September 11, 2002

THE MANY BAY Area fans of ecstatic visionary 20th-century French composer Olivier Messiaen have a real feast this year. The San Francisco Opera presents the American stage premiere of Saint François d'Assise, a good choice for not standing, since it's at least five hours long. "It's not a shabby little shocker like Tosca, where you're in and you're out!" conductor Donald Runnicles says. The opera's new general director, Pamela Rosenberg, clearly wants to use this groundbreaking production as her introduction to Bay Area audiences. The chorus is possibly the largest ever assembled for an S.F. Opera production: 120 total, often broken into subsets singing as many as 27 different vocal lines simultaneously (though Messiaen wanted 500). The orchestra is record size as well, at 119 – too many to fit in the pit. The overflow musicians, in costumes, will sit on a platform built out over the audience.

Rosenberg and her staff have managed to orchestrate tie-in performances all over the Bay Area. The San Francisco Symphony did Messiaen's Turangalîla-symphonie in the spring. This fall, his fascination with bird songs gets explored in a program called "Voices of Birds," with works by Messiaen and others, performed at San Francisco's California Palace of the Legion of Honor and the Oakland Museum. His lifelong devotion to the sound of the organ in churches will be represented by recitals at the National Shrine of St. Francis in September and October. His chamber music, including his most famous work, Quatuor pour la fin du temps (Quartet for the end of time), composed in a prison camp during World War II, will be performed at UC Berkeley's Hertz Hall, San Francisco's Old First Church, and the Julia Morgan Theater.

To Bay Area concertgoers who are regulars on the not-so-mainstream concert scene, though, the Messiaen buzz is nothing new. More than 20 years ago Kent Nagano, then a still-wet-behind-the-ears Santa Cruz alumnus and sometime surfer, persuaded the young Berkeley Symphony Orchestra (formerly the community-based Berkeley Promenade Orchestra) to tackle Messiaen. Nagano programmed Messiaen many times, taped the results, and sent them to the composer in Paris. The rest, as they say, is music history. Nagano went to study with Messiaen in France and was chosen to assist Seiji Ozawa in the Paris premiere of Saint François in 1981. Messiaen came to the Bay Area that year for a spectacular performance of the oratorio La transfiguration de notre seigneur Jésus-Christ, which sold out Davies Hall.

Nagano made the definitive recording of Saint François from a production with avant-garde director Peter Sellars in Salzburg, Austria. He now conducts major orchestras in Berlin, London, Paris, Salzburg, and Los Angeles, but he remains loyal to Berkeley. And he's recognized as perhaps the world's foremost Messiaen interpreter. The BSO season opener on Sept. 18 will include L'Ascension.

Messiaen has been dead for 10 years, but his influence can still be felt in the Bay Area music scene. Earplay, a cutting-edge performance group, specializes in presenting the music of living composers. Their conductor, Mary Chun, was Kent Nagano's assistant conductor for two successive performances of Turangalîla in the early '80s, when she was also deputized to learn to play the Ondes Martinot, a very exotic and difficult violin-piano-electronic hybrid that imitates the sound of waves (ondes, in French). This season she's one of the three Ondes players in the S.F. Opera's Saint François, and she's also leading Earplay in a concert of living French composers, some followers of Messiaen, in December.

Sept. 16

San Francisco Opera The "Voices of Birds" program features works by Schubert, Grieg, Wolf, Ravel, and Chabrier, including excerpts from Messiaen's Catalogue des oiseaux and Ravel's Oiseaux tristes for solo piano, with Greta Feeney (soprano), Brad Alexander (baritone), John Parr (piano). 7 p.m., California Palace of the Legion of Honor, Lincoln Park (near 34th Ave. and Clement), S.F. $25. (415) 864-3330, www.sfopera.com.

Sept. 18

Berkeley Symphony Orchestra Opening night with Kent Nagano includes Messiaen's L'Ascension. 8 p.m., Zellerbach Hall, U.C. Berkeley, Bancroft and Telegraph, Berk. $21-$45, $10 students. (510) 841-2800, www.berkeleysymphony.org.

Sept. 22

Schola Cantorum "Music to Saint Francis" includes pieces by Messiaen and others on the subject of St. Francis, with music direction by John Renke and organ by John Fenstermaker. 4 p.m, National Shrine of St. Francis, 610 Vallejo, S.F. Free. (415) 983-0405, www.shrinesf.org/suncon.htm.

