Reviews

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Review

Braved by Bell

Georgia Rowe - February 22, 2010

Some guys have all the luck — or at least it seems that way with Joshua Bell. In the last decade, the American violinist has become one of the most successful artists in classical music history, selling millions of CDs and stacking up awards like so many Legos. With his boyish good looks, it would be easy to dismiss him as the industry’s most marketable commodity.

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Review

Unexpected Delights

Jason Victor Serinus - February 22, 2010

If you’re looking for music to restore your faith in what’s good in life, look no farther. Florilegium’s pioneering Bolivian Baroque series — three superbly recorded volumes by that period instrument ensemble — contains some of the most delightful music I’ve heard in many a year.

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Review

Music and Movement Converge

Jessica Balik - February 22, 2010
Shadows are necessarily murky entities. They create spaces in which edges soften and distinctions blur. The program title “Flowing Shadows,” therefore, suited a concert emphasizing convergence between multiple artistic disciplines.
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Review

Ranking French Mastery

John Karl Hirten - February 22, 2010
The Parisian titular organist holds a special — some would say even exalted — place in the hearts and minds of organ fans.
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Review

Bewitching Singing From Across the Pond

David Bratman - February 20, 2010
There wasn’t any doubt which piece on their San Francisco Performances program that the King’s Singers had really come to Herbst Theatre to perform on Wednesday.
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Review

Brahms, in Style

Michelle Dulak Thomson - February 16, 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?

Music Center at Sonoma State Still A-Greening

Robert P. Commanday - February 16, 2010
While California and its constituent parts sit in a blue mood, Sonoma County on Friday night was celebrating the future and its hopes. At least, 350 of its movers and shakers were doing that, the donors who had raised much of the $96 million toward building the Green Music Center on the Rohnert Park campus of Sonoma State University.
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Review

Plumbing Beethoven’s Depths

David Bratman - February 15, 2010
Music-lovers in the South Bay had their calendars marked. The Takács Quartet came to San José’s Le Petit Trianon on Saturday, as part of the concert series of the San José Chamber Music Society.
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Review

British Radiance

Heuwell Tircuit - February 15, 2010
There was nothing of English pastoralism on Friday’s all-British program by the San Francisco Symphony, under guest conductor Charles Dutoit. The two 20th-century works offered a nearly tactile brilliance all evening long, aided and abetted by the orchestra’s concertmaster, Alexander Barantschik, and, in the closing minutes, by the wordless, offstage women of the S.F.
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Review

Music For Presidents' Day

Jason Victor Serinus - February 15, 2010

To honor the 200th anniversary of the birth of Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865), our 16th president, the Spokane Symphony under Music Director Eckart Preu commissioned Michael Daugherty to write a Lincoln-themed work for baritone and orchestra.