Previews

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. 

Thanks to the 200th anniversary of Giuseppe Verdi’s birth, his Requiem, one of the most popular choral works of all time, is sure to figure in the Bay Area concert scene a number of times this year. 

For a famous violinist, Midori cuts an intentionally low profile, so you can be forgiven for not noticing that she will be performing a Bay Area recital soon, for San Francisco Performances.

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.

Genre-bending is the all-embracing category for the annual Switchboard Music Festival in San Francisco’s Mission District.

National music icon, Iranian singer Mohamad Reza Shajarian is celebrated for his ability to transform the beauty of Sufi poetry into music.

A new wind quintet, City of Tomorrow, aims to challenge the string quartet’s supremacy by bringing to light rarely heard chamber masterpieces, while encouraging the creation of more.

Cantare con Vivo is doing Sergei Rachmaninov’s deeply moving Vespers (All-Night Vigil) as their spring concert. 

Clerestory, the men’s choral group that is partly a spin-off from Chanticleer, is back in action on the weekend, with a program they’re calling “Bacchanalia”, a celebration of spring and music about springtime appetites.

When the exciting new music group Alarm Will Sound visits the Bay Area, tickets are normallyhard to find.