Reviews

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Like a baseball game rescheduled after a rainout, there was one more concert on the San Francisco Symphony’s season calendar after last week’s grand finale with outgoing Music Director Esa-Pekka Salonen.

The orchestra staged its makeup performance of Verdi’s Requiem on Friday, June 20, a concert that was canceled during the Symphony Chorus’ strike in September last year. James Gaffigan generously stepped in to conduct the work, which Salonen would have led in the fall. The program is slated to be repeated on Sunday, June 22, at Davies Symphony Hall.

After its extraordinary contributions to Salonen’s farewell performance of Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 2, the Chorus showed it was worth every penny of the anonymous $4 million gift made in the months following the strike. The singers came to the fore not just in the 90-minute Requiem, normally programmed by itself, but in a first part that included three choral pieces by Gordon Getty, himself a generous donor to the Symphony (and a co-founder of San Francisco Classical Voice).

Getty’s works are genial, melodic and accessible, and Gaffigan, a friend of the composer, led them deftly and with evident care. The Intermezzo from Getty’s 2017 opera “Goodbye, Mr. Chips” begins delicately, with spare lines in the marimba giving way to the harp, then acquiring a more definitive melodic profile in the strings. It’s a meditative piece that finds an unexpected climax when the choristers interject a school hymn, almost as if overhead from afar.

The Chorus also gave fine performances of “Saint Christopher” (2024), which features effective writing for voices, and “The Old Man in the Snow” (2020), a more substantial work in several sections that Getty skillfully sets apart with different instrumentation, including a trombone choir, keyboards and mallet percussion.

Symphony Chorus Director Jenny Wong did an outstanding job preparing this music, and the singers communicated its spirit with unfussy directness. But they were brilliant in the Requiem that followed intermission.

If the performance of the piece as a whole lacked finesse, their contributions were nonetheless stellar. The singing was artful, from the opening “Requiem aeternam,” with the sound humming in the air through the nasal consonants, to the explosive “Dies irae” and the stentorian “Rex tremendae.” The women made a luminous entrance in the “Lacrimosa” at the line “Huic ergo parce, Deus” (Therefore spare him, O Lord), and the whole chorus concluded with the fearful declamation and hortatory final fugue of the “Libera me.” The singers encompassed the range of Verdi’s writing in finely balanced sound that pulled emotion from every chord change.

Gaffigan’s conducting, however, emphasized drive and the titanic climaxes while shorting the Requiem’s poetic side. Certainly, this is a public religious work, conceived as a memorial to Italian art — first to the composer Gioachino Rossini and then, when that initial plan fell through, to author Alessandro Manzoni. But it’s not only theatrical. This interpretation was driven by inflexible tempos and a sameness to all of the climaxes and fortissimo outbursts that ultimately became wearing. Though the orchestra played well, earning deserved applause, the performance was missing a sense of transcendence and the overarching struggle of mourning and fear giving way to tranquility and acceptance.

The soloists — soprano Rachel Willis-Sørenson, mezzo-soprano Jamie Barton, tenor Mario Chang and bass Morris Robinson — were generally excellent. The notable exception was Chang’s effortful “Ingemisco” prayer, sung without any bloom in the tone and generally unresonant and unconvincing. The violins joined Willis-Sørenson in a moving “Sed signifer sanctus Michael” (Let the standard-bearer holy Michael), the soprano singing sweetly in one of the score’s many standout lyrical moments. If there had been more of those, this Requiem would have been even better.

Michael Zwiebach is a freelance writer. This review has been provided in partnership with San Francisco Classical Voice.

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I cannot recall ever having a more intimate operatic experience than listening to Gordon Getty’s touching opera based on the acclaimed James Hilton novella. The scoring is for what sounds to me like a chamber orchestra with prominent keyboard, harp, and percussion parts. As befits the poignancy of Hilton’s story, Getty’s approach (he wrote the libretto as well) is all very lyrical. Rarely do the dynamics get as loud as forte, as in pastoral English music by the likes of, say, Delius, but for all that there is no monotony. There are, however, stylistic similarities to the vocal writing of Britain’s leading opera composer, Benjamin Britten (which should be taken as high praise). The style is tonal and traditionally melodic.

As the program notes inform us, the opera was not premiered live but was “reimagined” as a film, due to the privations visited upon the performing arts by the COVID-19 pandemic. I believe the cast is the same in the film as in this recent recording, but whether or not that is so, I would look forward to seeing the film and even more so to seeing this work staged live. Getty’s creative take on the storyline — for example, having Dr. Merrivale as the narrator — and its musical transformation is frequently quite affecting.

