One of the Bay Area's many "hidden places," Forest Hill feels as different
from the Sunset District that encompasses it as Seaside is from the
Richmond, Piedmont from Oakland, and so on.

Forest Hill is so attractive that globetrotters Kent and Mari Kodama
Nagano settled there eight years ago (shuttling to work in Berlin, Paris,
Salzburg, and elsewhere), their daughter was born there almost five years
ago, and they like their "intimate, friendly community" very much.

The quote is from Nagano, who spoke before tonight's concert in the Forest
Hill Club House, a chamber-music event that's part of a four-day
mini-festival.

The Naganos are giving the concerts - free, by invitation only - as a
thank-you gesture to the community. "We couldn't have it in our living
room," Nagano said, so the club house on Magellan Avenue is being used...
although the attractive, wood-paneled hall is not much bigger than a
living room. About 80 people squeezed in to hear "An Exploration of
Viennese Artistry," including some folk just visiting the 'hood (unlike
composer Kirk Mecham, who lives next door).

The Japanese Consul came, Cal Performances director Robert Cole, the
music critic of the Los Angeles Times, Arnold Schoenberg Center director
Christian Meyer... and members of the Vienna Philharmonic.

It helps to conduct that orchestra in the Salzburg Festival in order to
attract musicians from 6,000 miles away to serenade one's friendly
neighbors.

And so, Mari Kodama joined violinists Martin Zalodek and Alexander
Burggasser, violist Peter Sagaischek, and cellist Nikolaus Straka to
perform the Brahms G minor Piano Quartet and Schumann's Piano Quintet
in E flat. UC Santa Barbara music professor Michael Ingham recited Byron's
poem in Schoenberg's sprechstimme, in the rarely-heard "Ode to Napoleon
Buonaparte."

Sunday's opening concert featured the sisters Mari and Momo Kodama in
works by Bach, Schoenberg, and Kandinsky, the latter's "Sounds" recited
by the actress Frances Lee McCain.

Tomorrow will bring Wysocki's Etude-Fantasie with the oboist Clemens
Horak, along with works by Mozart and Britten. The concluding concert
on Thursday is an all-trio affair, the Trio Plus Wien (Zalodek, Sagaischek
and Straka) playing Schoenberg, Mozart, Krenek, Beethoven and Brimberg.

Meanwhile, on a slightly larger scale, the San Francisco Symphony is in
the middle of its own Vienna-related festival, called "Innocence Undone:
Wagner, Weill and the Weimar Years." There, in the large club house of
Hayes Valley, a.k.a. Davies Hall, Schoenberg, Ernst Toch, Hindemith and
others help to entertain that neighborhood.

Janos Gereben/SF
www.sfcv.org
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