Reviews

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Review

Messiaen in Context

Heuwell Tircuit - November 18, 2008

Jumping the gun a bit, ChamberBridge presented three programs of music by Olivier Messiaen, his associates, and major family members Saturday in Old First Church. The programs were set up to honor Messiaen's centennial — which actually occurs on the 10th of next month. The survey was most unusual, as festivals go, since relatively little of the composer's actual works appeared amid the programs, set forward under the rubric of "Messiaen Illuminated."

Breaking Down Walls

Jessica Balik - November 18, 2008
By definition, contemporaneity is an integral component of new music. But contemporary circumstances obviously engulf more than musical concerns: From war to the environment to the financial crisis, there are plenty of present-day issues that have nothing to do with music.
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Review

Beauty All Around

Be'eri Moalem - November 18, 2008
Most of Stanford Lively Arts' concert presentations avoid Memorial Church, perhaps because its acoustics are a bit too lively. But cellist Christopher Costanza finds the church's atmosphere "absolutely perfect ...

Love and All That Jazz

Jason Victor Serinus - November 18, 2008
On the face of it, there may seem to be little in common between George Antheil's A Jazz Symphony, the world premiere of Nathaniel Stookey and Dan Harder's ZIPPERZ: A soaPOPera, and Sergei Prokofiev's suites from Romeo and Juliet. But on Friday Michael Morgan and his Oakland East Bay Symphony knew something that their enthusiastic Paramount Theater audience was
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Review

Entrancing Trios

Jules Langert - November 18, 2008
The Left Coast Chamber Ensemble began its season with a program blending the (relatively) old and the new.

Wild Variety, Common Threads

Michelle Dulak Thomson - November 11, 2008
Someone at San Francisco Performances is keen on completeness.
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Review

Twists in the Road

Georgia Rowe - November 11, 2008
One of the charges frequently leveled against regional orchestras is that they program only the tried and true. While this may be on point in some instances — particularly in these tough economic times — the Santa Rosa Symphony's November program was both adventurous and free of filler.
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Review

Love Comes in at the Eye

Jaime Robles - November 11, 2008
The libretto of Gaetano Donizetti's 1832 opera L'elisir d'amore (The elixir of love) has wide appeal. Many of us have suffered the torture of being in love with someone who doesn't know we exist, and worse, wouldn't be interested if they did.

Musician Impossible

Heuwell Tircuit - November 11, 2008
Every so often I come across a musical event that defies all logic. That was the case Sunday afternoon as Benjamin Shwartz conducted the San Francisco Symphony's Youth Orchestra and a 13-year-old boy soloist through a performance of the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto that would be the envy of any leading virtuoso.
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Review

Celebrating Devotion and Love

David Bratman - November 11, 2008
Masterworks Chorale, of San Mateo, stuffed Mozart's great big Mass in C Minor, K. 427, into the small confines of Trinity Presbyterian Church in San Carlos on Sunday afternoon. A lively and exciting time was had by all. It's easy to make a secularly appreciative remark like that about this Mass, which Mozart wrote in a burst of enthusiasm over his wedding to Constanze Weber.