Reviews

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Review

Turnabout’s Unfair Play

Jeff Dunn - February 17, 2009

Two works on last Wednesday’s San Francisco Symphony program; two different conductors with the same name. Kurt Masur 1 nicely portrayed the manifold strengths of Sofia Gubaidulina’s composition The Light of the End, which he premiered with the Boston Symphony in 2003. Then Kurt Masur 2 came out after intermission and cruelly exposed all the flaws of Anton Bruckner’s Symphony No.

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Review

Life Patterns

Be'eri Moalem - February 10, 2009

A concert that features only one composer is a fascinating opportunity, not only to get a thorough picture of that composer’s style, but also to track changes in it over time. San Francisco State University’s 60th birthday retrospective of Richard Festinger presented what, to me, seemed like two different approaches to music — yet still in the same basic style. I later noticed that the two perceived methods came from two different time periods: one from the 1990s, the other from last few years.

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Review

Treading a Thin Line

Jason Victor Serinus - February 10, 2009
Danielle de Niese

There comes a time in every alluring young female singer’s life when it is time to grow up.

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Review

Terrific Timbres

William Quillen - February 10, 2009

Conductor David Robertson returned to San Francisco last week to lead the San Francisco Symphony in performances of Tchaikovsky, Sibelius, and Scriabin. Robertson once again showed his uncanny ability to summon forth rapturous sounds from this ensemble.

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Review

Operatic Mood Swings

Georgia Rowe - February 10, 2009

Così fan tutte is often described as an effervescent comedy, but beneath the froth is a deliciously dark and poignant vision of the human heart. There’s a happy ending in the 1790 Mozart–da Ponte dramma giocoso about a pair of besotted naval officers who enter into a wager to test the fidelity of their girlfriends.

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Review

When the Audience is the Congregation

Anna Carol Dudley - February 10, 2009

Heinrich Schütz suggested that his Musikalische Exequien could be a substitute for a German mass. Warren Stewart has taken him at his word, incorporating the work into a full-length church service. Stewart’s Magnificat, complete with two organs, a continuo group, and eight singers (including a preacher and a deacon), performed the mass Saturday night at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church in Berkeley. The so-called audience served as congregation, joining in on some verses of the chorales.

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Review

A Charming Tribute to Felix

Heuwell Tircuit - February 10, 2009

It was almost as if Herbst Theatre itself were smiling in delight Thursday as Nicholas McGegan and his Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra played a memorial tribute to Felix Mendelssohn’s bicentennial. The audience seemed even more delighted. Glancing up and down my aisle, I noted that every face had a broad expression of pure pleasure.

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Review

Names to Remember

Michelle Dulak Thomson - February 10, 2009

The Bay Area is blessed with enough music-lovers and enough enterprising concert presenters that few musicians spend long at the top rank without swinging through here on some tour or other. Still, I suppose I’m not alone among SFCV readers in anticipating the appearance of musicians I’ve read about (or heard on record), but who’ve not yet performed here.

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Review

Here Comes the Dawn

Thomas Busse - February 10, 2009

For the second time in a year, I have been fortunate enough to attend a chamber opera production superior to any work I have seen from the Bay Area’s smaller companies. The culprit was Composers Inc., a contemporary chamber music collective that expanded its forces last Wednesday to mount a staged chamber opera in San Francisco’s Herbst Theatre. On a diminutive budget, Composers Inc.

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Review

A Glass-Full Tenor

Janos Gereben - February 3, 2009
On Sunday, at Alek Shrader's Schwabacher Debut Recital in Temple Emanu-El, presented by the San Francisco Opera, I was wondering about the tenor's response if Barbara Walters should ask him what kind of tree he would be. Not knowing the answer, I came up with a question to which the answer is obvious. What kind of drinking glass would Shrader be? Tall, clear, gracefully simple, and full.