Michelle Dulak Thomson
Michelle Dulak Thomson is a violinist and violist who has written about music for Strings, Stagebill, Early Music America, and The New York Times.
Articles by this Author
CD REVIEW
June 29, 2010
Something like a quarter century ago, I bought a CD of Dvořák string quartets that had the words “American Quartet” prominently displayed on its front. Only later did I discover that the American Quartet was the ensemble; the Dvořák “American” quartet that I meant to buy wasn’t even on the menu. The two other quartets that were there, though, made me avid for more Dvořák chamber music, and I went on to discover an entire cache of marvelous music that I’d never heard of.The Emerson Quartet’s new three-CD Dvořák box might work the same magic on another set of listeners.
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May 25, 2010
It’s not as rare as one might think, from the constant reports of the demise of the classical recording industry, to encounter great new recordings of unfamiliar music. All the same, this recent release by the Göttingen Festival Orchestra, the NDR Choir, and a stellar cast of soloists under the direction of Nicholas McGegan is rather astonishing.
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May 4, 2010
It would not be impossible to construct a program of three piano trios more taxing than the one the Skride/Vogler Trio played last Tuesday at Herbst Theatre. It might, though, be difficult to find anyone willing to play it.
More about San Francisco Performances »Chamber Music REVIEW
April 15, 2010
Word of the Kuss Quartett preceded its actual appearance here. That’s pretty much how things do happen in the Bay Area with string quartets that haven’t actually been born here, but in the case of the Berlin-based Kuss Quartett it wasn’t “word” so much as whispers.
More about San Francisco Performances »CD REVIEW
March 3, 2010
As an accomplished violinist and pianist, the young Felix Mendelssohn took to piano-and-strings chamber music almost immediately. It’s not an accident that his first three published works are all quartets for piano and string trio.
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March 9, 2010
Unaccompanied violin recitals are sufficiently rare that the image and bio of Jennifer Koh’s longtime recital partner, pianist Reiko Uchida, made it into the printed program of last Tuesday’s Herbst Theatre recital before San Francisco Performances staff realized their mistake. It would be misleading to say that Uchida (a very fine pianist) was not missed. But Koh by herself was amply capable of holding anyone’s attention. More about San Francisco Performances »
CD REVIEW
March 9, 2010
The Danish violinist Nikolaj Znaider has a taste for challenges. Two years ago, in his San Francisco Performances debut recital, he gave a stunning performance of Arnold Schoenberg's late Phantasy. The Schoenberg Concerto, a monumentally tough nut, is in his repertoire; so is Carl Nielsen's notoriously difficult one.
More »Chamber Orchestra/Orchestra REVIEW
February 11, 2010
The Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra hasn't been just a Baroque orchestra for a very long time; Haydn, Mozart, and the early Romantics are bread and butter to its seasons now. Still ... Brahms? From a self-described Baroque orchestra? The Philharmonia launched their Brahms foray on Thursday night at San Francisco's Herbst Theatre, a double bill of the composer's First Serenade for full orchestra (in D major, Op. 11) and his Violin Concerto (Op. 77, also D Major), with Viktoria Mullova as soloist.
More about Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra »Chamber Music REVIEW
January 31, 2010
There is a rough protocol for establishing a name as a newish chamber ensemble. It involves, among other things, programming carefully so as to interest the people whose opinions might make your name, while not frightening the horses. That means, in general, picking up and prominently featuring a work by a currently favored composer (or, better yet, commissioning it yourself, if you can afford to do so).
More about Old First Concerts »Recital REVIEW
January 24, 2010
A number of the audience members at David Aaron Carpenter’s Sunday afternoon recital at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music (under the auspices of San Francisco Performances) didn’t seem entirely sure what they were getting into. Viola? All 20th-century? Is it all going to be atonal?
