Lisa Hirsch

Lisa Hirsch is a Bay Area music writer. She studied music at Brandeis and Stony Brook and blogs about classical music and opera at Iron Tongue of Midnight.

Articles By This Author

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Preview

Puppets and Gender Bending in the Baroque Style

Lisa Hirsch - September 28, 2009
When is an opera not an opera? When it’s the opening work in a grand entertainment for visiting royalty ...
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Feature

The Season Ahead: A Preview of Fall Concerts

David Bratman, Georgia Rowe, Janos Gereben, Jason Victor Serinus, Jeff Dunn, Lisa Hirsch, Michelle Dulak Thomson, Scott Cmiel - September 6, 2009

With autumn upon us, the Bay Area's classical music groups are tuning up for hundreds of intriguing events. San Francisco Classical Voice asked several of our critics and editors to comb through the performance announcements available to date and pick their favorite choices for September through December.

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Artist Spotlight

An Interview With Patricia Racette, Coming Home in Three Guises

Lisa Hirsch - September 6, 2009

Soprano Patricia Racette is in town for an important role debut: She’s singing all three soprano leads in Puccini's Il trittico at San Francisco Opera, a feat only a few have tried. She took time out from rehearsals to talk about her career, her plans, and her life with mezzo-soprano Beth Clayton, her partner of many years.

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Review

Hearing Haydn

Lisa Hirsch - June 15, 2009
Over the last couple of decades, René Jacobs has assembled a catalog of recordings as a conductor, a major change from his earlier career as a famed countertenor. The bicentennial of Franz Josef Haydn’s death brings a happy pairing of composer and conductor, on a Harmonia Mundi disc featuring the symphonies No. 91 in E-flat Major and No.
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Review

Navigating Songs

Lisa Hirsch - April 26, 2009
Members of New York’s venerable Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center are spending April touring a program called American Voices. Thursday at Herbst Theatre, the centerpiece of the program, which spans the 18th to 21st centuries, was a new song cycle by Alan Louis Smith, Vignettes: Covered Wagon Woman.
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Review

Major Schubert

Lisa Hirsch - March 10, 2009
On Sunday, at Hertz Hall, the Takács Quartet played the second of their two Berkeley concerts this season. As with the first concert, an eminent guest joined the quartet. This time, we were lucky enough to hear Peter Wyrick, associate principal cellist of the San Francisco Symphony.
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Review

Brother and Sister Act

Lisa Hirsch - February 17, 2009

Classical music has had a few notable sibling acts in its history. Wolfgang and Nannerl Mozart toured as duo pianists; violinist Yehudi and pianist Hephzibah Menuhin performed recitals together.

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Review

Playing a Sweeter Music

Lisa Hirsch - January 27, 2009

Piano recitals don't often come with a title, beyond the ubiquitous "Famous Pianist Plays Chopin and Brahms." Sarah Cahill took the name of her recital, and her commissioning project, from the lecture Martin Luther King Jr. gave on receiving the Nobel Peace Prize: "We must see that peace represents a sweeter music, a cosmic melody, that is far superior to the discords of war."

Beautifully Balanced

Lisa Hirsch - October 28, 2008
The Berkeley Symphony Orchestra is in the second year of its search for a music director to succeed Kent Nagano, who has led the orchestra since 1978.
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Review

Striving for Unity

Lisa Hirsch - September 9, 2008
San Francisco Opera launched its 2008-2009 season on Friday with a comparative rarity, Verdi's great opera of reunion and reconciliation, Simon Boccanegra, using the revised version of 1881. This revival, led by outgoing Music Director Donald Runnicles, is blessed with a much better cast than that of the 2001 production.