bombast, the Japanese rejected the Sinfonia. Britten had come to the US in 1939, the fateful, desperate year. Though far away, Britten was deeply distressed by of war across Europe and Asia. James Conlon concluded his remarks by observing that the Sinfonia was a requiem for the culture that was destroyed by the war. His voice caught a bit as he said this; it is plain that Conlon felt deeply the horrors of the war and the permanence of loss. This is a great, surprising work in three movements, each named for Christian liturgy. Lacrymosa, the first, comes from a medieval hymn describing the Day of Judgment: “Lamentable is that day on which guilty man shall arise from the ashes to be judged.” There is nothing comforting about it; it has a driving, percussive force and cries from a saxophone. Without pause, the second movement, Dies irae begins. It is an irregular dance, fast and harsh. One might remember depictions of the dance of death in medieval art, but, sadly, it is not necessary to search art history to find meaningful connections. The final movement’s title, Requiem aeternam, comes from the Mass for the Dead: “Grant them eternal rest, O Lord, and let everlasting light shine upon them.” Phrases for flutes and horns alternate; chords from harps, clarinets and strings build fervently. All grows quieter and fades to eternity.

Jan Lisiecki was the soloist for Mozart’s Concerto. A twenty-one year old phenomenon, his mastery of the lovely Mozart work was secure and admirable. The concerto is notable, in addition to the brilliance of the piano, for the clarinets which Mozart included for the first time in a concerto. This work has everything that delights in a Mozart concerto: complexity of design and also complexity of feeling. While there are dashing themes and splendid allegros, it poses formal, spritely 18th century dances along with the sweetness of life in music.

Closing the concert with Dvorak’s 8th Symphony was a gesture of affirmation. It is a compact work which gains power through compression. There are joyful, happy sounds of birds, dance rhythms, music which seems to pour directly from nature. Yet, despite the cheer, there is a sigh of awareness that this beauty is fragile. As the last movement, Allegro non troppo, rounds through music of our natural world, the listener senses a smile from Dvorak. There is strife and sadness, but we still enjoy the birdsong. The Hedgehog is grateful to James M. Keller for this quotation from Czech conductor, Rafael Kubelk, when rehearsing this Symphony: “Gentlemen, in Bohemia the trumpets never call to battle–they always call to the dance!” James Conlon is Music Director of the Los Angeles Opera, Principal Conductor of the RAI National Symphony Orchestra, Torino, Italy; he has also been Music Director of the Ravinia Festival and Principal Conductor of the Paris National Opera. He first performed with the SFS, 1978. FOR MORE HEDGEHOG HIGHLIGHTS on Mozart, please see April 26, 2016, Hilary Hahn, violinist, playing Mozart’s Sonata in G maj. K379 (373 a), and Oct. 4, 2015, Andras Schiff, pianist, playing Mozart’s Sonata in D maj. for Piano, K.576. Pictures, from top: James Conlon, Jan Lisiecki, Antonin Dvorak.

On The Town: Great Performers, Great Show

The San Francisco Symphony, conducted by Michael Tilson Thomas, brought On The Town to San Francisco, May 25-29, 2016. It was such an upbeat, entertaining performance May 28 when the Hedgehogs were there, the audience left with ear to ear smiles and toes still tapping.

The story behind the story could be a Broadway show itself. The ballet, Fancy Free, about three sailors on a one day pass to New York City, was the origin of the show. Oliver Smith, famed stage designer with American Ballet Theater, thought it would make a good show on its own; he advised the composer, Leonard Bernstein, and choreographer, Jerome Robbins, to add script and more music. Bernstein invited his friends, Betty Comden and Adolph Green to write the book and lyrics. Comden and Green also performed two starring roles. The ballet premiered in April, 1944. On the Town opened on Broadway in December. The creative team must have worked full tilt just as the three sailors went after their New York experiences living every moment to the fullest while they could.