The singers­—and Melody Moore, in particular—are absolutely convincing in their roles and sing beautifully. The chorus, British public school boys singing hymns, but occasionally used to add additional color, also sings splendidly. Dennis Doubin at the podium is in complete command and moves the opera along briskly but in a manner that never seems rushed. One reason I would love to see this staged (whether on film or in the opera house) is to see what one can only imagine listening to the recording: how the flashbacks and flashforwards embedded into the libretto are managed.

The scene (which is reprised to great effect towards the end of the opera) where Chips’s wife Kathie, who will die in childbirth, says her farewell, is not at all maudlin but is nonetheless extraordinarily moving. Also striking is the use of Melody Moore to sing the role of a young schoolboy meeting the aged Chips for the first (and last) time, who intones the titular “Goodbye, Mr. Chips” in a manner reminiscent of how it was sung by the long-dead Kathie. Even more moving is Chips’s final soliloquy, voiced over a boys’ chorus background, in which he identifies individual former students, some of them among those who died in World War I, by name, and they respond, and this concludes with his emotion-laden final cry, “My boys.” Then there is silence. I’m not sure the abruptness of that ending works for me. I understand the dramatic effect Getty was seeking in illustrating Chips’s death with the absence of further sound, but I would have preferred even a few bars of instrumental epilogue.

This is a distinguished, and extremely listenable, addition to the escutcheon of American opera. Highly recommended.

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It’s a special occasion when two of the Bay Area’s best ensembles join forces.

This was the case for Thursday’s performance of “In Winter’s Glow,” when New Century Chamber Orchestra and the San Francisco Girls Chorus met to great effect.

The Dec. 11 Christmas concert at the First Congregational Church in Berkeley showed the groups in their best light, with only a couple of famous carols in the mix. Both groups gravitate toward unusual repertory and have signature sounds that envelop and energize the listener — and it turns out that they mix brilliantly.

The Girls Chorus’ top level group is a wonder. These are teenagers who sing like professionals, perform confidently and freely, project words clearly, radiate a love of music and navigate difficult part-writing with ease. You will wait in vain for a tentative entrance, wavering pitch, any sign at all that these singers are, you know, kids.

Part of the credit goes to their SFGC training and Artistic Director Valérie Sainte-Agathe, who has molded their sound expertly. But make no mistake, each of these girls has become a superior musician in her own right.

The Girls Chorus made a breathtaking entrance in a traditional Christmas concert procession, singing William Billings’s “Bethlehem” (“While shepherds watched their flocks by night”). Listeners were able to appreciate the group’s balanced sound as it filled the church, and also the nearest singers’ individual parts.

Then the singers took up Benjamin Britten’s “A Wealdon Trio” (a rarity based on a Ford Madox Ford poem in a regional Sussex dialect) and Ola Gjeilo’s beautiful “Northern Lights” without a conductor. Saint-Agathe was in the seats and didn’t need to do much.

The New Century Chamber Orchestra made the most of its full-bodied, well-balanced and deeply penetrating sound in Vivaldi’s Concerto for Four Violins in B Minor, RV 580. They also shone in Edward Elgar’s “Serenade for Strings,” a work that plays to their strengths. The 1892 work, written as a birthday present to Elgar’s wife, Alice, is unfailingly beautiful but also unassuming, melodically rich and, like a true serenade, meant to seduce. Fortunately, this orchestra possesses a true pianissimo, and the dynamic range of their performance was thrilling.

John Rutter’s “Suite for Strings” proved to be a delightful surprise. The 12-minute romp through four English folksongs, including the still well-known “O, Waly Waly,” featured sweet solos by Music Director and Concertmaster Daniel Hope.

The groups collaborated on two modern carols by Gordon Getty, to whom the orchestra has dedicated its season, in recognition of his consistent philanthropic support. Getty is at his best in these melodic gems, with their homey, traditional sentiments in lyrics written by the composer. The frenetic, outdoor scene of “Candles on the Tree” is tremendous fun when sung by a youth chorus. The groups complement each other, thanks to the orchestra’s ability to play under the singers without sacrificing tone.

Jake Heggie’s collection of works, “On the Road to Christmas,” was written for NCCO early in the San Francisco composer’s career. The chorus sang two songs from it: a setting of “I Wonder as I Wander” and Heggie’s original “Christmas Time of Year,” with swinging music and lyrics that would not sound out of place on a Bing Crosby album. 

Another San Francisco composer, David Conte, was represented Thursday evening by his “Two Winter Scenes,” through-composed pieces with a warm, welcoming heart.

