Preposterous but true: My two best memories of Gounod's Faust performances come from a gala occasion in Paris 34 years ago and a small regional company's premiere of it on Saturday. A world-class event and Walnut Creek's Festival Opera each hit the spot in its own way.
Ten years ago, when Michael Steinberg retired as the San Francisco Symphony's program annotator and music advisor, he had a farewell essay in the program, entitled "Why We Are Here." It is also part of the book For the Love of Music Steinberg cowrote with Larry Rothe, his long-time colleague at SFS.
The Festival del Sole concert Thursday in Napa’s Castello di Amorosa was an exception to the conventional structure of a concert. It consisted of two unrelated sections, each featuring a big star, and felt like two separate musical events. The two featured performers could not have been more different, not that there is anything wrong with that, but the concert was indeed unusual.
Chronologically and in many other ways, it’s a long way from Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847) to Pierre Jalbert (born in 1967), but Music at Menlo will bring the two together.
John Adams’ Doctor Atomic Symphony is an orchestral reduction, the soundtrack in a sense of his 2005 opera. The work presents episodes from the opera, with three movements titled “The Laboratory,” “Panic,” and “Trinity.”
The biggest and best summer festival of classical music is in session, and available — free — to everyone with a computer. (Or, in the U.K.
