Reviews

The Santa Rosa Symphony consists of about six dozen talented musicians, but during its performance Saturday, piano soloist Valentina Lisitsa stole the show. This 30-something, blonde, steely-fingered Ukrainian-American has technical virtuosity to easily match any pianist of her generation, and her musicality is out of this world.

The French Ensemble Zellig focuses on innovation and experimentation and is fully at ease traveling through time and musical styles. In its West Coast debut on Sunday night it was a breath of fresh air.

You have probably heard Carl Orff's Carmina Burana before. If you're like me, you've heard it many times. Even so, I have never heard it the way the S.F. Symphony played it on Wednesday.

At 20th-anniversary concerts of Musica Pacifica offered performers who reach far beyond merely creating beautiful sounds: They truly create music by infusing the composers’ notes with energy and passion, and with the elusive-but-essential breath of life.

This disc is a revelation. A revelation as much to initiates who think they know the beautiful, often ethereal choral music of Eric Whitacre, as to the millions who know him only from the YouTube Virtual Choir video of “Lux Aurumque,” and as to those who have yet to make his acquaintance.

What music do you expect to hear at a Halloween concert? The Santa Cruz Chamber Players lack the forces necessary for warhorses, so in their concert at Christ Lutheran they were forced to be creative. It made for a festive holiday occasion.

Henry Purcell never wrote an opera titled The Witch of Endor, so the question arose as to what, exactly, Urban Opera would be performing over Halloween weekend. The answer turned out to be something equal in musical brilliance and theatrical flair to the company’s inaugural production.

Besides impeccable musicianship, Kronos offers up socially aware compositions.

On a drizzling Sunday, California Bach Society performed two gems of the English vocal repertory: Purcell’s ode Hail, Bright Cecilia and Handel’s Acis and Galatea, a masque. Or is it a pastoral? Or, as Handel once described it, a little opera? Whatever the genre, the Bach Society’s cheerful demeanor and an attentive audience belied the sullen weather.

String quartet concerts customarily feature the old masters, or the medium-old masters, and apologetically stick small quantities of modern music in the corners of the program. At Sunday night’s concert at the Kohl Mansion in Burlingame, though, the opposite plan — feature the contemporary works, and stick the old masters in the corner — was enacted by the Lark Quartet.