Reviews

Review

White-Hot, and New

Lisa Hirsch - February 12, 2008

Reputations are funny things. In the classical music world, technical virtuosity can lead to charges of superficiality or emotional coldness. Some listeners, especially opera fans of a particular ilk, prefer guts and heart to good intonation and steady tone. The great Jascha Heifetz had a reputation for playing with more technical perfection than musical soul; today, both Maurizio Pollini and the Emerson String Quartet have sometimes been labeled cold.

Grand Tour of the Unorthodox

Heuwell Tircuit - February 12, 2008
An encouragingly large and enthusiastic audience turned out Monday evening in Herbst Theatre for a serious, handsomely chosen program of new chamber music presented by the expanded Earplay ensemble.
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Review

Brahms: It's What's for Dinner

Michelle Dulak Thomson - February 12, 2008
There's concert programming as science, programming as art — and programming as pure, primal indulgence.

Renaissance Faire

Joseph Sargent - February 12, 2008
In an increasingly crowded field of Bay Area choral ensembles, certain groups have devised creative methods of garnering attention.

Musical Alchemy

Jonathan Wilkes - February 5, 2008
The San Francisco Contemporary Music Players performed its first concert of 2008 on Monday. Some last-minute changes to the program affected its theme, as the “Strongbox of American Music” was pried open to accommodate British and French composers who live in the U.S.
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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.