Chamber Music

Sometimes it’s good to venture out to the boundaries, find out what’s going on on the wild side of music. The annual Outsound Festival of experimental and improvisational music is as good a time as any to do this exploration. 

Eos Ensemble, made up of members of the San Francisco Opera and Ballet Orchestras, celebrates their 10th anniversary with a Beethoven perennial, the Septet and Stravinsky’s laconic, darkly humorous Soldier’s Tale.

It has become a tradition for Chamber Music San Francisco to offer the Brandenburg Concertos on Mother’s Day weekend. 

The Ives Quartet has an interesting way of sandwiching the most novel or interesting piece between two standard masterworks. 

The Tokyo String Quartet formed in 1969 will have one set of its farewell concerts at Chamber Music San Francisco.

Some people don’t know when to quit, and sometimes that’s a good thing. 

New Century Chamber Orchestra is presenting a top-drawer concert that expertly mixes orchestra and chamber music, showcasing the versatility, that is the chamber orchestra’s trademark.

If you heard Handel’s Messiah at Grace Cathedral last December, you may be interested in the arrival of the New College Choir from Oxford, which sings J.S. Bach’s St. John Passion at Grace on Good Friday.

In his quest to illuminate the life work of Robert Schumann, the fascinating pianist Jonathan Biss has enlisted the Elias String Quartet to pair Schumann’s string quartet and piano quartet in E-flat, with Henry Purcell’s string fantasias. 

The Australian Chamber Orchestra and their dynamic leader, Richard Tognetti return  to Cal Performances for a wide-ranging pair of programs, featuring pianist Alice Sara Ott in Shostakovich’s Piano Concerto No. 1.