The father:  baritone Mack Harrell.  The son:  cellist Lynn Harrell.  But
at tonight's concert in Herbst Theater, those distinctions happily blurred.

`Andante Cantabile:  Songs of My Father' had the cellist,
career-interrupting hand surgery behind him, `sing' Papageno's aria from
`The Magic Flute,' Germont's aria from `La Traviata,' Schubert's `Nacht
und Traume' and `Im Fruehling,' switching voices to a soprano aria from
`La Forza del Destino,' then to `Danny Boy,' ending with a breathtaking
Schumann `Traumerei.'

Through it all, through the long, generous evening, Simon Mulligan,
a 25-year-old pianist from London, dazzled with sensitive, brilliant
accompaniment.  (Mulligan recorded his first CD *seven* years ago.)

An indirect, but strong opera connection formed the heart of the concert,
with the world premiere of Tobias (`Emmeline') Picker's Suite for Cello
and Piano -- and instant modern chamber-music classic.

With the Beethoven Sonata No.  3 and the Shostakovich Sonata in D Minor
in the first half, Harrell offered `An die Musik' before the Picker as
palate-cleansing `sorbet.' It was glorious, but not really necessary:
Picker's five-movement suite opens with a romantic, lyrical `Serenade,'
far from the Beethoven-Shostakovich `weight,' much closer to Liszt and
Dvorak.  An unsettled (if not unsettling), skittish scherzo called
`Daylight' follows, then a hide-and-seek `Lament,' a dark and intense
`Night,' and a gorgeous love song of a finale, named `Alone.'

Compared with the last Picker premiere I heard, the Los Angeles `Fantastic
Mr.  Fox,' the suite is in another domain.  It will soon travel to Santa
Fe, Tanglewood, Urbana, the Ravinia Festival, Ann Arbor, and elsewhere --
don't miss it.

Herbst is located in the War Memorial Building -- birthplace of the UN,
walls cracked since the 1989 quake, the last of the unfixed buildings now
that the Opera House and City Hall are reborn.  Tonight, the building was
heavily populated by composers.  Downstairs, in Herbst:  Jake Heggie, in
the audience, his opera to Terrence McNally's text, `Dead Man Walking,'
ahead of schedule for the SFO 2000 premiere, to run just under three hours.

Upstairs, in the Green Room, two world premiere performances at a Left
Coast Chamber Ensemble concert, by Eric Zivian and Richard Festinger, while
Mario Davidovsky was attending the performance his `very 'Seventies'
Chacona for Violin, Cello and Piano.

Zivian work, featuring a very high-pitched, eerie violin solo (performed
impressively by Anna Presler), is fascinating, but the most important
composer on the premises was acting as a stage hand and page turner (for
Zivian's bravura piano work)...  and violist.  That would be Kurt Rohde,
32, whose fabulous `Oculus' is about to be followed by the Feb.  18
premiere of `Minerva's Pools.'

I remember hanging out at The Kitchen and at numerous New Music America
festivals; with what's available right here, I think I won't search for
new music elsewhere...  for a while.

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