Reviews

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Review

Stravinsky's Plain Folks

William Quillen - October 28, 2008
The Oakland Opera delighted listeners Saturday with a double bill of Stravinsky's theatrical works, Histoire du Soldat (1918) and Renard (1916).
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Review

Challenge Fest

Jeff Dunn - October 28, 2008
On Thursday, guest conductor Fabio Luisi brought a program to the San Francisco Symphony season that challenged performers and listeners alike. First he conducted Richard Strauss' multifaceted tone poem Don Juan, demanding a tempo in the faster portions as high as this month's Investor Panic index. Could the orchestra hold on?

Beautifully Balanced

Lisa Hirsch - October 28, 2008
The Berkeley Symphony Orchestra is in the second year of its search for a music director to succeed Kent Nagano, who has led the orchestra since 1978.

Soloist Save

Noel Verzosa - October 28, 2008
On Sunday in Berkeley, the Jerusalem Symphony offered an evening of music by 20th-century Jewish composers, performing old favorites alongside works that have disappeared from the canon.
Review

Youthful Voices Rise

Heuwell Tircuit - October 28, 2008

The 30th anniversary season of the esteemed San Francisco Girls Chorus opened on Friday in Calvary Presbyterian Church. As usual, the chorus offered a terrific display of fine musicianship that traversed a complicated variety of musical styles. What else is new with this group? Even so, it was sometimes hard to fathom the precision and intonation with which these high school kids sang.

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Review

The Ives Have It

Be'eri Moalem - October 28, 2008
Any ensemble that calls itself the Ives Quartet had better not play like sissies, as Charles Ives himself would threaten. "I don't write music for sissy ears," he used to quip. When an audience member once booed a dissonant piece, he stood up and shouted back, "Stop being such a God-damned sissy!
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Review

Godunov, in Short

Janos Gereben - October 28, 2008
Not all Russians are alike. Modest Mussorgsky wrote big, earthshaking operas.
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Review

Reverberations

Noel Verzosa - October 28, 2008
In a tribute to the composer Elliott Carter's centenary birthday, Earplay devoted part of last Monday's concert at San Francisco's Herbst Theatre to his music and the rest to American composers.
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Review

Master and Commander

Heuwell Tircuit - October 21, 2008
Pianist Leon Fleisher returned to his native San Francisco for a celebration of his 80th year, with both hands working beautifully after a nearly 40-year layoff, due to his right hand, which partly died on him. The cause was a focal dystopia that brought on the dysfunction of two of his fingers.
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Review

Accepting Carmen's Challenge

Jason Victor Serinus - October 21, 2008
Why do so many folks disparage Bizet's Carmen? While certain pre-Freudian elements of its plot strain credulity, like Corporal Don José's instant obsession with the Gypsy woman Carmen and her final quest for death, Henri Meilhac and Jacques Halévy's libretto is far more believable than many.