Seldom programmed by virtuosos, the French Suites by J.S. Bach are usually thought of as teaching pieces to be assigned to intermediate pianists. I think the last time I heard one played in public was as an encore after an all-Beethoven recital. An integral concert performance of all six is a rare event, and the opportunity to hear them played on three different harpsichords, each in a different tuning, is an impossibility.
Starting off with an Etude for the left hand alone is not the typical way to begin an orchestral concert. It was, however, the perfect musical gesture for Berkeley Symphony and Conductor Joana Carneiro to celebrate their third season together on Thursday everning.
Deadlines — where would we be without them? House payments, concert reviews, coronation masses. In at least one case, we can be glad that Beethoven did not come through on time. His Missa Solemnis, intended for the installation of the Archduke of Olmutz, formerly the Archduke Rudolf, who happened to be a friend and pupil (and patron) of Beethoven, was completed a mere four years late. Lucky for us!
Hélène Grimaud’s new solo disc, titled Resonances and newly released on DGG, comprises the recital program with which she has been touring this past season. It features three piano sonatas, each from a different period. So, what do Mozart, Liszt, and Berg have in common? Grimaud sets out to demonstrate, with high-voltage, quasi-operatic readings that are clearly meant as a departure from the typical anthologies in which three or four works by the same composer are presented, often as part of a “complete” traversal of a body of works.
If you wanted to pair diametric opposites on a piano recital, you might choose the complete Ligeti Études and Bach’s Goldberg Variations, two monumental works that at first glance seem psychologically light years apart. This was Jeremy Denk’s Bay Area solo debut program, sponsored by Cal performances at Hertz Hall on Sunday. It promised to be an auspicious one, and I couldn’t wait to see if he would pull it off.
It seemed an exciting if daunting prospect: hearing all of Beethoven’s cello sonatas at one sitting. Chamber music has a way of enlivening performers and audiences, and of inspiring them in ways that the solo and concerto literature, with its focus on the individual artist, often can’t.
As every classical music lover knows by now, this is a big anniversary year for Chopin and Schumann. Still, somehow we are never quite prepared to fully comprehend their vast achievements as composers for the piano. Emanuel Ax’s recital at Davies Symphony Hall Sunday showed how difficult it is to reconcile these two giants of the Romantic period, even at a range of 200 years after their births.
From the hauntingly tentative first notes, or rather the first words of a poem prefacing the Brahms Requiem sung Saturday by the powerful but always beautifully balanced and expressive Cantare Chorale led by Artistic Director David Morales, I knew I was about to have a unique experience.
Garrick Ohlsson’s credentials as an interpreter of Frédéric Chopin — he has recorded the complete works, twice — place him in the top echelon of modern pianists. Many performers possess the technical prowess and power to treat the piano as a slave and to do pretty much as they please to the music. Ohlsson’s all-Chopin recital Sunday afternoon, sponsored by Cal Performances and celebrating the 200th anniversary of the composer’s birth, went beyond virtuosity and paid the deepest respect to our greatest “poet of the piano.”
Maybe it was the Halloween season, or the full moon, or just because he could. Presented by Cal Performances, pianist Louis Lortie’s recital Sunday at Hertz Hall was composed of works having something to do with diabolical virtuosity. Among the spooky stuff covered, there were two corpses, a fantastic imp, things that go bump in the night, and, to top it off, Chopin’s “Funeral March” Sonata.
“We are looking for someone who will touch us deeply, in a way that we cannot forget.” These words, spoken by the pianist Menahem Pressler in a documentary about the Van Cliburn competition, came to mind while listening to his solo recital at this summer’s Music@Menlo Festival. In the course of his recital I discovered just how deeply they were meant.
It seemed fitting that the conclusion of the 35th season of the Berkeley-based Midsummer Mozart Festival, coinciding with the number of years of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s life, would include an early symphony from his youth in Salzburg and conclude with his last, the glorious, seemingly unsurpassable “Jupiter.”
