Reviews

When, in the winter of our discontent, carols are pressed into the service of commerce in stores and TV commercials, it is refreshing to hear a concert focused on peace, the core of the original Christmas story. Such a concert was provided Saturday by Voci Women's Vocal Ensemble, at St. Mary Magdalen Parish in Berkeley.

A music teacher returned to his old school on Saturday night, three decades after writing his breakout piece there, and the brilliant concert that took place exceeded all expectations of such an occasion.

Continuing a long-standing tradition, the San Francisco Bach Choir presented a joyful holiday program on Saturday night. The large sanctuary of Calvary Presbyterian Church in San Francisco resounded with Renaissance and early Baroque works, as well as traditional music of the season. SFBC's program, titled "Psallite!

Programming contemporary works with standard repertoire seems tricky: The danger is that the new, unfamiliar piece might easily sound like commentary on the towering masterwork.

The Takács Quartet favored the Bay Area with fairly regular visits even before our own Geraldine Walther became a member in 2005, but in these last two years we have, gratifyingly, heard a lot of them.

The current San Francisco Opera production of Madama Butterfly is pure Puccini perfection. Casting, conducting, and stage design are so ideally aligned that this is one of the most satisfying productions that I have ever experienced. Foremost is the superior interpretation of Patricia Racette.

One thing’s for certain: Alarm Will Sound wants its audience to have a good time. Committed to what the group describes as "innovative performances of today’s music,” the former artists-in-residence at Dickinson College (Carlisle, Penn.) often indulge in a host of choreographed visual effects more associated with rock and pop ensembles than with classical music.

With Thanksgiving a hazy memory, the first few weekends of December arrive with a whiteout blizzard of Christmas concerts from choruses large and small, professional and amateur. The air is still and chill all of a sudden, and you can feel genuine euphoria about town as the sounds of familiar carols deck the halls — even Bing Crosby's White Christmas sounds novel and cheery.

One of the most satisfying experiences you can have at a concert consists of being forced to reexamine your own attitude toward a piece of music. I had just such an experience on Friday, at the San Francisco Symphony's performance of Dmitri Shostakovich's Fifth Symphony.

Avoiding the obvious, the California Bach Society offered a delightfully refreshing program of Christmas music Friday evening in St. Mark's Lutheran Church in San Francisco. Director-scholar Paul Flight chose a program largely devoted to the neglected Baroque master Marc-Antoine Charpentier, plus a few traditional French noëls and brief visits to the music of Hector Berlioz and Antoine Brumel.