If you audition singers by the numbers, Dietrich Henschel wouldn't rank
high, but if you love music, you would give him the top prize, the keys
to the city, and throw in the local equivalent of Pogner's daughter.  The
German baritone is a true master singer, with miles and miles of heart.

In the Berkeley Symphony concert last night, conducted by Kent Nagano,
Henschel sang Mahler's "Ruckert-Lieder" and four songs from "Das Knaben
Wunderhorn." The voice is medium-sized, it thins out in higher notes, lacks
resonance in the lower range, he is unprepossessing in appearance.  Again,
if you listen to the notes, it's nothing special.  When you hear a whole
song, you're enchanted.

Among his many virtues in the gestalt division, Henschel is a wonderful
story-teller and he conveys the emotional burden of a song perfectly.  The
first two Ruckert songs were exactly right in their simplicity, sincerity,
proper scale.  Henschel sang "Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen" quietly,
free of the "drama" that often creeps into what should be resignation - it
was all the more moving for being unaffected.  "Um Mitternacht" combined
the compelling story-teller and Henschel's powerful ability to express
emotions directly; even when handicapped by problems in the woodwinds (the
evening's only blemish in the orchestra), he managed to give a performance
that ranks with the best I heard.

After a charming rendition of "Wer hat dies Liedlein erdacht," Henschel
tore into "Wo die schonen Trompaten blasen" with an intensity that gripped
the audience and paced the orchestra to excellent playing.  After a stark
"Revelge," another memorably simple and delightful performance, of "Des
Antonius von Padua Fischpredigt," closed the Mahler section.

The rest of the concert was a typical Nagano production:  generous in
length, varied, and challenging:  Schubert's Symphony No.  4, the
Schoenberg Piano Concerto and the world premiere of a brief work.

The Berkeley Symphony being a small, regional, part-time orchestra,
it doesn't always play well.  (I found a Beethoven overture on the last
program, for example, near-unacceptable.) But this evening, in Zellerbach
Hall, was glorious.  Nagano, who is doing a complete Schubert-symphony
cycle, excelled with the two larger outer movements of No.  3, handled the
other brief movements well.  The first movement would have done credit to
any orchestra, anywhere.

Then came the heart of the evening, Schoenberg's rarely-performed 1942
Piano Concerto.  Nagano, fresh from a Los Angeles "Moses und Aron" (with
his Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester) and his wife, Mari Kodama, back at the
piano after giving birth to their first child, presided over an orchestra
that appeared to have the tough 12-tone score for breakfast, with reserve
power to spare.  Concertmaster Stuart Canin, second violin, viola and cello
principals Maya Soriano, Darien Cande and Carol Rice paced the strings to
great, sustained heights.  With Michael Tilson Thomas' "maverick concerts"
across the Bay, the area is doing well by contemporary music.

Kodama's performance was amazing.  Steely and lyrical in turn, she burned
through the score with effortless grace, but playing from inside the music,
not skipping along the surface as many of her virtuoso colleagues tend to
do.

Schoenberg's program notes are both specific to the times 60 years ago and
amazingly current:  "I.  Life was so easy, II.  Suddenly hatred broke out,
III.  A grave situation was created, IV.  But life goes on." The concerto
is not "program music" in the least, but the moods it expresses, the
emotions it raises have the immediacy of recent weeks.

After the concerto, very well received by the near-capacity audience, came
Oscar Levant's Revenge.  The actual name was "Kodama (Rag in the Forest)
for Two Pianos," a world premiere by Ichiro Nodaira.  Performed by the
sisters Mari and Momo Kodama, the piece opened with a virtual echo of
Schoenberg, immediately degenerating (or progressing, depending on one's
point of view) into something Levant would play on an ancient Today Show.
Levant, incidentally, was the pianist originally commissioning the
Schoenberg concerto, but the two had a falling out over the fee, the final
dispute apparently being about a difference of $100!  Nodaira's semi-comic
attempt at symphonic jazz restored Levant at least to the vicinity of
Schoenberg's masterpiece.

(Henschel will sing Friday and Saturday in Davies Hall at San Francisco
Symphony performances of the Bach Christmas Oratorio, conducted by Helmuth
Rilling.  Soloists include soprano Kendra Colton, mezzo Iris Vermillion,
and tenor Marcus Ullmann.)

Janos Gereben/SF
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