It's a gloriously Czech-Moravian weekend in San Francisco, Leos Janacek's
"Kat'a Kabanova" opening in the War Memorial Sunday afternoon, the
Alexander Quartet playing Janacek's string quartets Saturday morning
in Herbst Theater.

On both days, in Davies Hall, Jiri Belohlavek is conducting the SF
Symphony in Janacek's overture to "From the House of the Dead," Bohislav
Martinu's Fourth Symphony, and the Prague-adopted Mozart's Piano Concerto
No.  23, with Prague-native Ivan Moravec, as the soloist - making his
SFS debut an inexplicable four decades after his first US appearance.

The Symphony program could be a coincidence, but the Janacek feast was
the result of combining Pamela Rosenberg's "Animating Opera" project
with Ruth Felt's San Francisco Performances decade-old series of the
Alexander performing entire canons (all the Shostakovich quartets, for
example), combined with an illustrated music-historical-geopolitical
lecture by the inimitable Robert Greenberg.

The Janacek quartets - at 18- and 25 minutes, among the greatest
"condensed" works in all music - are vitally linked with the composer's
opera.  Quartet No.  1 ("After Tolstoy: The Kreutzer Sonata") came two
years after the 1921 "Kat'a" and its element of doomed desire-seduction-rage
are precisely mirrored in the stage work, both having to do - in Greenberg's
phrase - with "the tragedy of the bedroom."

The 1928 Quartet No.  2 ("Intimate Letters," written to the married,
unattainable...  and uninterested young woman) came in the middle of
work on "From the House of the Dead."

Greenberg spoke of Janacek's desdain for Wagnerian romanticism and
"pompous chord progressions," but didn't mention that at their most
essential, the two quartets fit in perfectly with romantic excess -
however classically restrained in execution.  No. 2 is really a kind of
"Tristan" with a happy ending: the 74-year-old Janacek appears in the
music as an ecstatically happy, thoroughly fulfilled man in a thoroughly
unconsummated relationship.  ("What defines you," says Charlie Kaufman
in "Adaptation," the film opening next month, "is not who loves you, but
how you love." Janacek might have put that on the title page of "Intimate
Letters.")

The Alexander played well, but its flag was only half raised. First
violinist Zakarias Grafilo and cellist Sandy Wilson were in the moment
throughout, but the second violinist Frederick Lifsitz had problems with his
instrument (they really should have started the music again), and violist
Paul Yarbrough's tone appeared dry and distant this time.

Still, these works are so wonderful that it's easy to overlook problems and
concentrate on the music. Actually, there is no need to do that. Janacek
doesn't take effort - his music permeates the hall, it enters into the
cortex directly, there to keep running forever.

Some music repeats itself endlessly, some makes a statement and stops
(this is also known scientifically as "good music"), and then there is
Janacek.  He wrote "Duets for Composer and Listener." He didn't restate
and didn't stop, just started these incredible, atmospheric sounds,
questions, probably without answers.  The opening bars of these quartets,
the beginning of "Jenufa," of "Wixen," of "Kat'a," and just about
everything he wrote have the same characteristics of invitation, challenge,
intriguing incompleteness.

These were my reflections at the concert.  Greenberg's were far more
structured and funny ("Try spell check on `Bedrich Smetana'.) Besides
the ongoing Shostakovich cycle with him and the Alexander (Nov.  9, Jan.
11, Feb.  15, March 15), I learned today that SFO and SFP will cooperate
again next year when Ferruccio Busoni's "Doktor Faust" is presented in
the "Animating Opera" series, and Greenberg will tell all about the man
at a lecture-concert featuring Busoni's piano music.  I am sure he'll
mention possible Czech connections of Busoni's German mother.

Janos Gereben/SF
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