'Messiaen Celebration' Soprano Laura Claycomb and pianist Peter Grunber perform Chants de terre et de ciel, and members of the San Francisco Symphony, including concertmaster Alexander Barantschik, cellist Peter Wyrick, clarinetist Luis Baez, and pianist Robin Sutherland, perform Quatuor pour la fin du temps. 7 p.m., Hertz Hall, UC Berkeley, Bancroft and College, Berk. $32. (510) 642-9988, www.calperfs.berkeley.edu/presents/season/2002/20th_century/events/messiaen.html.

Sept. 25

Jacqueline Chew and Michael Orland Pianists Chew and Orland perform Messiaen's Visions de l'amen. Noon, Hertz Hall, UC Berkeley, Bancroft and College, Berk. Free (510) 642-9988, ls.berkeley.edu/dept/music/noon.html.

Sept. 27-Oct. 17

San Francisco Opera Saint François d'Assise, Messiaen's hymn to San Francisco's patron saint, is performed with Willard White as St. Francis and Laura Aikin as the angel. Call for times, War Memorial Opera House, 301 Van Ness, San Francisco. $24-$175. (415) 864-3330, www.sfopera.com.

Oct. 6

John Karl Hirten Hirten gives an all-Messiaen organ recital. 4 p.m., National Shrine of St. Francis, 610 Vallejo, S.F. Free. (415) 983-0405, www.shrinesf.org/suncon.htm.

Oct. 18

San Francisco Conservatory's New Music Ensemble "Messiaen and His Legacy (Part I)," part of the conservatory's "BluePrint" festival, features one of the artist's signature works: Oiseaux exotiques for piano, percussion, and winds, plus compositions by Messiaen's followers, including Jean Louis Florentz, Michele Reverdy, and Gilles Tremblay. 8 p.m., Old First Church, 1751 Sacramento, S.F. (415) 474-1608 (tickets), (415) 759-3457 (information).

Oct. 20

Parallèle Ensemble The "Messiaen and His Legacy (Part II)" program features mezzo-soprano Wendy Hillhouse performing Quatuor pour la fin du temps. 7 p.m., Old First Church, 1751 Sacramento, S.F. (415) 474-1608 (tickets), (415) 759-3457 (information).

Dec. 9

Earplay The group performs recent works by Messiaen-influenced French composers, including Christophe Bertrand, winner of the 2002 Donald Aird Composers Competition. 8 p.m., Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, 701 Mission, S.F. $18, $5 students. (415) 978-2787, thecity.sfsu.edu/~earplay/earplayers.html.

B.O.

High-minded
Classical and opera must-sees, at any cost

Sept. 21

New Century Chamber Orchestra "On Love and Life," a program as juicy and romantic as this season's abundant Messiaen performances are spiritual and refined, features works by Mendelssohn, Schubert, Herbert, Janácek on joy, love, and jealousy, played by a passionate, conductorless string ensemble. 8 p.m., Herbst Theatre, 401 Van Ness, S.F. $27.50-$35, half price students. (415) 357-1111, www.ncco.org. See the Web site for performances in Berkeley, Menlo Park, and Marin.

Oct. 2-5

San Francisco Symphony When do you get the chance to hear a contrabassoon solo? Michael Tilson Thomas conducts the world premiere of his new piece for contrabassoon, Urban Legend. Wed. and Fri.-Sat., 8 p.m., Davies Symphony Hall, Grove between Van Ness and Franklin, S.F. $29-$87. (415) 864-6000, www.sfsymphony.org.

Nov. 3-20

San Francisco Opera The San Francisco Opera performs Kát'a Kabanová, by Janácek, who continues to get hotter, probably because of the exodus of well-trained musicians from the former Eastern Bloc who know his music. Nov. 3, 6, 9, 12, 15, and 20, 8 p.m., War Memorial Opera House, 301 Van Ness, S.F. $24-$175. (415) 864-3330, www.sfopera.com.

Nov. 15

'Oakland East Bay Symphony Opening Night' Michael Morgan conducts the world premiere of a cello concerta by Dead Man Walking composer Jake Heggie. 8 p.m., Paramount Theatre, 2025 Broadway, Oakl. $15-$55. (510) 444-0801, www.oebs.org.

Dec. 13

Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra You haven't heard the real Messiah until you've heard it done by S.F.'s own world-famous original performance orchestra, in the original Handel style, without the huge symphonic sound and with clear human solo voices predominating. The group only does this every third year or so. Call for times. Herbst Theatre, 401 Van Ness, S.F. $33-$48. (415) 252-1288, www.philharmonia.org. See Web site for performances in Berkeley, Walnut Creek, and Palo Alto.