Even the encore was unusual: “Balulalow,” an English folksong with music by Peter Warlock, best known from its appearance on Sting’s Christmas album, “If, on a Winter’s Night.”

Don’t let the slightly offbeat repertory stop you. This is a rare and wonderful concert not to be missed.

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Festival Napa Valley’s Summer Season which runs through July 20, 2025 at venues throughout Napa Valley is characterized by music and arts for all ages. Many of the finest programs are free. I joined two friends from Davis who were visiting the festival for the first time to see an amazing free program at 11:00 am on July 14 at the Jackson Family Wines Amphitheater CIA at Copia, 500 1st Street, Napa. The performance was amazing and the venue is a delight.

We had the privilege of seeing two remarkable talents from East and West unite when Forrest Eimold from New York performed a recital of works composed by Gordon Getty who lives in California. The program was introduced by Charles Letourneau, Festival Napa Valley’s EVP Director of Artist Planning, followed by an introduction to the music by Eimold.

My friends and I experienced the music as contrasted, suspenseful, charming, playful and full of surprises. The first pieces were short. The composer’s notes describe “First Adventure” as inspired by his two grandnephews as toddlers. “Scherzo Pensieroso” was written for Conrad Tao when he recorded the composer’s piano pieces.

“Four Traditional Pieces” followed and had a distinctly Irish flavor – “The Fiddler of Ballykeel”, while “Tiefer und Tiefer”, “Ewig Du” and Ehemals” were adapted from an earlier work.

“Impenitent Ultima” is the piano version of the composers choral setting of Dowson’s poem of that name. The piano music was captivating and powerful with no chorus.

“Ancestor Suite” had a romantic flair at times. This work is loosely based on Edgar Allen Poe’s The Fall of the House of Usher. Many members of the audience related to this work which has been interpreted by choreographers as a ballet suite, while others such as Forrest Eimold have made this music part of their repertoire.

“Follow me” was inspired by John Philip Sousa’s works which the composer loved. The surprise ending was just right for this remarkable program.

In addition to his amazing skills as a pianist, Emold is an accomplished composer. Other composers and people connected to Gordon Getty artistically were in the audience including: composer Jake Heggie along with performer Curt Branom, composer Luna Pearl Woolf and artists connected to Rork Music including Lisa Delan, Kevin Korth, Alexandra Armantrading, and Lester Lynch.

As the concert ended, there was an enthusiastic standing ovation followed by many audience members rushing to speak with both Getty and Eimold.

Festival Napa Valley champions the power of music to enrich the human experience and create a thriving, healthy, and engaged community. The gala held the previous evening should ensure free musical events in the future. Festival Napa Valley’s Arts for All Gala raised a record-breaking $5 million on Sunday, July 13, further cementing its place as one of the nation’s leading fundraisers for education and the arts. Proceeds from the Gala fund Festival Napa Valley’s programs that empower youth through music education and wellness, as well as free and affordable concerts, and scholarships. The Gala has now raised over $33 million cumulatively.

Over the past year, Festival Napa Valley awarded over $1 million in scholarships, engaged 250 artists, supported 90 emerging musicians through tuition-free summer academies, presented 30 masterclasses, and promoted 125 local wineries, restaurants, hotels, and culinary businesses. The festival presented 70 concerts in Napa Valley, San Francisco, and nationwide that brought music to more than 25,000 attendees, including over 8,500 children, seniors, and veterans at admission-free events, reaching all Napa County public schools and Boys & Girls Clubs.

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Gordon Getty doesn’t compose so much as decorate. The man writes like he’s afraid someone might mistake him for poor. Every bar is upholstered, monogrammed, perfumed. You don’t hear music. You hear money arranging itself in four-part harmony and asking not to be disturbed.

Start with Plump Jack. His “take” on Falstaff, in the same sense that a hedge fund takes over a bakery and replaces the bread with scented candles. The notes arrive in formation, well-groomed and overfed, with all the rambunctious spirit of a cotillion. Falstaff, who should bellow and belch and charm his way into tragedy, instead wanders through a cloud of tasteful brass. Fugues appear like trust fund kids at a board retreat: expensive, educated, and completely beside the point.

The tavern scenes pretend at revelry but sound more like a conservatory recital hosted by the DAR. A drunken revel ends in a tiered crescendo so well-behaved it could double as a debutante entrance. Nothing in the score risks vulgarity. Nothing swings. Every punchline is softened with a glissando and a gentle timpani roll, like a footman coughing politely at the back of the hall.