It has become a cliche to refer to classical musicians as being “phenomenal” or even geniuses at their instruments. If a performer can get to the heart of the music, that’s enough for me. Still, in a profession in which it’s expected that as a teenager you have already learned and performed the summits of the keyboard, it has become increasingly difficult to grab the attention of the public as, say, Vladimir Horowitz did when he raced Sir Thomas to the finish line of the Tchaikovsky First.
After two staggering performances of Bach and Beethoven at Krystian Zimerman’s recital Friday, sponsored by Cal Performances at Zellerbach Hall, the familiar thought came to mind: “How can you follow that?” With Brahms on deck after intermission, I imagined how he would play one of the other, “lesser” B’s; the stupendously difficult Boulez Second was my first choice, but I would have been happy to hear Bernstein, who was one of the pianist’s mento
Formerly known as “A Bright New Trio,” pianist Joseph Kalichstein, violinist Jaime Laredo, and cellist Sharon Robinson have been together now for over three decades — and it shows, not only in their technical mastery as individual instrumentalists, but also in the subtle ways that great chamber ensembles mature. They match each other nuance for nuance, and they can complete each other’s sentences without your even being aware of it.
Hans von Bülow once described Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier and Beethoven’s 32 Piano Sonatas as the Old and New Testaments of music. All pianists undertake serious study of them, but András Schiff has made a specialty of performing both in toto, giving him a unique distinction among the modern-day prophets of the piano and reason for Beethoven bibliophiles to attend his upcoming two concerts.
The pianist Rudolf Serkin took a year off from concertizing to study the Bach Cantatas because, as he said, “They are such beautiful music.” On hearing the American Bach Soloists perform four of them Saturday at the First Congregational Church in Berkeley, and after witnessing the vitality, spirit, and timeless human truths that they contain, I realized it would take a lifetime to full
While speaking with one of the singers of the Pacific Collegium during the intermission of their Sunday concert giving the complete motets of Johann Sebastian Bach, I mentioned that I came to love these works only via recordings, while attending the Carter centenary at Tanglewood this past summer.
Composer Elliott Carter has been around for 100 years, literally. For 60 of them he has been at the forefront of serious American composition. But, like so many 20th-century composers, his music has had more limited exposure to audiences than his genius warrants. But that may be changing now. Next weekend, San Francisco Performances will divide two concerts devoted to his work between two generations of "young artists." The Pacifica Quartet will play his five string quartets on Saturday, Dec. 6. The next day, Dec. 7, Ursula Oppens will perform Carter's complete works for solo piano.
Seldom programmed by virtuosos, the French Suites by J.S. Bach are usually thought of as teaching pieces to be assigned to intermediate pianists. I think the last time I heard one played in public was as an encore after an all-Beethoven recital. An integral concert performance of all six is a rare event, and the opportunity to hear them played on three different harpsichords, each in a different tuning, is an impossibility.
Starting off with an Etude for the left hand alone is not the typical way to begin an orchestral concert. It was, however, the perfect musical gesture for Berkeley Symphony and Conductor Joana Carneiro to celebrate their third season together on Thursday everning.
It seemed an exciting if daunting prospect: hearing all of Beethoven’s cello sonatas at one sitting. Chamber music has a way of enlivening performers and audiences, and of inspiring them in ways that the solo and concerto literature, with its focus on the individual artist, often can’t.
It has become a cliche to refer to classical musicians as being “phenomenal” or even geniuses at their instruments. If a performer can get to the heart of the music, that’s enough for me. Still, in a profession in which it’s expected that as a teenager you have already learned and performed the summits of the keyboard, it has become increasingly difficult to grab the attention of the public as, say, Vladimir Horowitz did when he raced Sir Thomas to the finish line of the Tchaikovsky First.
After two staggering performances of Bach and Beethoven at Krystian Zimerman’s recital Friday, sponsored by Cal Performances at Zellerbach Hall, the familiar thought came to mind: “How can you follow that?” With Brahms on deck after intermission, I imagined how he would play one of the other, “lesser” B’s; the stupendously difficult Boulez Second was my first choice, but I would have been happy to hear Bernstein, who was one of the pianist’s mento
The pianist Rudolf Serkin took a year off from concertizing to study the Bach Cantatas because, as he said, “They are such beautiful music.” On hearing the 
