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by
Nina Beckwith
FEATURED UCSF
ARTIST| NINA'S ARTS NOTES
1st appeared 1
December 1998
FEATURED UCSF ARTIST
Harpist on Parnassus
 What more suitable site for a heavenly harp
and harpist than Parnassus, an 8,000-foot mountain in central Greece said to be the abode
of the gods? After all, Apollo, the god of healing, is also the god of music and is often
portrayed with a lyre, ancestor of the harp.
UCSF's Parnassus, while not quite reaching that altitude, has more than a few gods of its
own in the various spheres of healing. And at work in the daytime abode of one of them
(Dean Haile Debas of the School of Medicine) is an accomplished harpist.
She is Lydia Derugin, who is both harpist and percussionist in the UCSF Orchestra, and a
financial manager on Dean Debas' team. She is one of the Orchestra's core members, a
stalwart who has been actively involved with the group for five years, half of its life.
And for Derugin "actively" means helping with every aspect of the UCSF
Orchestra, from organizing and publicizing its activities to introducing its November 14
& 15 set of concerts, and then playing her harp in the Bach First Brandenburg Concerto
and crashing her cymbals in the finale of the Tchaikowsky Fourth Symphony.
Derugin is a native San Franciscan who grew up in the Sunset district. She started playing
flute and violin as a child, then settled on the piano. "But on my first day at
Lowell High School," she recalls, "they said, 'Oh, another pianist. You can go
to the back of the room now.' There were 12 of us lined up against the back wall.
Fortunately the music teacher was very good at re-programming kids and figuring out what
they would be suited to do. He taught me to play percussion because that was one of the
things they needed."
Percussion instruments are those whose sound is made by striking them. Technically the
piano is a percussion instrument but the term usually refers to drums of all kinds,
xylophones, castanets, cymbals, and suchlike. Not all musicians can do it, but Derugin
obviously had the percussionist's essential ability to coordinate complex rhythms.
"And then the school orchestra won some kind of competition and needed to play Scheherazade,"
she continues, "that lovely piece by Rimsky-Korsakov which has a big shimmery part
for the harp. I started playing the harp part on the piano but they said, 'No, No, No.
That is not going to work.' So they found a lady in the neighborhood who was willing to
donate a harp and they gave me a check for $200 and said, 'Get thee to the SF Conservatory
of Music and learn how to play this part.' So I did."
Later she went back and mastered the basics of that most beautiful but very difficult
instrument. As Derugin points out, harp technique is totally different from piano: only
four fingers of each hand are used as the little finger is not strong enough to pluck the
strings. "But you do use both feet," she says, "because you have seven
pedals, one for each note of the scale, and each one has three positions: in the bottom
position the note is raised to sharp, the middle is natural, and the top position takes
the note down to flat. Most people don't know about the pedals because they are under the
harp and hard to see from the audience. There's also a mechanism at the top of the harp
which shortens or lengthens the strings."
All through SF State, Derugin continued with music as well as majoring in business
administration. After graduation, her first job was at UCSF; she has now been on the
administrative staff in various departments for 23 years. She feels that "there is an
intrinsic satisfaction in coming to work here; it's an intellectually stimulating place to
be." And she is happy that her boss, Dean Debas, chose to leave a legacy of his UCSF
Chancellorship in the form of music -- the Chancellor's Concert Series which has embodied
his wish to enhance the quality of campus life all during the fall, will resume in
January.
The UCSF Orchestra is also a life-enhancer. As Derugin says, "Many of us participate
in the orchestra because it's a creative outlet; more fun than going to a gym and more
satisfying. You can work off some of the stresses and frustrations and you can get so
involved that it's therapeutic.
"But unlike many community orchestras," Derugin notes, "ours has some
intrinsic difficulties. Owing to the nature of UCSF's population, we have students and
postdocs who don't sit still for very long. They might play for a year and then move on.
There's a core group but we need new people coming in all the time and we have to be
flexible enough to deal with that."
The orchestra has been reinvigorated by its new conductor, Stephen Paulson, who will
maintain regular communication via email even while touring abroad this winter with the SF
Symphony. There remains the major problem of concert venues. While the Gospel Choir, for
example, can rehearse and perform in Cole Hall, the UCSF Orchestra players cannot haul
their percussion battery and 100-pound harps around Parnassus -- unless Apollo comes to
help. The orchestra played well at its November concerts, as we reported, but no one can
claim that the Millberry Gym's deliberately deadened sound is appropriate for music.
Along with all other UCSF performers, Derugin hopes that the Mission Bay Campus planners
will include a large, comfortable, and acoustically alive hall for that all-important
"enhancement of the quality of life."
Previous featured artists
NINA'S
ARTS NOTES
Powerful Peter Grimes
Benjamin Britten's Peter Grimes is one of the most powerful and emotionally
involving operas ever written. It has nothing of the spikily "modern" -- it is
full of glorious melodic music. And Grimes is as immediate and relevant for us
today as it was when first heard in l945, at the end of World War II to which Britten, as
a pacifist in his 20s, was so opposed that he had to leave England. In this and other
ways, Britten was different, unconventional, an outsider. He returned to write 14 more
operas, and a great deal of other wonderful music.