Then there’s Goodbye, Mr. Chips, Getty’s plushest embalming. What should be a tender meditation on aging and loss becomes a sepia-toned crawl through musical Clotted Cream. The story’s shape is recognizable if you squint, but every emotional curve is sanded down and padded with strings. You keep waiting for a moment of clarity. You get violins.

The love duet is a pastoral coma. Two people declare themselves through melodic material so timid it practically curtsies. When Mrs. Chips dies, the orchestra swells like a velvet curtain. No sting, no break, just reverent modulation and another round of woodwind embroidery. It’s grief as a commemorative tea towel. Getty doesn’t write emotional arcs. He arranges heritage content.

The school scenes try for atmosphere and land somewhere near tourist gift shop. It’s Englishness via duty-free Elgar. Horns pose nobly. Harps blink. The clarinet section flirts with a theme and then demurs. Every time the music might get interesting, it smooths its skirt and returns to tonic. There’s no spine, no spark, just tonal wallpaper from someone terrified of offending the imaginary dowager in row C.

The libretto is a dry biscuit. Characters talk like Victorian Alexa: always enunciated, never alive. You keep thinking maybe one of them will break into speech with weight or wit. Instead, you get gerunds and vowels and the sort of syntax that could only be produced by someone who thinks formalism equals depth. Nobody onstage sounds like they’ve ever touched another person or lost sleep. They sound like they’ve attended a symposium about both.

Harmonically, the music sits. Getty finds his ornamental groove somewhere around 1910 and parks there like a chauffeured Bentley. Every cadence has been triple-polished. The melodies are afraid to modulate without a valet. Even in moments that beg for dissonance or rupture, the score responds with caress. You could conduct this music in white gloves and not leave a mark.

And yet…. The critics. The presenters. The gala gowns. They line up. They bow. They toss around phrases like “accessible” and “generous” and “melodic” as if they weren’t just synonyms for “the check cleared.” One gets the sense that if Getty turned in a score composed entirely of recycled Franck modulations and dental-office Debussy, it would still get a three-city tour and a boxed set with commemorative insert essays.

Getty could have been opera’s great benefactor. Instead, he’s its Hobby Lobby. Aesthetic conservatism masquerading as generosity. Cultural capital laundering itself in the key of C major.

These operas don’t breathe. They glow. They recline. They look gorgeous in press photos and vanish mid-aria. The most striking thing about watching one is how little you remember ten minutes later, except the sense of having been graciously ushered out of your own brain.

So what’s left? A few deluxe recordings, painstakingly mixed and instantly forgotten. Program notes typeset in gold. And that unshakable feeling that Getty’s true ambition wasn’t to write great music. It was to make sure his name was read aloud from the stage. Preferably before intermission. He will not be remembered for a melody. Not for a line. Not for a scene that cracked open. He will be remembered as the man who bought a front-row seat to his own mediocrity. And then insisted on conducting.

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I was excited to find that the new Matt Haimovitz album The Primavera Project is based on a collaboration between two great works of art and 81 contemporary composers. The dynamic and athletic cellist’s latest release is number four in a cycle of six CDs; with his vast experience in contemporary and classical music, the cellist makes this major undertaking look easy.

The two visual works in the spotlight are Botticelli’s Renaissance Primavera (c.1480) and contemporary artist Charline von Heyl’s triptych Primavera (2020). You could just dive into the CD with no reference at all, but I would recommend starting with the website accompaniment which displays the von Heyl painting and the accompanying map of the corresponding musical chapters: The Wind, The Rabbits, The Vessel and now the fourth in the collection, The Heart. Seeds of inspiration are sprinkled on von Heyl’s painting as live hyperlinks, which then open to each playlist. A stark contrast to the Botticelli version, Von Heyl notes “Kitsch is not ironic the way I use it. Kitsch, for me, means a raw emotion that is accessible to everybody, not just somebody who knows about art. That’s where kitsch comes from to begin with: it was basically art for the people.”

Haimovitz tears into every nuance of colour from the compositions, and our journey takes on many of this decade’s greatest composers and musical storytellers. Each track references a particular motif notated in either painting. Justine Chen’s playful Iridescent Gest and Nina C. Young’s pentimento for solo cello and electronics are standouts, as are Tyshawn Sorey’s edgy and cinematic Three Graces and Canadian Vincent Ho’s jazz-inspired Blindfolded Cupid (which Haimovitz pulls off as if he wrote it). The album closes with Gordon Getty’s richly melodic miniature-sonata Winter Song. Explore the website dedicated to the project. The creative and beautiful videos include visuals of von Heyl’s work on YouTube; they bring the artwork to life, anchoring the disc within the scope of the project. Haimovitz plays with an energetic and powerful core, and a dedication to each composition that only his stunning skills could match.

