Dan Leeson

Dan Leeson is a retired businessman, a former member of the now defunct San Jose Symphony, and a historical musicologist with some 50 publications in major journals and four books on Mozart, including the novel The Mozart Forgeries.

Articles By This Author

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Review

Perfection Meets Awe

Dan Leeson - February 26, 2010
At the February 25 San Francisco Symphony matinee, Conductor Laureate Herbert Blomstedt led the orchestra in two polar opposite symphonic masterpieces.
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Review

Boccherini, That Chamber Music Renegade

Dan Leeson - January 10, 2010
On the surface, Friday’s program for a concert at Palo Alto’s First Lutheran Church looked peculiar. The concert consisted of four works, all with the same instrumentation — two violins, one viola, two cellos — all written by the same late-18th- and early-19th-century composer; one who is not perceived as being among the hot shots of classical chamber music.
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Review

Splendors of the Jon/Jon Duo

Dan Leeson - November 21, 2009

On Friday, the remarkable duo of clarinetist Jon Manasse and pianist Jon Nakamatsu gave a sensational recital of works that covered the period from the first half of the 19th century to a celebratory composition written for the centennial of Benny Goodman’s birth, which occurs this year.

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Review

Menlo-Atherton Concert Hall Strikes Gold

Dan Leeson - October 12, 2009
Sunday afternoon’s inaugural performance at the sumptuous new Center for the Performing Arts at Menlo-Atherton opened both eyes and ears.
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Review

Good Vibrations

Dan Leeson - July 28, 2009
Following what I had expected to be the preconcert lecture for the Music@Menlo evening presentation of "Midsummer Night Dreams," I found myself listening to an extravagant performance of the Dvořák Terzetto in C Major, followed by a breathtaking presentation of Brahms' Clarinet Trio in A Minor.
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Review

Schubert and Mozart Supplant Bach in Carmel

Dan Leeson - July 24, 2009

In two programs Wednesday at the Carmel Bach Festival, Schubert and Mozart came to the fore. In the first concert, an afternoon performance at the Church of the Wayfarer in downtown Carmel, baritone Sanford Sylvan and fortepianist David Breitman presented a program of Schubertiana, consisting of three lieder and two impromptus for piano.

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Review

The Perfect Score

Dan Leeson - May 9, 2009

Some orchestral programs are naturally perfect — the compositions are linked by friendly key relationships, similar temperaments, and compatible styles.

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Review

Mixed Message

Dan Leeson - April 13, 2009

For its 2008-2009 season finale on Saturday, the San Francisco Chamber Orchestra, under Benjamin Simon’s effective direction, presented an eclectic program with a theme of “Bach to Bach” — meaning, of course, that the concert would both begin and end with a Bach composition, though the finale was a very different kind of Bach.

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Review

In Honor of Lincoln

Dan Leeson - February 3, 2009
The second of four programs designed to celebrate the 10th anniversary season of the Ives Quartet had, as its theme, "With an American Voice." Terrific idea. Imaginative programming! The players, Bettina Mussumeli and Susan Freier, violins, Jodi Levitz, viola, and Stephen Harrison, cello, are a unified force that shows some brilliant playing. While the program, presented at St.
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Review

Four, And More

Dan Leeson - January 27, 2009

In the second of its three performances on Stanford Lively Arts' 2008-2009 season, the St. Lawrence String Quartet practically tore the house down with the final number of its program. For Sunday's Dinkelspiel recital, the quartet invited back two of its former members. The quartet on its own set itself a tough assignment in the middle of the program, but it was the Dvořák Sextet at concert's end that raised the roof.