Reviews

Mi Alma Mexicana abounds in revelations. That its all-Mexican classic repertoire, which ranges from sedate, 120-year-old, European-influenced salon music to uncommonly savage modern fare, arrives with such wide-eyed freshness and power owes as much to the abundant gifts of 29-year-old conductor Alondra de la Parra as to the artistry of the young members of her 6-year-old Philharmonic Orchestra of the Americas (POA).

The world of music for two pianists is a rarified one. Established as an art form in the Mozart family for its two talented children, then popularized by Schubert at coffeehouses in Vienna, and finally made immortal by Brahms, the two-piano/four-hands repertoire has occupied an important but often neglected corner in the vast richness of piano music. The Milton and Peggy Salkind International Piano Duo Festival celebrates that repertoire.

What if you were confronted with a dozen spirited saxophonists, male and female, embracing a stunning range of pitch and a delightful variety of repertoire? That wouldn’t be too much sax, would it? Not in the case of the Selmer Saxharmonic.

Something like a quarter century ago, I bought a CD of Dvořák string quartets that had the words “American Quartet” prominently displayed on its front. Only later did I discover that the American Quartet was the ensemble; the Dvořák “American” quartet that I meant to buy wasn’t even on the menu. The two other quartets that were there, though, made me avid for more Dvořák chamber music, and I went on to discover an entire cache of marvelous music that I’d never heard of.The Emerson Quartet’s new three-CD Dvořák box might work the same magic on another set of listeners.

Boom! Wham! As the percussion of Orquesta La Pasión,led by Mikael Ringquist and Gonzalo Grau, pounds away, Argentinean-born composer Osvaldo Golijov wastes no time proclaiming that his St. Mark Passion will take a giant step away from the language of J.S. Bach’s monumental achievement.

For a society of iPod shufflin’, Web surfin’, channel flippin’, Facebook friendin’ individuals, the annual Garden of Memory is an excellent idea. Every summer solstice since 1995, Sarah Cahill and New Music Bay Area present “a columbarium walk-through event at the Chapel of the Chimes in Oakland.”

There are recitals, there are great recitals, and then there’s Yuja Wang. In an extraordinary scene Sunday in Herbst Theatre, after hearing her play the audience appeared both exhausted and elated. My hands hurt not merely from applauding, but also from an apparent case of couvade syndrome (men’s sympathy pain at childbirth) on listening to two hours of devilishly difficult Scriabin and Prokofiev played with ease and astonishing clarity.

Proof of our good fortune in having Ragnar Bohlin as director of the San Francisco Symphony Chorus, this tremendous CD demonstrates his overarching sense of line and purpose. In six contemporary works by Swedish and (in the case of Ned Rorem) American composers, Bohlin’s leadership of the 32-person Swedish Radio Choir produces mesmerizing dynamic gradations and shading.

Tenor Jonas Kaufmann will likely be your tenor of the hour, if not the decade, after you hear his new Decca recording of German arias by Mozart, Schubert, Beethoven, and Wagner. Supported and urged on by the Mahler Chamber Orchestra, magnificently conducted by Claudio Abbado, the tenor lavishes as much care, love, and passion on his repertoire as you can ever expect to hear.

And the winner is ... Claudio Monteverdi! He was well-served Saturday night in a Berkeley Festival performance at that city’s First Congregational Church. ARTEK (from The Art of the Early Keyboard), a New York–based ensemble of six singers and seven players of plucked and bowed strings, gave magnificent voice to Monteverdi’s Fifth Book of Madrigals.