Classical Music Reviews

Mozart Dances, which finally arrived here via Cal Performances last Thursday, achieved the impossible by exceeding its rapturous reviews. Jane Glover, conducting the Berkeley Symphony Orchestra and joined by Garrick Ohlsson and Yoko Nazaki on piano, gave a performance of warm dynamics and perfect unity. Ohlsson played each of the three Mozart works as if he and the dancers had spent their entire lives together, instead of rehearsing days before.

For those who can't (or won't) see the forest of an opera for the trees of performance minutiae, here's the word about the San Francisco Opera's new production of Wagner's Tannhäuser that opened on Tuesday night: Donald Runnicles' Opera Orchestra and Ian Robertson's Opera Chorus give a magnificent account of the music, which is among Wagner's most sweeping and bewitching.
Runnicles and General Manager David Gockley have assembled an outstanding cast for this, the first new production of Gockley's 20-month-old intendancy.

"It is only the modern that ever becomes old-fashioned."
— Oscar Wilde
In a radio interview almost 30 years ago, the Bay Area composer Wayne Peterson spoke about a new piece of his for violin and piano, remarking that "problems of line, of melody, and the relationship of the piano counterpoint and so forth are concepts that are rather old-fashioned, I'm afraid."

How things have changed in music since 1978. Peterson, a distinguished professor of music at San Francisco State University for over 40 years, celebrated his 80th birthday on Sept. 3.

Every so often, a Russian performing group rides through town and brings out what seems to be the entire Russian émigré community, filling one of the largest halls to capacity. Its program typically offers a serious or traditional first half followed by arrangements of favorite tunes from the war years or Soviet cinema. As the tunes grow more familiar, culminating in ever-popular bonbons such as Moscow Nights or Ochi Chornaya, the audience becomes ever more enthusiastic.