Heuwell Tircuit

My sister forwarded me a menu last week from an early 1950s Woolworth’s diner counter, which she intended to give me price shock.

You can hardly have more fun than by stumbling across quality music you didn't even know existed. Pianist Gary Graffman certainly provided a rich panoply of that Thursday in Palo Alto's St. Mark's Episcopal Church, via his recital titled "For the Left Hand." The event was presented as part of the important Music@Menlo Festival, to a packed and roaring audience.

Last Thursday’s San Francisco Symphony’s Summer in the City concert in Davies Symphony Hall turned into a light, but charming array of basic French fare, as conductor James Gaffigan went from opera excerpts to Ravel’s bitter take on the Viennese Waltz.

Two major masterpieces dominated Friday's opening of the annual Midsummer Mozart Festival as George Cleve conducted his merry band with two important soloists in Herbst Theatre. Each piece was a prelude to a somewhat lesser Mozartian work, but all of it was so well-presented that this hardly mattered. Cleve opened with the Divertimento No. 7 in D Major, K. 205, and the Piano Concerto No.

For his 50th birthday celebration Friday night, pianist Daniel Glover presented his Old First Church audience with a recital split right down the middle. His first half featured works of overly ripe Russian Romanticism, heavy on flashy piano writing but music of questionable worth.

Last weekend saw one of the most unusual events of the piano world, in San Francisco. This was the second Milton and Peggy Salkind International Piano Duo Festival. The three-day festival at the San Francisco Conservatory was packed with five programs devoted to unusual as well as standard works for two pianos, piano duos, and a variety of music for chamber combinations.

Russian music is internationally popular and much programmed. But for last week's San Francisco Symphony concerts under guest conductor David Robertson, we got three masterpieces by Slavic composers born west of Russia: a Pole, a Slovak, and a Czech.

A bit quixotically, the San Francisco Symphony Youth Orchestra's "Bon Voyage" program, offered Sunday in Davies Symphony Hall, took on three demanding symphonic monsters from early last century. Conductor Benjamin Shwartz's program turned out to be a little less than I had hoped for, but better than I had feared.

On Friday evening, Old First Church featured the local debut of America’s newest chamber group devoted to promoting new music, New York’s Redshift quintet. The ensemble is especially idealistic in that it avoids big-name composers in favor of up-and-coming hopefuls. And this, while setting forth those intentions enthusiastically for every piece in sight: hook, line, and stinkers.

Nothing about cellist Lynn Harrell's two all-Bach recitals last week in Grace Cathedral could be called ordinary, except for his insightful virtuosity. First and most strikingly, those performances of J.S. Bach's six highbrow Suites for unaccompanied cello, BWV 1007-1012, were presented as part of the four-month jazz festival, titled the 9th Annual SFJAZZ Spring Season.