Each sailor meets a girl: Ivy, the serious dancer-singer who performs in a side show on Coney Island to pay for her lessons at Carnegie Hall is matched with Gabey, the naive farm boy. Hildy, the earthy, independent cabbie wants her sailor, Chip, the thoughtful, slightly nerdy one, to come home with her. Claire de Loon, an anthropologist, falls for Ozzie because he resembles an early human she studies. The music is delightful: New York New York is one everyone can hum even if they don’t know it’s from this show. They all have an ending that is as happy as time allows. After 24 hours the sailors must be back on their ship. There is a war on; they will be in the midst of it. Time meant more. In 2016, one might forget a threat of finality hangs over all the silliness; in 1944, it was the nightmare behind everyday reality. In one song, Comden and Green let us know that they knew that even then in their 20s at the beginning of their careers. “Just when the fun is starting comes the time for parting.”

The show was performed on the SFS’s stage and on a platform above and behind the musicians. The SFSymphony Chorus sang from on high from left and right box seats. Narrow, gray cylinders formed a kind of skyline onto which evocative images were projected: news reels, war ships, the American flag put us in the historic setting. Especially effective were Coney Island images: Ferris Wheel, colors and lights. Michael Tilson Thomas premiered a concert version of On the Town, 1992, with the London Symphony Orchestra. He had written a new edition of the music with Charlie Harmon and David Israel. Comden and Green contributed a new narration. The May performances at SFS were the same version. Performers this spring had appeared in the Broadway revival, 2014. Clyde Alves as Ozzie, the role created by Adolph Comden; Jay Armstong Johnson, Chip; Tony Yazbeck, who won the Astaire award for his Gabey; Megan Fairchild, Ivy; Alysha Umphress, Hildy, Betty Comden’s role. Isabel Leonard who has performed internationally in opera was Claire. They are the legendary triple threat performers of Broadway: they sing, dance, and act. A perfect example is the sailor who performed back to back flips and whipping ballet turns. The narrators were David Garrison, an actor with a long list of stage and TV credits, and Amanda Green, the lyricist daughter of On the Town’s lyricist, Adolph Green.

Photos from top: Michael Tilson Thomas, Music Director, San Francisco Symphony; Leonard Bernstein; Betty Comden and Adolph Green; Alysha Umphress and Jay Armstrong Johnson as Hildy and Chip in Broadway’s On the Town, 2014.

JAN KARSKI: Exhibition on a Great Hero

There is an exhibition about Jan Karski on display at the Veterans Building, in the Trophy Room, 401 Van Ness Ave., San Francisco Civic Center. It is open M-F, 11 a.m. – 5 p.m. Free admission. The last day is May 13. Don’t wait. If you do know about Karski, you will want to see the photos and historical information about this great man. If you have never heard of him, you must take the time to “meet” him at this excellent exhibition. Jan Karski was the nom de guerre of a young, Polish officer in the Polish Home Army, the underground opposition to the Nazi occupation. He was directed to travel, in 1942, at the height of the annihilation, through the war in occupied Europe to tell the leaders of Great Britain and America about what was happening in Poland: mass murders on a scale so enormous no one could imagine it. In order to report honestly, he was smuggled into places where he could observe horrors, the Warsaw Ghetto, Lublin. He traveled to London. He traveled to Washington. No one believed him. Though he met with President Roosevelt and Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter, they did not believe him. No action was taken on the facts he gave the free world. He stayed in Washington, D.C. and taught at Georgetown University for many years.

jan_karski_gu_sfs_ Jan Karski (1914-2000) married Pola Nirenska in 1965. She died tragically in 1992. She was a dancer whose family had been murdered in the Holocaust. In a speech, in 1981, given to American military officers who had liberated the concentration camps, he said that he had failed in his wartime mission, and so “thus I myself became a Jew. And just as my wife’s entire family was wiped out in the ghettos of Poland, in its concentration camps and crematoria–so have all the Jews who were slaughtered become my family. But I am a Christian Jew… I am a practicing Catholic…my faith tells me that the second original sin has been committed by humanity. This sin will haunt humanity to the end. And I want it to be so.”

