The transformation in the title of Yuja Wang's latest recording does not refer to her playing. Just as in her recitals and appearances with orchestras — more than a hundred each year — she sounds powerful but never loud, brilliant without arrogance, and always, always serving the music first, eliminating all the superficial stuff that so often plagues pianists.
As someone coming from that neck of the woods, I will walk the plank with this about Eastern Europe: Notwithstanding the many splendid composers of the region, it has not done well as a source of great operas.
Every time I hear what Gustav Mahler did not call his “Resurrection Symphony” — but others did — I think about what the work must have sounded like to the first listeners 115 years ago.
Yerba Buena Center for the Arts is running the second annual Dream House Raffle, a big fund-raising lottery with the grand prize a San Francisco house valued at $3 million or $1.5 million in cash.