Objects in the mirror
As 2024 recedes into the distance, a quick look back at some of the year’s musical highlights
Well it was some kind of year, wasn’t it? From my perspective, it seems as if only three things of real import happened during 2024. I retired from my job at the Chronicle after 36 years — the only job I’ve ever had aside from a couple of years in the early 1980s as a software programmer — and started up this enterprise as a speculative alternative. And my country, given the opportunity to strike at least a tentative blow against full-on fascism, chose instead to embrace it with open arms.
I’m not at all sure how to process either of these developments. I know how I feel about the latter, of course, but not how to understand it or what to do about it. And the end, or at any rate the transmogrification, of a career requires a bit of time to take shape in one’s psyche.
One other thing happened, too, which in a more ordinary year would have been the headline event. Esa-Pekka Salonen, whose 2018 appointment as music director of the San Francisco Symphony was one of the most thrilling and joyous developments in the Bay Area’s musical life in decades, declined to renew his contract with the orchestra in the face of draconian cuts to programming and budgets. No one fully knows yet what this means, or will mean, for the future of the organization. I shared some thoughts about this at the time, and not much has changed outwardly since then, except for the September showdown that killed plans for season-opening performances of Verdi’s Requiem. The decline or revival of the SF Symphony is all but certain to dominate the timeline in 2025, but at the moment we’re kind of waiting for things to start happening in earnest.
The upshot of all of this is that I’m not especially well-equipped for retrospection this particular December. Too much is in flux, both externally and internally. So in lieu of any grand summations or reflective syntheses, let’s take a quick tour of some of the year’s musical highlights.
• MTT conducts Mahler’s Fifth Symphony (Jan. 25) Of all the concerts MTT has led with the San Francisco Symphony since his 2021 diagnosis with brain cancer, these performances, billed as his final subscription program with the orchestra, felt like the perfect coda to his long career here.
• Julius Eastman, Femenine (March 9) Eastman’s music, some of it lost and much of it imperfectly understood, continues to exert a shimmery spell. The Berkeley performance by the ensemble Wild Up of this 1974 landmark piece came off as both a ritual and a musical catharsis.
• Jakub Józef Orliński (April 9) The extravagantly gifted Polish countertenor returned to Berkeley’s Cal Performances for another ravishing program of Baroque music with the period-instrument ensemble Il Pomo d’Oro.
• Thomas Adès, Wreath (April 13) Composed for the Danish String Quartet as a companion piece for Schubert’s C-Major String Quintet, this hypnotically beautiful new score emerged as both a marvel in its own right and a complete stylistic departure for Adès.
• Fellow Travelers (June 22) Gregory Spears’ elegant, accessible 2016 opera about the 1950s Lavender Scare, based on Thomas Mallon’s equally rich novel, had its West Coast premiere in a dexterous production by Opera Parallèle.
• Merola Opera Program Schwabacher Summer Concert (July 11) The summer showcase of up-and-coming young vocal artists featured a memorably explosive parade of talent, including soprano Mary Hoskins and tenor Samuel White — both part of the new group of Adler Fellows for 2025 — in a virtuosic account of the final duet from Strauss’ Ariadne auf Naxos.
• Harawi (Sept. 27) Messiaen’s rarely heard song cycle from 1945, performed by soprano Julia Bullock and pianist Conor Hanick, would have been a delight under any circumstances. The American Modern Opera Company’s staging, which added dancers Bobbi Jene Smith and Or Schraiber into the mix, made it a full-on immersive experience.
• Esa-Pekka Salonen, Cello Concerto (Oct. 18) Salonen’s exuberantly inventive score, composed in 2016 for Yo-Yo Ma and performed here with San Francisco Symphony principal cellist Rainer Eudeikis as soloist, is packed full of inventive strokes. It uses electronic looping technology here, bongos there; it’s full of eloquence and dramatic fervor throughout.
• Tristan and Isolde (Oct. 27) The highlight of the San Francisco Opera’s fall season was this vibrant account of Wagner’s masterpiece, probingly conducted by music director Eun Sun Kim and magnificently cast with tenor Simon O’Neill and soprano Anja Kampe in the title roles
• Galina Ustvolskaya, Piano Sonatas (Oct. 28) In an unforgettable recital presented by Other Minds, pianist Conor Hanick played all six of the Russian composer’s piano sonatas back-to-back, an hour’s worth of fiercely original music ranging from the whimsical to the clangorous.
• Two Black Churches (Nov. 8) Shawn Okpebholo’s brilliant, morally uncompromising orchestral diptych about the murderous force of American racism got a potent rendition by the Oakland Symphony, led by the incoming music director Kedrick Armstrong and featuring baritone Will Liverman as soloist.
And that’s a wrap. For 2025, hoping for more stability, less fascism and enough music to see us all through.
Cryptic clue of the week
From Out of Left Field #248 by Henri Picciotto and me, sent to subscribers last Thursday:
Secret movement is insufficiently pulverized? (11)
Last week’s clue:
Belly button, or, in French, “ligature” (5)
Solution: OUTIE
Belly button: definition
or, in French: OU
ligature: TIE
Coming up
Berkeley Community Chorus & Orchestra: War and peace, those perennial Tolstoyan counterweights, form the thematic basis for a program led by music director Ming Luke. On one side is Haydn’s Mass in Time of War, and on the other are the radiant strains of the Fauré Requiem. Also on the program is Beethoven’s Choral Fantasy, featuring a piano soloist yet to be publicly identified. Jan. 3-5, Hertz Hall, UC Berkeley. www.bcco.org.
Sarah Cahill: The Bay Area’s doyenne of contemporary music offers a solo piano recital dedicated to the music of James Cleghorn, who spent most of his career as the music librarian for the San Francisco Public Library while composing an eclectic array of keyboard pieces in all styles and genres. Jan. 5, Old First Church. www.oldfirstconcerts.org.
An excellent look back at last year's highlights. I would only add the superb performance of Pierrot Lunaire by Nikki Enfield and Left Coast Chamber Ensemble. It was a real highlight for me.
While I'm at it, let me add my two cents to the SFS imbroglio. It's a great orchestra that is being betrayed by their own board and their General Manager. I don't understand how budget cuts will ever lead to artistic relevance.
BCCO Thanks you for supporting community music making. John Wilson is the piano soloist in the Beethoven Choral Fantasy. Friday 7:30, Sat and Sun at 3 pm at Hertz Hall on UC Berkeley campus. FREE.