Reviews

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Review

Marian Devotion From Scandinavia

Anna Carol Dudley - March 27, 2007

Trio Mediæval returned in triumph to San Francisco on Sunday night. The Trio continues to produce hit recordings, and we are lucky that San Francisco Performances has had the wisdom to present them two years ago and again this year. In Herbst Theatre its program of religious music, grounded in 12th- and 13th-century Roman Catholic music, was expanded to include early nonliturgical music and new settings of ancient texts, as well as traditional Norwegian hymns.

Review

Setting the Bar in Beethoven

Michelle Dulak Thomson - March 27, 2007
Ah, a Takács Quartet recital. Another few months gone (the violist-groupie in me thinks), another rare chance to hear Geraldine Walther play. Only I find that I'm not really thinking about the Takács' visits like that anymore. Walther is a great violist, but the Takács with her in it is something more interesting — a great quartet, and one that seems to become greater by the minute.
Review

Setting the Bar in Beethoven

Michelle Dulak Thomson - March 27, 2007
Ah, a Takács Quartet recital. Another few months gone (the violist-groupie in me thinks), another rare chance to hear Geraldine Walther play. Only I find that I'm not really thinking about the Takács' visits like that anymore. Walther is a great violist, but the Takács with her in it is something more interesting — a great quartet, and one that seems to become greater by the minute.

Shining Early Cantatas

Kathryn Miller - March 27, 2007
When you think of imagery and text painting in Baroque music, you are likely to think first of the era’s early Italian composers and the madrigal tradition. The American Bach Soloists, however, remind us that despite his reputation as a composer of highly technical and complex music, J.S.

Neoclassical Temperaments

Jules Langert - March 27, 2007
Everything came together beautifully in the finale of Thursday’s concert by the New Century Chamber Orchestra at St. John’s Presbyterian Church in Berkeley, and it was Paul Hindemith’s strikingly original concerto for piano and strings, The Four Temperaments, that was the catalyst.

A Mendelssohn Masterpiece Receives Its Due

Heuwell Tircuit - March 27, 2007
Rarely do audiences anywhere get the chance to hear any full-scale choral-orchestral works other than the Messiah, which tyrannically monopolizes the Christmas season. So last Thursday’s performance of Mendelssohn’s masterful oratorio Elijah, with the inestimable strengths of conductor Herbert Blomstedt, formed the high point of at least my season.

Beautifully Unsatisfying

Be'eri Moalem - March 27, 2007
The casinolike Paramount Theatre in downtown Oakland is an architectural marvel. Its Art Deco interior, if not beautiful or elegant, is bold and stunning. The opposite was true of the music at the Oakland East Bay Symphony’s concert on Friday night — it was mostly beautiful and elegant, but not bold and stunning.

The Unbearable Lightness of Music

Jeff Rosenfeld - March 27, 2007

To say we heard Martin Fröst play the clarinet at San Francisco’s Herbst Theatre on Thursday would be an understatement. We came to see his San Francisco Performances debut, and in return he made us see how music can defy gravity.