Reviews

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Review

Walking a Tightrope

Michelle Dulak Thomson - February 5, 2008
Grateful though we must be for the continual flow of new, exciting young ensembles to Bay Area concert halls, it's another and possibly greater pleasure when the most impressive of them drop in a second time.
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Review

Fill 'er Up

Janice Berman - February 5, 2008
Virgil Thomson isn't the composer who pops automatically to mind when you think of dance, but he was a major presence at San Francisco Ballet over the weekend.
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Review

Illuminating Inspirations

Brett Campbell - February 5, 2008

The next time I hear someone bewailing the moribund state of classical music, I'll point them to the Herbst Theatre, where last Saturday morning (a dreary day) a couple hundred music lovers paid to hear a couple of string quartets and an hour of explanation about them.

Wild Ride on Horn and Hide

Jonathan Russell - February 5, 2008
Swedish trumpeter Håkan Hardenberger and British percussionist Colin Currie offered a virtuosic and highly polished performance last Tuesday at Herbst Theatre in San Francisco.

A Beautiful Müllerin

Janos Gereben - February 5, 2008
Schubert’s song cycle Die Schöne Müllerin may be the richest treatment of a simple story in all music. Young man loves the miller's daughter, she prefers a hunter, young man drowns himself in the brook — and that's all there is. And yet, for some 70 minutes, there is a universe of variety and beauty unfolding before the listener.
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Review

Joyous Eclecticism

Michelle Dulak Thomson - February 5, 2008
In a Bay Area music scene crammed full of resolute, relentless eclectics, the Del Sol Quartet stands out less for packing bewilderingly various elements into its programs than for doing it with such ease and stylishness.
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Review

Fierce Winds

Mark Wardlaw - February 5, 2008

Chamber Music is alive and well in Mill Valley — even on Super Bowl Sunday. Even during the Super Bowl. Improbable as this may seem, a near-capacity audience eschewed the day’s customary revelries in favor of a highly polished and at times wildly exhilarating performance by the superb Zephyros Winds.

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Review

Honoring Vaughan Williams

Heuwell Tircuit - February 5, 2008

For the 11th Basically British program Friday evening in Old First Church, the series’ founder, John Parr, chose to honor the memory of Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958). Parr is head of the San Francisco Opera’s music staff, so he invited the young tenor Thomas Glenn, recently of the company’s Adler Fellowship program, to sing.

Graced by a Lotus

Benjamin Frandzel - February 5, 2008
The Berkeley Symphony's Zellerbach Hall season opened last Thursday with Kent Nagano, departing music director, at the helm for his only performance with the full orchestra this year.

Warhorses at a Trot

Lisa Hirsch - February 5, 2008
Once upon a time, a symphony-goer would regularly find concerts on an orchestra's schedule consisting of an overture, a concerto, and a popular warhorse or two, light programs notable more for their entertainment value than substance.