Rebecca Wishnia

The Ives Quartet has morphed into the Ives Collective, which began 2016 with Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time

The three pieces that made up San Francisco Contemporary Music Players’ Jan. 19 concert played with sound as a physical presence in the environment of the concert hall.

The group lived up to its “hip, unstuffy” reputation at St. Mark’s Lutheran in San Francisco.

Festival Opera explored Indian cultural narratives with two noteworthy chamber operas at the Oakland Cultural Center.

Kaija Saariaho is being given a great composer’s retrospective this month, and her music more than justifies the celebration.

In a refreshing departure, the S.F. Symphony, with guest conductor Susanna Mälkki, highlighted the music of Finland.

Tenor Rinde Eckert, the Kronos Quartet, and Vietnamese multi-instrumentalist Vân-Ánh Võ are collectively powerful in this new opera.

The young string quartet, the first quartet-in-residence at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, also performed early works by Webern and Beethoven.

The ensemble’s interpretations of Beethoven’s late quartets at The Berkeley Hillside Club were too temperate.

Pieces by Missy Mazzoli and Nico Muhly were the only standouts in a program of music that lacked ambition and scale.