Reviews

The didactic imperative runs deep, if gentle, at Music@Menlo. Every season and indeed every program boasts a design, one calculated to make the audience hear anew, or differently, or both.

Last Thursday’s San Francisco Symphony’s Summer in the City concert in Davies Symphony Hall turned into a light, but charming array of basic French fare, as conductor James Gaffigan went from opera excerpts to Ravel’s bitter take on the Viennese Waltz.

The best thing about the Carmel Bach Festival, besides that it's in Carmel, is that, as Calvin used to say to Hobbes, "The days are just packed." Except that, unlike Calvin's day, one at the festival really is packed.

The second installment of this season's Midsummer Mozart Festival took off on Thursday at Mission Santa Clara. Unlike the first program, this concert featured only two works — and for good reason. The Serenade for 12 wind instruments and a double bass, K.

Billed as "Classics to Moderns" 1910-2008, the duo of Sarn Oliver and Robert Pollock presented a program of solid, if seldom played, masterpieces Sunday at the Berkeley Hillside Club as part of its concert series, in association with Ebb & Flow Arts.

Suffering hath no season. Perhaps that’s why, on a beautiful summer’s day just warm enough for short sleeves, the Carmel Bach Festival programmed baritone Sanford Sylvan performing, in shirt sleeves, Schubert’s chilling song cycle, Der Winterreise (Winter’s journey). It was no small challenge, on such a lovely day, to conjure Schubert's bare, desolate, emotional landscapes.

The third annual Festival del Sole came to an impressive conclusion Sunday afternoon at the Lincoln Theater in Yountville, with the Dallas Symphony Orchestra under its dynamic new music director, Jaap van Zweden, performing an all-Mahler program capped by a forceful, streamlined performance of the composer's Symphony No.

Often the repertoire and locale of summer festivals seem, on first glance, a disconcerting mix, as the music we are used to hearing in a formal concert hall setting doesn’t smoothly combine with bucolic surroundings.

Few rock concerts are as eventful as the Wagner-Mozart-Bach presentation at Festival del Sole last Thursday turned out to be. The news included the disruptive effects of a Presidental visit and roadblock, a serious injury to the conductor/violinist the day before the concert, and a near-catastrophic memory lapse by the pianist.

From Beethoven to Wagner to Schoenberg, Johann Sebastian Bach influenced the subsequent course of Western music. Everybody knows that. Particularly influential is Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier. This work consists of two volumes, each of which features one prelude and one fugue in every major and minor key.