More about San Francisco Conservatory of Music »CD REVIEW
January 19, 2010
The Cypress Quartet is probably best known for an enterprising commissioning program that by now has added a dozen or so substantial works to the string-quartet literature. It is heartening, then, to see the ensemble stake its claim to the heart of the literature that it didn’t engender itself.
More about Cypress String Quartet »Chamber Music REVIEW
January 16, 2010
Voices of Music is one of those rare ensembles built from the bottom up: Founders and Codirectors David Tayler (lutes) and Hanneke van Proosdij (harpsichord) make up the bones of a continuo team that supports anything from solo singers or instrumentalists to a small orchestra. On Saturday at St. Mark’s Lutheran Church in San Francisco, Tayler, van Proosdij, and cellist/gambist William Skeen were the backup band, as it were, to oboist Gonzalo Ruiz.
More about Voices of Music »CD REVIEW
December 22, 2009
Eric Zivian and Tanya Tomkins have been playing together as a period-instrument cello/keyboard duo for some time, but the first that many Bay Area listeners likely heard of their partnership was as two thirds of the solo contingent in Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra’s performances of Beethoven’s Triple Concerto last fall. The only prior recording of the duo that I’ve happened upon was also of Beethoven: the sonatas Opp. 5/2 and 102/2, the “Bei Männern” Variations (WoO46), and the Op. 119 Bagatelles, downloadable from magnatune.com
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December 10, 2009
The Left Coast Chamber Ensemble’s practice of commissioning companion pieces to established repertoire is such a marvelous idea that it’s strange not to see it emulated everywhere. Judging by composers’ program notes, the general concept is all over the place; composers are always, it seems, being asked to write companion works to this or that.
More about Left Coast Chamber Ensemble »CD REVIEW
December 15, 2009
Musicians who come from recording on “modern” violin (cello, piano, whatever) to recording on “period” (ditto) generally sort themselves into two heaps. Some check out “period” playing because they have noticed that some of their colleagues and of their listeners are interested; they try it, mess around with it (as we might say), and then go back to what they were doing before. They don’t scorn the “period” shtick, but they aren’t interested in living in that world full-time.
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December 15, 2009
One of the handy things about Antonio Vivaldi, from a violinist/conductor’s point of view, is that few composers sound at once so familiar and so fresh. You can, of course, make up a disc-length program of Vivaldi concertos that everyone already knows; but it’s as easy (and much more fun) to make up a disc-length program of Vivaldi concertos such that only one person in 10,000 will know every piece on the bill.
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Upcoming Concert
Sun December 13, 2009 4:00pm
Most schools of music host concert series, not only by their own students and faculty but also by local (or even visiting) artists: What better way to keep the students inside in touch with the professional music community outside? But the Crowden Music Center’s “Sundays@4” series, as befits the CMS’ community-centered mission, has little of the conservatory feel about it.
More about Cypress String Quartet »Chamber Music REVIEW
November 8, 2009
If there’s anything common to great string quartets, it’s that they have collective personalities much as great musicians have individual ones. What inflects a quartet’s performance of a work becomes, at some undefinable but high level of accomplishment, not only four individual wills but also, seemingly, one composite one. And it’s a will that you can recognize at work whatever the music, just as you can recognize a voice or a touch or a violin tone across repertoire.
More about Cal Performances »Early Music/Baroque REVIEW
October 31, 2009
Even decades of piecemeal exploration by curious historical performers have not made German music of the generation or two before Bach exactly familiar ground for most listeners. The chamber ensemble La Monica’s most recent San Francisco Early Music Society program, titled “Out of the Depths,” assembled a varied but consistently interesting clutch of vocal and instrumental works.
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October 18, 2009
The introduction of a new player into a venerable chamber ensemble is always a touchy thing; you can never quite be sure what sort of entity will emerge at the end of the process, how much or how little it will resemble the group you once knew. That goes doubly for the leaders of string quartets. For better or worse, the first violinist has a disproportionately large role in forming a quartet’s collective character.
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