Takács to play Beethoven cycle
Geraldine Walther, the revered principal violist of the San Francisco Symphony for 30 years until she left in 2005 to assume the viola chair in the renowned Takács Quartet, was on the phone from Singapore, where the quartet played the first of several all-Beethoven concerts in Asia before returning stateside for a major undertaking: performing the complete cycle, over six concerts, of all 16 Beethoven string quartets.
After the University of Michigan, the quartet hits UC Berkeley on Oct. 15 for the first of three intensive residencies spread over three weekends in the fall, winter and spring. The foursome will play all the quartets and participate in Cal Performances-sponsored symposia, open rehearsals and master classes delving into the music and the historical and social contexts in which the quartets were created and consumed and are continually made contemporary.
“They’re just great masterpieces,” says Walther of the Beethoven quartets, which the Takács was celebrated for playing, and won Grammy Awards for, before she joined the group.
“Each time we come to them, we find something new,” continued Walther, who performed the full cycle with her three colleagues seven or eight years ago. “We’re looking for new things; maybe we can find a better way to bring something out that nobody was thinking of yesterday. We try something new to make it better, more interesting, fresh.”
The programming for the Cal Performances series draws its themes from the new book by the quartet’s first violinist, Edward Dusinberre, “Beethoven for a Later Age: Living With the String Quartets,” which explores the history of the quartets and how the Takács works through and interprets them.
The immersive Oct. 15-16 program is called “Making and Remaking the Beethoven Quartets.” In March, the focus will be technology and “When Old Media Were New Media.” In April, the talk turns to “Beethoven: Religion and Politics.” At each concert, the quartet will perform a mix of early, middle and late-period Beethoven.
“This is Beethoven’s journey,” says Walther, 66, who lives near Boulder, Colo., where the quartet, formed in Hungary in ’75, has been based at the University of Colorado for many years.
“You hear the young, optimist Beethoven, coming away from Mozart and Haydn and throwing in these wild ideas nobody ever did before — my goodness, he just goes his own way. You have the stormy middle quartets, which are full of passion, and then the late quartets, which have that as well as introspection, and resignation, resignation at the end of a life.”
Walther, who still misses her friends in the Bay Area and is stoked to be coming back here for these meaty programs, tries to “stay open and receptive to my colleagues, listening to what they’re doing today. Because the guys I work with don’t play the same way every day. They really change it up. You gotta stay on your toes to respond.”
After hanging up the phone, Walther planned to practice Quartet No. 14 in C-Sharp Minor, Opus 131 — Beethoven’s last large-scale work and his favorite among the late quartets — “because it’s technically very demanding,” she says, “and I wouldn’t want to get it good enough just to play it the same way. I really want to play as freely as possible, because that’s when the exciting stuff happens.”
For more information, go to www.calperformances.org.
Outside Lands turns 10
Fans of the Outside Lands music festival in Golden Gate Park may want to mark Aug. 11-13 on their 2017 calendars: Those are the dates for the 10th anniversary edition of the farranging festival, which this past summer showcased everyone from Radiohead and Duran Duran to Chance the Rapper and the Claypool Lennon Delirium.
The lineup for Outside Lands 2017 has not yet been announced.
For more information, go to www.sfoutsidelands.com
Singing girls
The Grammy Award-winning San Francisco Girls Chorus uncorks its four-concert season Oct. 29 at Herbst Theatre, joined by mezzo-soprano Laurie Rubin and members of Magik*Magik Orchestra for a love-laced program, including Holst’s “Seven Part Songs,” Janácek’s “The Wolf ’s Trail,” Milhaud’s “Devant sa Main Nue,” New York avantgardist John Zorn’s “Colombina” and a piece Rubin composed.
Later concerts feature such guest artists as composer-bagpiper Matthew Welch, organist Paul Vasile and the Trinity Youth Chorus of New York.
For more information, go to www.sfgirlschorus.org.
Trans-world music
Aspada, a global-minded Bay Area quartet whose members come from India (percussionist V. Selvaganesh), Egypt (pianist Osam Ezzeldin), the U.S. (saxophonist-composer George Brooks) and GermanLiberian ancestry (bassist Kai Eckhardt), will feature the hot classical Indian vocalist Mahesh Kale at Freight & Salvage in Berkeley next Thursday, Sept. 29.
In addition to his musical skills, the Indian born-andraised Kale, who now lives here, has a master’s degree in engineering management from Santa Clara University.
For more information, go to www.thefreight.org.