The Hedgehog’s hat is off to Maureen Mroczek Morris. She has worked on bringing this exhibition to San Francisco for about three years that we know of. Her vision and determination brought together other groups and individuals to introduce Jan Karski, this great hero of all humanity, to San Francisco. We salute Ms Morris and her father, Walter (Mroczek) Morris for making the exhibition possible. Organizing the volunteer docents at the exhibition, connecting with the organizations of Veterans and Polish history and culture, publicizing the event, the list of what it takes to put on the exhibition is very long. We are grateful that she cared enough to make it happen. Here is a list of organizations which have been involved in various ways:

The American Legion War Memorial Commission
The Consulate of the Republic of Poland in Los Angeles
Polam Federal Credit Union
The Polish Club, San Francisco (3040 22nd Street)
The Polish-American Congress, Northern California Division
Polish Combatants Association & AK Veterans
Walter [Mroczek] Morris and Maureen Mroczek Morris
Honorary Polish Consul, Christopher Kerosky
The Polish Arts & Culture Foundation
Tad and Dianne Taube (Taube Family Foundation)

San Francisco Symphony & Pablo Heras-Casado

Pablo Heras-Casado is the young Spanish conductor who seems to be conducting everywhere all the time. He is Principal Conductor of Saint Luke’s, New York, since 2012, and Principal Guest Conductor of Teatro Real, Madrid, since 2014, the year he was named Musical America’s Conductor of the Year. He conducted the San Francisco Symphony three times, April 27 – 29, in an unusual program matching major 20th century composers with a lengthy world premiere work by Mason Bates. The Bates work, Auditorium, was commissioned by the SF Symphony. Adding more electronic interest to the electronica in Auditorium, the April 27 concert attended by the Hedgehogs was the first ever to stream live from a major orchestra to broadcast online worldwide via Facebook Live. It launched at 8:15pm PDT on April 27 on the SFS Facebook page, and will be archived for future viewing. The program included Dance Suite (1923) by Bela Bartok, Auditorium (2016) by Mason Bates, Le Tombeau de Couperin (1919) by Maurice Ravel, Symphony No. 9 in E-flat major, Opus 70(1945), by Dmitri Shostakovich.

The Dance Suite opened the program and was a high point of the performance. It is indeed a suite of five movements, each with multiple rhythms and characters. Bartok made extensive forays into the Hungarian countryside, sometimes with composer and musicologist Zoltan Kodaly, to gather authentic folk tunes. In his Dance Suite, there are contrasting styles which have more Middle Eastern or perhaps more Romanian character. However, he wrote them all himself and did not quote the folk tunes. While one movement might have a riotous force of dancers circling madly, another has the mysterious, nearly otherworldly magic that Bartok could create as though he heard the music of the spheres playing through the star light. The SF Symphony and Maestro Heras-Casado were able to present Bartok’s magic in all its quickness and variety without letting a musical “crack the whip” run away with them with dizzying abandon.

As the streaming event was to begin at 8:15 and Bartok’s Dance Suite is listed in the program as “About 16 minutes,” one must conclude that the Bates piece alone was chosen to be broadcast across the Facebook world. According to the extensive program notes, “Auditorium begins with the premise that an orchestra like a person, can be possessed. The work haunts the SFS with ghostly processed recordings of a Baroque ensemble, with the electronic part comprised entirely of original neo-Baroque music created for the SF Conservatory’s Baroque Ensemble, conducted by Corey Jamason. Essentially it is a work for two orchestras–one live, one dead.” There were definitely sound effects reminiscent of creaky stairs, odd burblings, that dry ice evaporating ssst, and ghostly squeaks which brought to mind the Munsters of mid-century fame. Mr. Bates sat in the back of the orchestra with two laptops on which he produced the sounds. The orchestration included such notions as the playing of a piano key being promptly echoed by the playing of an electronic key.

