Reviews

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Review

Truths Out of Time

Jerry Kuderna - March 16, 2009

The pianist Rudolf Serkin took a year off from concertizing to study the Bach Cantatas because, as he said, “They are such beautiful music.” On hearing the American Bach Soloists perform four of them Saturday at the First Congregational Church in Berkeley, and after witnessing the vitality, spirit, and timeless human truths that they contain, I realized it would take a lifetime to fully get to know the wonders of this music.

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Review

The Best and the Beast

Jeff Dunn - March 16, 2009

It has been said that passion arouses the best and the beast in man. On Saturday, visiting conductor James Conlon’s passion for the music to Dmitri Shostakovich’s opera Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District unchained the beast in the music, and let it terrorize listeners in Davies Symphony Hall.

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Review

Pellucid Perfection

Anatole Leikin - March 16, 2009
The program that Evgeny Kissin played at Davies Symphony Hall on Thursday brought together Sergei Prokofiev, a flamboyant 20th-century extrovert — the “Russian Liszt” (as Francis Poulenc called him) — and Frederic Chopin, a reticent bard of the 19th-century piano.
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Review

Major Schubert

Lisa Hirsch - March 10, 2009
On Sunday, at Hertz Hall, the Takács Quartet played the second of their two Berkeley concerts this season. As with the first concert, an eminent guest joined the quartet. This time, we were lucky enough to hear Peter Wyrick, associate principal cellist of the San Francisco Symphony.
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Review

Ideas Many, Meals Few

Jeff Dunn - March 10, 2009
The Other Minds Festival of New Music should rightly be proud of its track record of bringing many "other" ideas of composers from all corners of the globe to the musical table. However, an interesting idea for an ingredient is one thing; a decent musical meal, another.
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Review

Music of Light and Shadow

Michelle Dulak Thomson - March 10, 2009

The seventh season of the San Francisco Conservatory's BluePrint Project had a deliberate political cast to it.

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Review

A Significant Find

Jeff Dunn - March 9, 2009
Valentine's day is past, and the bloom is off the rose. Thirty years past my first deep acquaintance with Brahms and Dvořák, after repeatedly relishing in their many sublime creations, and enjoying flings with even the least of their compositions, my Don Juan for them is waning.

Until now.

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Review

A Marvelous Curio

Heuwell Tircuit - March 9, 2009
Although the music of Olivier Messiaen is extremely popular these days, his songs are rarely encountered in live performance. Little wonder, for they're so overly demanding. Dramatic soprano Heidi Melton and pianist John Parr took on the major beast of the field, his largest cycle, Harawi, Sunday afternoon in Old First Church, and pulled off a triumph.
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Review

Wondrous Mechanism

Jessica Balik - March 9, 2009
Who is László Klangfarben, and what is a Schick Machine? Those were the two burning questions on the minds of audience and protagonist alike during Schick Machine, a theatrical and musical work commissioned by Stanford Lively Arts and premiered Saturday evening at Stanford’s Dinkelspiel Auditorium.
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Review

Charming Communicator

Jason Victor Serinus - March 9, 2009
How many tenors who hail from New Zealand can put across the Neapolitan songs of Francesco Paolo Tosti as if born and raised in southern Italy? James Benjamin Rodgers can.