DEMOTED MOZART AND PROMOTED MAESTRA 
                                              By Paul Hertelendy 
        artssf.com, the independent observer of San Francisco Bay Area music and dance 
                                                                 Week of Jan. 22-29, 2009
                                                                  Vol. 11, No. 50
            Sorry, I simply cannot fathom Mozart’s Symphony No. 40 in G Minor languishing in 77th place in popularity.
            Of course, the usual suspects are at the top of the list of classics: Beethoven’s Ninth and Sixth, "Four Seasons,” the great six-part group of Bach Brandenburg Concertos and, in some years, the Dvorak “From the New World.”
            But relegating the Great G Minor to 77th is an affront to Mozart lovers, who once again will rally round his birthday coming up Jan. 27. The ear-catching counterpoint  (those winds!), the picture-perfect sonata form, an undercurrent of distress, the inevitability of the descending clarinet theme in the slow movement combine to make this an unforgettable, concise work, written during one of all music’s greatest creative outbursts in 1788, when Mozart wrote his last three symphonies.
            The results stemmed from the recent listener survey by KDFC-FM radio, the commercial San Francisco classical station that listed the Top 100. There could well have been some overachieving ballot-stuffing as Beethoven’s Seventh and the Barber Adagio for Strings, which didn’t make the top 35 last year, both ascended to the top dozen favorites. 
            Other revelations:
----chamber music, long sitting on the back burner, surged up to No. 29 via Schubert’s “Trout” Quintet;
----the Rachmaninoff Piano Concerto No. 3, that notorious finger-buster tour de force, moving all the way up to 18th place;
----Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D Minor (No. 22), despite the total absence of pipe-organ music on KDFC;
----no vocal  music. Even where an opera made the list, like “Carmen,” "Magic Flute,” “Don Gioanni and “Figaro’s Wedding,” the performances on the air were confined to instrumentals;
---no sacred music, unless you count instrumental versions of Bach’s “Jesu Joy of Man’s Desiring” and the B Minor Mass (excerpted); and
----no Wagner, apart from his “Siegfried Idyll” and his very early “Rienzi’ Overture (No. 69). Not even the stirring “Ride of the Valkyries” prelude;
---and no string quartets.  
            Modern music? Better not ask. Apart from a couple of film-score artists, no living composers. Prokofiev’s ballet “Romeo and Juliet” made it. Also Holst’s “The Planets.” And a smattering of Khatchaturian, Rodrigo, Albeniz, Vaughan Williams, Ravel, Debussy.
            Apologies, Herr Mozart! Any objection if we stuff the ballot box next year?  
            THE NEW MAESTRA---Emerging the winner in a very strong field of six candidates, Joana Carneiro, 32, of Lisbon, Portugal has been named the new music director of the Berkeley Symphony, which has been led by the vaunted Kent Nagano for the past 31 years. The consensus choice of the 10-member search committee of musicians, board members and administrators, she will start this fall.
             Although the orchestra has a very short season, it is an unusually important one, not only because of the internationally renowned San Franciscan Nagano, but also because of its heavy concentration of music by living composers, in many cases presenting world premieres.             
           Carneiro, who holds a doctorate from the University of Michigan, was given a three-year contract, during which she will lead four regular orchestral concerts, with guests filling the other podium niches.

        ©Paul Hertelendy 2009
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           Paul Hertelendy has been covering the dance and modern-music scene in the San Francisco Bay Area with relish -- and a certain amount of salsa -- for years.
    These critiques appearing weekly (or sometimes semi-weekly, but never weakly) will focus on dance and new musical creativity in performance, with forays into books (by authors of the region), theater and recordings by local artists as well.
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