Chamber Music

Although he’s recorded the Christmas repertoire before, most of us haven’t had the chance to witness him delivering it live, and it’ll be bound to raise goose bumps, regardless of the weather.

The Uruguayan six-string virtuoso masterfully interprets music from Bach to contemporary guitar.

The New EsterházyQuartet, having run out of Haydn a couple years back, is focusing now on his contemporaries and pupils. November’s set includes a Haydn quartet, a Beethoven quartet (the formidably dark Opus 95), and quartets by Anton Reicha and Nicolas Zmeskall.

In November, the Mill Valley Chamber Music Society presents Concertante, a well-established string ensemble that last year finished an impressive two-year commissioning project.

The South Bay's major premiere of the season is a new work by the leading Argentinian-born composer Osvaldo Golijov, performed by the St. Lawrence String Quartet in the Stanford Lively Arts series.

The Cypress String Quartet is bringing in renowned cellist Gary Hoffman to help them play Schubert's masterpiece, the String Quintet in C Major.

In recital at Old First Concerts this weekend, cellist Robert Howard (San Francisco Symphony, Philharmonia Baroque) and his duo partner Elizabeth Dorman offer a variety of interesting music beginning with one of my personal faves, Toru Takemitsu (Orion).

It was well worth the wait, to hear the Pražák Quartet’s fleet take on the Borodin Second Quartet.

Philip Glass has got a pick-up band of all stars ready for his inaugural Days and Nights Festival in Carmel Valley. The first weekend features Glass' compositions paired with works by Franz Schubert and Dmitri Shostakovich. Personally, if forced to pick one, I'd opt for Saturday night at Hidden Valley, with Glass' String Quartet No. 5 paired with Schubert's evergreen Piano Trio in B-Flat, D. 898.

If you're wondering about the increasing coverage of jazz in the virtual pages of SFCV – more on this later – it's because jazz is classical music (not just America's classical music). Think about it: long-form instrumental pieces with lots of harmonic and rhythmic complexity (some of that derived from those European dead white males); small, niche market of enthusiasts; a repertoire of bedrock, classic pieces, which musicians reinterpret over and over again; casual listeners may find it “difficult”. What am I describing, traditional classical or traditional jazz?