Heuwell Tircuit

Heuwell Tircuit is a composer, performer, and writer who was chief writer for Gramophone Japan and for 21 years a music reviewer for the San Francisco Chronicle. He wrote previously for Chicago American and the Asahi Evening News.

Articles By This Author

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Feature

Remembering Sam

Heuwell Tircuit - March 2, 2010
The yin and yang of musical fashions and fads shift every 20 or 25 years, and always have done. In the 1950s, concert music fledged itself from new music in traditional tonal style and notation toward an increasing respect for serial music, and in the process up popped Elliot Carter, John Cage, Luciano Berio, Pierre Boulez, and the like.
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Review

British Radiance

Heuwell Tircuit - February 15, 2010
There was nothing of English pastoralism on Friday’s all-British program by the San Francisco Symphony, under guest conductor Charles Dutoit. The two 20th-century works offered a nearly tactile brilliance all evening long, aided and abetted by the orchestra’s concertmaster, Alexander Barantschik, and, in the closing minutes, by the wordless, offstage women of the S.F.
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Review

Subtle Symphonic Surprises

Heuwell Tircuit - January 23, 2010
Thursday’s program of the San Francisco Symphony, under Michael Tilson Thomas, offered something new in my concert experience. Noting that the two works on the first half of the program were rather glum, MTT said he wanted to open with something lighter.
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Review

Precision Plus

Heuwell Tircuit - January 5, 2010

Piano fans will find much of interest from the new two-piano release of Martha Argerich and Nelson Freire, drawn from live performance at last summer’s Salzburg Festival. Their programming consists of two staples, Brahms’ Haydn Variations, Op. 56b, and Schubert’s Rondo in A Major, D. 951, plus two uncommon transcriptions: Rachmaninov’s Symphonic Dances, Op.

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Review

Try a Little Tenderness

Heuwell Tircuit - November 16, 2009
The normally high standards of the San Francisco Symphony Youth Orchestra were only dimly in evidence Sunday afternoon in Davies Symphony Hall.
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Review

First-Rate Russian at S.F. Symphony

Heuwell Tircuit - November 9, 2009
Leaving Davies Symphony Hall Sunday afternoon at the conclusion of the San Francisco Symphony’s all-Sergei Rachmaninov program, I was wondering if I’d put on weight merely by listening to it.
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Review

A Marvel to Behold

Heuwell Tircuit - October 26, 2009
Apparently, no one has informed the San Francisco Girls Chorus that what they are doing is impossible, so they just do it — and very well, too.
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Review

Pulling Out All the Stops, and Then Some

Heuwell Tircuit - October 20, 2009

This new release of piano trios by Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninov features three virtuoso musicians delivering gushy music gushily. In a way, this likely was the way this music was played in its own day, minus emotive restraint. This can almost be considered to be a recording as a historical study, free of the sometimes exaggerated objectivity of contemporary performances.

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Review

A Few Zesty Surprises

Heuwell Tircuit - October 9, 2009
Applause broke out at unexpected times Wednesday evening in Davies Symphony Hall as guest conductor David Robertson wowed the San Francisco Symphony audience.
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Feature

Music Close to the Heart: Why I Love Chamber Music

Heuwell Tircuit - October 6, 2009
All kinds of instrumental combinations occur in classical music, though chamber music is by far the most diverse, in terms of instrumentation and variety. If you’ve shunned this area, you’re missing out on much of the world’s greatest music, since many composers have poured their finest concepts into chamber music, especially the string quartet.