Now we know how Laura Claycomb warms up for her fabulous Zerbinetta. By
singing Schoenberg's "Herzgewachse," a song ranging over three octaves,
with a sustained high F. Singing it twice, perfectly.

She did it tonight, in Davies Hall, at the San Francisco Symphony's
"Songs of Innocence Lost," as part of the SFS "Innocence Undone: Wagner,
Weill and the Weimar Years" festival.

Michael Tilson Thomas explained that when the three-minute song - very,
very seldom performed - is first heard, it leaves the audience wondering
"what happened?" To remedy that, MTT said, "Heart's Foliage" will be
performed twice.

 [He didn't quote Browning, but he might have just as well have: "That's
the wise thrush; he sings each song twice over, / Lest you should think
he never could recapture / The first fine careless rapture."]

And so it was, twice sung, twice wonderful. This is not an Yma Sumac
trick. Using Maeterlinck's text, Schoenberg created a stunning
micro-masterpiece, and Claycomb's gave it a definitive performance.

She and the Symphony were in rare form, with an unusual, brilliant program
of some never/seldom heard works from the 1920s Neue Music period in
Austria and Germany, featuring Ernst Toch's delightful "Bunte Suite"
(with a breathtaking Adagio, an impromptu quartet of Alexander Barantschik,
Mark Volkert, Geraldine Walther and Peter Wyrick playing in concerto
style), and "The Chinese Flute," with Claycomb and principal flutist
Paul Renzi taking turns in grand performances.

With Hindemith's Kammermusik No. 1 opening the program, the new chief
Wagnerite of Grove Street, MTT, concluded the evening with a version of
the "Siegfried Idyll" few people ever heard.

Between splendid performances of "The Flying Dutchman" (see
http://tinyurl.com/ecko, but ignore the typo in Welles' name), MTT and
the orchestra have truly found their Wagnerian sea legs. The "traditional"
part of the Idyll was exceptionally simple, straightforward, free-flowing.
It was gentle, rather than passionate, the momentary menace lurking
underneath at one point before the final resolution all the more striking.
But it wasn't over when it was over, not before the thin redhead sang.

Claycomb and the Pacific Baychoir continued the Idyll without a break,
with another Wagner "music for an occasion," the "Kinder-Katechismus zu
Kosel's Geburtstag," a soprano solo and children's chorus for Cosima
Wagner's birthday.

The brief, glorious piece culminates in the Redemption theme that brings
both "Gotterdammerung" and the "Ring" to a close.

New & Unusual and Mixing-Opera-and-Symphony work at both ends of the Bay
Bridge. Last night, Kent Nagano and the Berkeley Symphony concluded their
cycle of the four Brahms symphonies, and provided a US and a world
premiere.

The former, David Benoit's "Kobe," is pleasant enough, but the latter,
Ichiro Nodaira's Piano Concerto, is an important work, and significant
for opera fans.

With Markus Pawlik as the impressive soloist, the concerto progresses
from what at first sound like random notes to a cohesive, dynamic flow.
Probably no one has used the lowest notes of the piano as extensively
as Nodaira in this work. Extreme syncopation in the brief interlude
connecting the two movements is fascinating.

The second movement is dark and powerful, with mystery and intensity
that bring Stravinsky's Concerto in D to mind, however different the
two composers' vocabulary may be.

There is great promise to be found here for Nodaira's opera in the
making, based on an idea of Toru Takemitsu, to a libretto by David
Lynch-collaborator Barry Gifford.

Janos Gereben/SF
www.sfcv.org
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