For the Stravinsky centennial, the chorus took on one of the rarest works in the male-chorus repertoire.
A cantata for stars
On Sunday, March 14, 1982, the Berkeley Symphony Orchestra, led by music director Kent Nagano, and the San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus performed Stravinsky’s “The King of the Stars” (Zvezdoliki) at Davies Symphony Hall. The Chronicle’s Marilyn Tucker explained that Stravinsky wrote the brief cantata for men’s voices and large orchestra in 1911–12, alongside “The Rite of Spring.” It was not performed until 1939 in Brussels, and its American premiere came in 1949. Debussy, its dedicatee, called it a “cantata for stars.”
The chorus sang it in the original Russian, coached by Irene Arn Bacchina, Stravinsky’s last manager. Tucker wrote that the work had been brought to Nagano’s attention by the chorus’s former director, Dick Kramer. The program also included Busoni’s Concerto for piano, orchestra and male choir, with Robert Hagopian as soloist. Tickets were $6 to $16.
It was the chorus’s first major concert after Kramer’s departure, prepared by guest conductor Robin Kay.
From the archives: this post retells reporting by the San Francisco Chronicle, the San Francisco Sunday Examiner & Chronicle and the Bay Area Reporter. The original articles survive only in newspaper archives, so we have told the story here in our own words. Details attributed to those outlets are their reporting; see the sources below.
Sources
- San Francisco Sunday Examiner & Chronicle, “The Berkeley Symphony Orchestra and the San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus (advertisement)”, February 14, 1982. sfchronicle.com
- San Francisco Chronicle, “Stravinsky’s “Stars”” by Marilyn Tucker, March 10, 1982. sfchronicle.com
- Bay Area Reporter, “Kramer Drops Out as Chorus Head” by Allen White, February 11, 1982. ebar.com
