Recital

Kurt Weill and several of his cabaret contemporaries from the “Roaring Twenties” in Berlin roared into the Martin Meyer Sanctuary at Temple Emanu-El Sunday afternoon.

Like other great countertenors before him, David Daniels established his career singing works from the Baroque repertoire. Since then, he’s made a point of expanding his horizons — and the public’s perception of what the high male voice type can do — with composers from other eras up to the present.

A rare opportunity to hear one of the 20th century’s underplayed composers. Though Niccolò Castiglioni (1932-1996) isn’t often mentioned in histories of 20th-century music, his music seems more contemporary than many composers who are.

One of the best-planned and at the same time oddest-looking piano recitals I’ve ever encountered is coming up two Sundays hence, in San Francisco’s Herbst Theatre. There, the distinguished French pianist Pascal Rogé will play a survey of basic French piano music from 1830 (Chopin’s Op. 10 Étude No. 1) to 1929 (Poulenc’s First Nocturne).

Hans von Bülow once described Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier and Beethoven’s 32 Piano Sonatas as the Old and New Testaments of music.

The last two decades have not been easy for Murray Perahia. Complications from the much-publicized cut to his right thumb, followed by surgery for a bone spur, have continued to haunt him, causing at least rounds of cancellations. But Perahia has reacted to his misfortune by embracing his challenges as opportunities for growth. He initially devoted his hiatus to deep study of the works of J.S.

Although the music of Olivier Messiaen is extremely popular these days, his songs are rarely encountered in live performance. Little wonder, for they're so overly demanding. Dramatic soprano Heidi Melton and pianist John Parr took on the major beast of the field, his largest cycle, Harawi, Sunday afternoon in Old First Church, and pulled off a triumph.