In the Suffolk fishing village of the 1830s called the Borough, Peter Grimes is a
fisherman like the others but an outsider, a loner, who doesn't fit in even though he was
born there. Grimes is acquitted when his boy apprentice mysteriously dies, but the
suspicion and enmity of the townspeople grow. He has only one friend, the widow
school-mistress Ellen Orford, whom he hopes to marry when he has earned enough money and
secured the respect of the villagers.
The sea is a close living presence all through the opera: Britten's Sea Interludes between
the scenes are often performed as concert pieces. The final and fatal chain of events
comes after a huge storm at sea, bringing floods and destruction to the land, and after
the villagers' antagonism toward Grimes turns them into a vengeful mob.
Until the superb production now at the War Memorial Opera House, Grimes had not been
performed here since l976. The stars are the villagers, the SF Opera chorus excellently
prepared by Ian Robertson, and the Opera orchestra under music director Donald Runnicles
who obviously loves this opera and has given it all his fervor. Thomas Moser has the heft
and husky figure, the strong tenor voice and the lyricism to convey both sides of Grimes,
his gruffness and isolation and his introspective tenderness. Soprano Deborah Riedel
beautifully modulates her powerful voice and fine acting to show both aspects of Ellen
Orford: her courage in standing by Grimes against her neighbors, and her wistfulness and
despair.
Bass-baritone Alan Held makes a memorable figure of Captain Balstrode, who tries to calm
the villagers, and Catherine Cook is perfect as Mrs. Sedley, the type of malicious
busybody known to every small town.
Peter Grimes is an opera you will enjoy while it moves you and makes you
think. Only five more performances: December 2, 5, 8, 11, and 13. Call 864-3330; www.sfopera.com . Depending on availability,
specially priced Student and Senior Rush Tickets go on sale two hours before each
performance; Standing Room at $10 also on sale then. (Orchestra standees can see and hear
quite well.)
* * * * *
Betrothal is Bliss
The SF Opera season is winding down but I urge you as strongly as possible not to let it
pass without another trip to the War Memorial for a totally new and glorious experience, a
flight into sophisticated comedy and the pure magic of marvelous theatre.
Betrothal in a Monastery comes to us from the Maryinsky Theatre in St.
Petersburg, once the home of Chaliapin, Nijinsky, Nureyev, Baryshnikov, and now of a fine
orchestra, which was recently heard here at Davies Hall, and of extraordinary companies of
opera and ballet and their dazzling maestro, Valery Gergiev.
Betrothal has every feature of grand opera and musical theatre in rich abundance
-- fabulous sets, fantastically gorgeous costumes, wonderful ballet dancers, stunning
singer/actors, an enchanting score by Sergei Prokofiev, and exciting theatrical
imagination you will not see anywhere else in this country. And it is based on a play, The
Duenna, by one of the wittiest writers who ever lived, the 18th-century Irishman
Richard Brinsley Sheridan.
One wonders why this ravishing opera is not done often and everywhere, or even once in a
while like the same composer's monumental War and Peace or his joyful Love
for Three Oranges, while his delightful Romeo and Juliet ballet is
frequently on our programs. The answer may be...tradition.
In addition to remarkable talent, the Russian conductor, stage director, designers, and
performers can draw on the centuries of their theatrical tradition for a production which
infuses so much sheer energy and magical ingenuity into stock characters and situations
that they become newly revealing and freshly funny. We just don't have that, as we do not
seem to produce the enormous voices, especially the basses, that come out of Russia and
eastern Europe. Most of the singers in this production are Russian, some are American, all
are superb. Once more in this West Coast premiere of Betrothal, the SF Opera
chorus and orchestra demonstrate their quality and versatility.
The plot of Betrothal is a comedy of errors, a zany series of mistaken
identities. It all takes place in Seville, like Don Giovanni and Rossini's Barber,
but in this Russian Spain every scene change is made by dancing commedia dell'arte
characters in whimsical costumes. There is a very funny onstage band rehearsal; a comic
scene of drunken monks who suddenly become solemn, and a silent scene of solemn nuns in
white-winged coifs walking in a lovely garden. One comes away full of wonderment because
everything is done so brilliantly. Thanks to English supertitles we can follow all the
action.
Only three remaining performances: December 3, 6, and 10. Lectures in the Opera
House are offered one-hour before curtain time, free to ticket holders. Box Office phone
864-3330; www.sfopera.com . As noted above,
Senior and Student Rush tickets on sale two hours before performance -- if available --
and Standing Room at $10 on sale then.
* * * * *
Visit the Utagawa Hiroshige
exhibit at the Asian Art Museum.
Events accompanying the Hiroshige show, which runs until January 17, 1999, include five
free lectures in December and January; a full-day teacher workshop on December
6;demonstrations of Japanese papermaking and printmaking on Saturdays and Sundays through
December 13, and on the evening of December 9 a performance of DarkPassages, a work of
music with video and slides that tells the story of war resisters and of
Japanese-Americans imprisoned at Crystal City Internment Camp in Texas. Hours are Tuesday
through Sunday 9:30 to 5; until 8:45 p.m. on first Wednesday of the month. Information:
379-8801; cultural programs 379-8879; educational programs 379-8895; internet www.asianart.org .
A San Francisco resident for 20 years, Nina
Beckwith is a longtime arts writer and music critic and a former Time magazine overseas
correspondent. She was founding editor of the UC Berkeley Library newsletter Bene Legere
and worked for six years with the late Dr. Peter Ostwald, Director of the UCSF Health
Program for Performing Artists. |
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