Reviews

Formerly known as “A Bright New Trio,” pianist Joseph Kalichstein, violinist Jaime Laredo, and cellist Sharon Robinson have been together now for over three decades — and it shows, not only in their technical mastery as individual instrumentalists, but also in the subtle ways that great chamber ensembles mature.

What are music stands and electric guitars doing on the same stage? Purple lights along with sheet music? T-shirts and blue jeans plus violins and violas? A better question might be: Why should this still come as a surprise? For the Switchboard Music Festival continues to combine various distinct musical genres, amassing them into a day of performances.

Mark Winges, composer for and advisor to the chamber choir Volti, certainly knows how to initiate an intriguing conversation. The proof can be heard on his second CD, But This Is This. Released on the Chicago-based Centaur label, the music on this all-instrumental recording is a bona fide Bay Area effort.

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.

The March 25-28 concerts of the San Francisco Symphony, under guest conductor Vladimir Ashkenazy, offered a masterpiece, a super masterpiece, and one outright dud. Along the way, we heard a new wunderkind pianist and an up-and-coming bass-baritone as soloist, plus astounding mastery from the Symphony Chorus.

Valery Gergiev, one of the heavyweights on the international music scene, does have his detractors. Just within the context of his Sunday-Monday appearances in Davies Symphony Hall, leading the London Symphony Orchestra in two eventful concerts, there were numerous items possibly contradicting what may well be a general enthusiasm about the conductor.

The production may be unique, but it’s not just the computer animation, puppetry, and “authentic” musical approach that make this week's staging of a great Baroque opera so special.

The San Francisco Piano Quartet discovered American music on Sunday afternoon at the Noe Valley Ministry in the city, as part of the Noe Valley Chamber Music series. That is to say, they presented a program tracing the discovery of self-awareness of Americanism in the works of several generations of composers.