Reviews

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Review

Vänskä Victory

Georgia Rowe - October 30, 2009

Osmo Vänskä saved the best for last in his most recent guest appearance with the San Francisco Symphony. Wednesday night at Davies Symphony Hall, the Finnish conductor introduced his second program in two weeks, achieving his most dynamic and cohesive results with this orchestra to date.

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Review

Dohnányi to the Fore

Robert P. Commanday - October 27, 2009
The San Francisco Symphony’s Chamber Music Series, offered most Sunday afternoons, is a dependable bet. There, members of the Symphony emerge as individuals from orchestral submersion and can be heard doing what they most like to do, as best they can.
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Review

Bryn Terfel Sinks the British Isles

Jason Victor Serinus - October 26, 2009

As powerful as bass-baritone Bryn Terfel’s voice is, it’s not strong enough to sink the British Isles by itself.

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Review

A New, Virtuosic Cadenza

David Bratman - October 26, 2009
Cadenza is a well-known term in classical music, and now it’s also the name of a local orchestra.
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Review

Only Some Clothes Fit

Jeff Dunn - October 26, 2009
Wouldn’t it be nice if each composer on a program could have his own, ideal interpreter?
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Review

A Marvel to Behold

Heuwell Tircuit - October 26, 2009
Apparently, no one has informed the San Francisco Girls Chorus that what they are doing is impossible, so they just do it — and very well, too.
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Review

Lieder Highs

Jason Victor Serinus - October 22, 2009
It was a night of opposites. For the first half of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music’s semi-annual Lieder Alive concert series in SFCM’s Concert Hall, we had tenor Eleazar Rodriguez, a 2009 Merola Opera participant who is compact of voice and frame.
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Review

Nimble New Voice in the Juilliard Quartet

Michelle Dulak Thomson - October 20, 2009
The introduction of a new player into a venerable chamber ensemble is always a touchy thing; you can never quite be sure what sort of entity will emerge at the end of the process, how much or how little it will resemble the group you once knew. That goes doubly for the leaders of string quartets.
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Review

Pulling Out All the Stops, and Then Some

Heuwell Tircuit - October 20, 2009

This new release of piano trios by Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninov features three virtuoso musicians delivering gushy music gushily. In a way, this likely was the way this music was played in its own day, minus emotive restraint. This can almost be considered to be a recording as a historical study, free of the sometimes exaggerated objectivity of contemporary performances.

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Review

Pan-Cultural Beauty and Longing for Kim Kashkashian

Jason Victor Serinus - October 19, 2009

Award-winning producer Manfred Eicher’s transcendent vision for his ECM New Series recordings defies simple categorization. A case in point is violist Kim Kashkashian's Neharót, a collection of unusual, oft-rarefied pieces that transcend national and genre boundaries, the recording touches the heart with its universal expressions of longing and prayer.