Reviews

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Review

Cantare Chorale: Graced by New Poetry

Jerry Kuderna - March 22, 2010
From the hauntingly tentative first notes, or rather the first words of a poem prefacing the Brahms Requiem sung Saturday by the powerful but always beautifully balanced and expressive Cantare Chorale led by Artistic Director David Morales, I knew I was about to have a unique experience. I was to have a window not only into Johannes Brahms’
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Review

Where Comes the Sun?

Jeff Dunn - March 22, 2010

Did the Santa Rosa Symphony on Saturday night live up to part of a public-school student poem, by “Cristobal,” posted in its concert-hall lobby?

Sounds frightful, amazing, destructive.
Beethoven, great composer —
Music as powerful as the sun.

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Review

Dreamy Recital of Romantics

Georgia Rowe - March 22, 2010
In a year that marks the bicentenaries of Frédéric Chopin and Robert Schumann, it can’t be easy to decide which composer to celebrate.
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Review

San Francisco Ballet Star Shines Under the Sea

Rachel Howard - March 22, 2010

“This is for her,” another critic said to me Saturday during the rapturous standing ovation that greeted the U.S. premiere of John Neumeier’s The Little Mermaid at the San Francisco Ballet.

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Review

To Paraphrase, Encore

Lisa Hirsch - March 19, 2010
The British composer Thomas Adès has been writing intricately structured and colorfully orchestrated music for nearly two decades now.
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Review

Going It Alone

Michelle Dulak Thomson - March 16, 2010
Unaccompanied violin recitals are sufficiently rare that the image and bio of Jennifer Koh’s longtime recital partner, pianist Reiko Uchida, made it into the printed program of last Tuesday’s Herbst Theatre recital before San Francisco Performances staff realized their mistake. It would be misleading to say that Uchida (a very fine pianist) was not missed.
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Review

Of Time and Turmoil

David Bratman - March 16, 2010
Saturday’s Music at the Mission chamber music concert, at Old Mission San Jose in Fremont, bore the title “Music in the Time of Turmoil: From Conflict to Redemption.” It featured a quartet for the end of time, and another quartet from after the end of time.
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Review

Repeat Counts as Pleasure

Be'eri Moalem - March 15, 2010
One of my favorite composition teachers once said, “Any buffoon can get a premiere. A real achievement is a repeat performance.”

Last May, I reviewed the Ives Quartet’s premiere of Dan Becker’s work Time Rising.

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Review

Strength and Grandeur

Jason Victor Serinus - March 15, 2010

Like the footsteps of a life partner, Beethoven’s music is heard so frequently that it’s easy to take it for granted. But listen to Austrian pianist Till Fellner’s ECM New Series CD of Beethoven’s Piano Concertos No. 4 and 5, performed with the Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal under Kent Nagano, and the love affair is renewed.

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Review

'Primal Light' Trumps Gigantism

Janos Gereben - March 13, 2010
Every time I hear what Gustav Mahler did not call his “Resurrection Symphony” — but others did — I think about what the work must have sounded like to the first listeners 115 years ago.