Classical Music Reviews

Another weekend in July brought yet another summer festival to a close, with the final concert on Sunday afternoon of the Green Music Festival at Sonoma State University, in Rohnert Park. Artistic Director Jeffrey Kahane balances this festival, now in its eighth year, with a blend of regularly returning performers and new guest artists.

Music festivals, whether of the mini or maxi kind, invite audiences to think of music as part of an entire experience. For most of the year, we're content just to hear a concert. But the summer festival experience is also partly about location and lingering twilight. In this, American Bach Soloists holds a few cards that make its SummerFest programs irresistible, beyond the superior concerts that are the main reason for attending. The little St. Stephen's Church, nestled into a hillside near the bay in Belvedere, hosts ABS throughout its season.

The German composer Hans Werner Henze, considered one of Europe's major composers of the '60s, '70s, and beyond, rarely gets a hearing in the U.S. One fan, however, will not take this neglect (is it simply old-hattedness?) lying down. Instead, the founder of the Worn Ensemble, Richard Worn, has organized all-Henze concerts to reenlighten the Bay Area as to the merits of this artist.
His latest concert at the Presidio Chapel in San Francisco (you can buy a poster of the previous one for $10) offered up four of Henze's chamber works for audience delectation.

In 1781, Joseph Haydn announced the appearance of a new set of string quartets, "composed in a new and special way, because I have written none in 10 years." The six quartets would appear as Opus 33, and would be Haydn's first authorized quartet publication in accordance with the terms of a contract he signed in 1779 with Prince Nicolaus Esterházy. With one of these works, No.