Ravel’s Le Tombeau de Couperin may have been the most familiar of the diverse works on the program, or at least the most frequently performed. For that reason, it was surprising that this was the point in the concert where the SF Symphony seemed to lose its enthusiasm. The work is made of four movements; each is a specific dance of the French Baroque era such as a Menuet/Minuet and the French folk dance the lively Rigaudon. The SFS had recently returned from an extensive East Coast tour; the conductor had perhaps focused most on the premiere work. One often could not hear the rhythms in the dances or recognize this well-loved work by an important, well-loved composer.

Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 9 fared better. A work of great energy which is the shortest symphony by Shostakovich, it was applauded by the public but reviled by the Soviet government when premiered. The bureaucracy from Stalin on down mostly despised their great composer. He did not write to formula. He presented a perversity to party line which enraged them. Danger followed closely behind Shostakovich throughout his career. This symphony, according to those in charge, should have been an heroic anthem to the Russians whose courage, perseverance, massive sacrifices, and dreadful winter had defeated the Nazis. Instead, it is playful, frisky, almost jokey, but it is a comedy that suggests it is only being funny because the tragedy behind the mask is too enormous and permanent to describe. The SF Symphony responded to Maestro Heras-Casado playing breathlessly like a runaway troika.

HILARY HAHN at SAN FRANCISCO’S DAVIES SYMPHONY HALL

Hilary Hahn, acclaimed violinist, performed solo violin and sonatas with pianist Cory Smythe, Tuesday, April 26, at the SF Symphony’s Davies Hall. The performance was brilliant. Although the Hedgehogs knew about Ms Hahn, seeing and hearing her live is something altogether different and surely placed multiple exclamation marks after comments about her artistry. Ms Hahn has a calm, assured stage presence. Her mastery is so great that the music of the masters she performs can fill the hall without distraction. Her program opened with Sonata in G major, K.379(373a) by Mozart and Sonata no. 3 in C major for Solo Violin, BWV 1005, by J.S. Bach. It would be more than enough to be able to be back in Davies and hear either one all over again. After the intermission, she performed Selections from Six Partitas for Solo Violin by Anton Garcia Abril, commissioned by Ms Hahn; Sonata for Violin and Piano by Aaron Copland; and Blue Curve of the Earth, by Tina Davidson. Ms Hahn created a competition for new encore pieces. Ms Davidson’s Blue Curve...was the winner.

The Mozart Sonata offered gentle, mellow music which was still Mozartian in delight and invention. It opens with an Adagio, a bit of a departure from the Adagio usually coming later in a Sonata, and then picks up with an Allegro of perfect balance. It was a chance to experience the partnership of piano and violin in fiery passages. The second movement, Theme and Variations, presents five variations which suggest that if he had wanted to take the time, Mozart could have written five hundred, each different, fascinating, and surprising as these.

The Bach Sonata is unaccompanied. It was part of a group of sonatas and partitas written between 1717 and 1723, the era in which he also wrote the Brandenburg Concertos, and solo works for keyboard, violin, and ‘cello. Ms Hahn’s performance was a rich, deep experience. The listener could experience the breadth of emotion created through pure music. It was a powerful performance of music which sounds new nearly three hundred years after it was written. One may perceive in it the connection between mind and the earth. Bach knew this profundity and gave it to the world in the abstract reality of his music.

For a musical excursion into the 20th century, Ms Hahn’s choice of Copland’s Sonata for Violin and Piano was wonderful. It had everything one looks for in the great works of this American composer whose life, 1900-1990, just about spanned the century. He is the composer whose music encompassed the heights of classical tradition as well as jazz inspired rhythms and themes that mislead you into thinking they are folk tunes. He does it all in this Sonata. The music never sounds like it was assembled like a salad. He carried all the music within him, assimilated into the great art that Ms Hahn and Mr. Smythe brought to life: vivid, dancing, almost sacred. Ms Hahn’s performance was a sensational evening of great music performed with greatness.