Reviews

After two centuries of an increasing reputation as a “Land Without Music,” whose homegrown composers weren’t considered worth importing by disapproving Germans, England suddenly flowered with a blossom of great composers starting around the turn of the 20th century. A garland of works by three of these masters formed “The English Voice,” the second of this year’s Music@Menlo chamber music festival main concert programs.

Since 2006, Napa Valley’s Festival del Sole has lured the likes of Joshua Bell and the Russian National Orchestra to wine country in the summer months for an orgy of the tasteful high life: the world’s finest musicians paired with the region’s best wines, enjoyed between meals at the area’s architecturally exquisite estates, vineyard strolls, and test drives of the Bentleys parked on display. On Friday, thanks to the sponsorship of Dede Wilsey, the festival added ballet to its pleasures, with tremendous success. “Stars of American and Russian Ballet” sold out Yountville’s Lincoln Theater.

Bruno Weil’s 19th, and last, season as music director of the Carmel Bach Festival happens, by timely rotation, to include the St. Matthew Passion. Heard Sunday at Carmel’s Sunset Center, this production of the great work was the most satisfying of the many times he has performed it there.

The Midsummer Mozart Festival has never been about the kind of easy-listening, check-your-brain-at-the-door fare that plagues many summer concerts. Music Director George Cleve wasted no time making that point Friday evening at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, as he and the orchestra got the annual Mozart bash off to a characteristically vibrant start.

When Eleazar Rodriguez sang Fenton's aria from Nicolai's The Merry Wives of Windsor Friday in Herbst Theatre, I experienced a multiple déjà vu. This was the opening concert of the Merola Program Class of 2010, but I was back at a similar occasion 12 years ago, listening to Charles Castronovo for the first time.

It’s a tried-and-true strategy for constructing programs, concerts, and CDs alike: Make certain there’s a surefire favorite in there somewhere, then pack around it as much unfamiliar music as you dare. Not often, though, have I seen it deployed as baldly as it is on the new Mozart recording by the Cleveland-based period-instrument orchestra Apollo’s Fire.

Mi Alma Mexicana abounds in revelations. That its all-Mexican classic repertoire, which ranges from sedate, 120-year-old, European-influenced salon music to uncommonly savage modern fare, arrives with such wide-eyed freshness and power owes as much to the abundant gifts of 29-year-old conductor Alondra de la Parra as to the artistry of the young members of her 6-year-old Philharmonic Orchestra of the Americas (POA).

The world of music for two pianists is a rarified one. Established as an art form in the Mozart family for its two talented children, then popularized by Schubert at coffeehouses in Vienna, and finally made immortal by Brahms, the two-piano/four-hands repertoire has occupied an important but often neglected corner in the vast richness of piano music. The Milton and Peggy Salkind International Piano Duo Festival celebrates that repertoire.

What if you were confronted with a dozen spirited saxophonists, male and female, embracing a stunning range of pitch and a delightful variety of repertoire? That wouldn’t be too much sax, would it? Not in the case of the Selmer Saxharmonic.

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.