Recital

Janos Gereben - April 26, 2009
Good old Herbst Theatre had a fabulous 24 hours over the weekend. Friday night, it hosted the Philharmonia Baroque's world-class presentation of Handel's Athalia. On Saturday — instead of soloists, chorus, and orchestra squeezed onto the small stage (how do they do that?!) — Herbst showcased Nelson Freire, a solitary artist in recital ...
Stephanie Friedman - April 23, 2009

As was announced before the concert by Ruth Felt, the gracious president of San Francisco Performances, Magdalena Kožená had been battling a nasty cold for several days, but the mezzo-soprano had decided to go through with her Herbst Theatre recital nevertheless. Red flags went up in my mind. A singer singing with a cold can present a problem for a reviewer: How to evaluate what the ears pick up?

Michael Zwiebach - April 21, 2009
Frederick Rzewski

Frederic Rzewski is still playing his 1975 masterwork, The People United Will Never Be Defeated, 36 variations on a Chilean song associat

Catherine Getches - April 14, 2009
Krystian Zimerman

Polish pianist Krystian Zimerman is known for his technical polish, recently seen here

Anna Carol Dudley - April 7, 2009
Kurt Weill and several of his cabaret contemporaries from the “Roaring Twenties” in Berlin roared into the Martin Meyer Sanctuary at Temple Emanu-El Sunday afternoon.
Catherine Getches - March 31, 2009
Krystian Zimerman

Polish pianist Krystian Zimerman is known for his technical polish, recently seen here

Georgia Rowe - March 29, 2009
Like other great countertenors before him, David Daniels established his career singing works from the Baroque repertoire. Since then, he’s made a point of expanding his horizons — and the public’s perception of what the high male voice type can do — with composers from other eras up to the present.
Michael Zwiebach - March 24, 2009
A rare opportunity to hear one of the 20th century’s underplayed composers. Though Niccolò Castiglioni (1932-1996) isn’t often mentioned in histories of 20th-century music, his music seems more contemporary than many composers who are.
Heuwell Tircuit - March 24, 2009
One of the best-planned and at the same time oddest-looking piano recitals I’ve ever encountered is coming up two Sundays hence, in San Francisco’s Herbst Theatre. There, the distinguished French pianist Pascal Rogé will play a survey of basic French piano music from 1830 (Chopin’s Op. 10 Étude No. 1) to 1929 (Poulenc’s First Nocturne).
Jerry Kuderna - March 21, 2009
Hans von Bülow once described Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier and Beethoven’s 32 Piano Sonatas as the Old and New Testaments of music.