Reviews

If you wanted to come up with a pairing of diametric opposites on a piano recital, you might choose the complete Ligeti Études and Bach’s Goldberg Variations, two monumental works that at first glance seem psychologically light years apart. This was Jeremy Denk’s Bay Area solo debut program. It promised to be an auspicious one, and I couldn’t wait to see if he would pull it off.

Conventional buzz has it that Franco Alfano’s Cyrano de Bergerac is a second-rate opera that has been revived solely as a vehicle for 69-year-old tenor Plácido Domingo. While it is doubtful that anyone is going to walk down the street whistling one of the 1936 opera’s extended love duets, the combination of Théâtre du Châtelet’s gorgeous production and an extremely strong cast have created the indisputable highlight of San Francisco Opera’s fall season thus far.

James Conlon is one of the finest conductors around, and he is also a maverick presenter of unusual programs. And so it was expected that he would bring something different to his current appearances with the San Francisco Symphony (which he first led 32 years ago), and he did not disappoint.

Harpsichordist Lars Ulrik Mortensen, heard Sunday with the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra in Berkeley, is an interpretive genius. And, it was little surprise that pairing one of America’s great period orchestras with a harpsichordist of such dramatic flair would produce impressive results.

Classical music advocates often take a Eurocentric view of music history that leads them to question the importance of the guitar and its repertoire. John Williams deftly reverses the logic, maintaining that a global 20th- and 21st-century perspective the guitar makes a more vital contribution than any other instrument. Williams made his case on Sunday in a recital received by a packed audience.

It’s a rare Pulitzer Prize winner in music who can boast a major-label recording of the winning work issued the same year as the award. Indeed, Jennifer Higdon (who won the 2010 Music Pulitzer for her Violin Concerto) would seem to be the first in a long time. Of course, it doesn’t hurt to have been writing for Hilary Hahn.

Symphony Silicon Valley’s showcase of Hungary came in an exploration in the obscure but worthy corners of the repertoire and a young and dazzling solo performer. Three works by modern Hungarian composers of the same generation, plus three by foreigners evoking the country, were saved from being too much of the same thing by liveliness and a riot of orchestral color.

If no weapons are involved, next time I am facing a gang in a dark alley, I want Gabriel Manro on my side. Making his debut here, in the West Bay Opera’s sensational production of Verdi’s La Forza del Destino, Manro is a new kind of baritone: not lyric, not helden, not Kavalier, not Bariton-Martin — none of those. Rather, he’s a knock-down baritone.

The Kronos Quartet have taken program-planning to a new level, stitching together works by 12 different composers, played without pause and with carefully planned segues. In doing so, the group essentially created a new 90-minute masterpiece: Awakening, a “musical meditation on the anniversary of 9/11.” The program was first played on Sept. 11, 2006 and was repeated on Wednesday, as the opening concert of Stanford Lively Arts' season.

Can Madama Butterfly fail? “Impossible,” say some 195 performances by the San Francisco Opera alone. Only La bohème is more often performed, and that by a whisker. Both present us with a transient happiness whose precious fragility can never survive the pathos — the inescapable sadness — that is the destiny of human life.