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Whenever a venerable literary property is reincarnated into another medium, one must initially ask if, why and how it speaks anew. This operatic version of Goodbye, Mr Chips might be expected to tap into misty-eyed nostalgia for the pre-First World War British culture of boarding schools for boys and their headmasters – as embodied by the fictitious Charles Edward Chipping. Not so with Gordon Getty, the California-based arts philanthropist who also has an extensive but underestimated history as a ‘Sunday composer’. His portrayal of this tiny, elite culturally distant corner of the world doesn’t begin promisingly but builds into a quiet but penetrating retelling that concentrates on universal themes such as the value of family and the devastation of loss. Yes, certain school rituals are acknowledged in this blessedly innocent milieu. But it’s peripheral scene-setting for a parable of surviving life’s heaviest weather.

Getty’s own libretto, adapting the 1934 novella by James Hilton (plus some of the author’s later postscripts to the Mr Chips canon), initially places the show-don’t-tell rule of theatre on hold: the story is more recounted than dramatised, playing more like a multi-character song-cycle than an opera. This is not ineptness but strategy: the plot is streamlined to get to the hard-won owl-and-pussycat marriage between Chips and the woman he never thought he deserved. His charismatic wife Kathie had surprisingly limited screen time in the classic 1939 film version, in which she dies in childbirth. The 1969 musical film gave greater presence to the character, updated to the Second World War, though the story, more expansively told in Terence Rattigan’s screenplay, left curiously little room for music. Getty the librettist allows ample leeway to Getty the composer, whose neo-tonal language – more respected now than 20 years ago – is readily comparable to Gian Carlo Menotti’s melodic but not necessarily tuneful idiom. Getty doesn’t aim to please; he aims to move. Talking to their deceased loved ones is a way of life for some – and in the case of Mr Chips, Kathie answers back, making her a pervasive after-death presence. The composer’s Wikipedia bio suggests why he achieves such emotional authenticity with only a few well-chosen notes: he has personally experienced significant family losses. It’s all over the score, which wears its emotional depths in the understated manner appropriate to the Mr Chips character.

At times, Act 2 seems laden with one poignant scene too many – were it not for the power of one of the opera’s culminating events: when a Mr Chips adversary shows up asking for favours, what could have been a routine forgiveness scene blooms into a search for reasons to live amid hopeless circumstances. Thus the central theme is far from the durability of tradition or the value of a classical education, but reasons to carry on amid disillusioning world-changing catastrophes.

The scoring uses the orchestra sparingly. Incidental woodwind solos do much of the storytelling, though some of the more obvious touches include celesta at the mention of children and harps in moments of magic realism. Getty’s dramatic compass also goes a bit off course as school politics become as weighty as the machinations of Das Rheingold.

Covid circumstances apparently prompted a rethinking of the opera into the film medium (a version I haven’t seen), though the opera still seems viable for the stage. Certainly, the Barbary Coast Orchestra under Dennis Doubin and the good cast of singers would benefit from living longer with the opera, particularly in finding a mode of vocal articulation (slanted more towards speech than singing) that suits the more narrative sections. The bigger question is whether the singers can scale back their voices for the many intimate moments. In the title-role, Nathan Granner does so with a rich range of colouring from an introspective use of head voice to a more vividly commanding manner when getting things done.

Mezzo-soprano Melody Moore is less ideal casting for Kathie, if only because her ample sound puts a bit of damper on the vivid emotions at hand. Lester Lynch is better employed with Verdi, but the benevolence he exudes as Dr Merrivale (Chips’s doctor) is stronger than the magnitude of his voice. As the ruthless Rolston, Kevin Short’s forceful manner is a welcome counterbalance to the ultra-civilised veneer that pervades in the story. Like Mr Chips himself, this opera isn’t out to change the world, but it may make a small part of it better.

February 21, 2025

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Now 91, Gordon Getty—yes, he’s one of the Gettys—has been composing operas for 40 years, and his latest, a 2017 stage work that premiered as a film in 2021, is an attractive adaptation of the James Hilton novella about beloved teacher Mr. Chipping at an English boys’ school. Getty also penned the libretto, and his music is accomplished and, by its end, quite moving (Chipping’s wife Kathie has a couple of emotionally climactic appearances). This excellent recording, by the Barbary Coast Orchestra and San Francisco Boys Chorus under conductor Dennis Doubin, highlights wonderful vocal performances by soprano Melody Moore as Kathie; bass-baritone Kevin Short in several smaller roles; and tenor Nathan Granner as Mr. Chips himself, a man whose personal tragedies color his natural optimism for his students.