Reviews

Songs Worth Far More Than a Smile

Jason Victor Serinus - July 7, 2009

Pentatone Classics has issued a veritable bonanza of recent American song, half of which come from Bay Area composers. And if the Song Be Worth a Smile, which takes its name from a line in Gordon Getty’s setting of his poem “The Ballad of Poor Peter,” features songs by William Bolcom, Jake Heggie, David Garner, John Corigliano, Luna Pearl Woolf, and Getty himself.

Review

Gidon Kremer/ Martha Argerich: The Berlin Recital

Steven Winn - July 6, 2009

In this striking double-disc of contrasting moods and temperaments, violinist Gidon Kremer and pianist Martha Argerich take up a program of Schumann and Bartók sonatas. From Kremer’s leisurely, sun-dappled pizzicato statement of the third-movement theme in Schumann’s Violin Sonata No.

Review

Ticklin' the Palate at Old St. Mary's

Heuwell Tircuit - July 6, 2009

Before opening the annual Midsummer Mozart Festival, there’s a tradition that musicians from the festival orchestra get together for smaller chamber music concerts of the great composer’s music. Because the possibilities are nearly infinite as regards instrumentation, anything can turn up as they preach to the faithful.

Review

La Traviata Reborn

Jason Victor Serinus - June 30, 2009

What a difference a change of principals can make. Instead of the overhyped Anna Netrebko, who, as Violetta in the first five performances of San Francisco Opera’s production of Verdi’s La traviata, simplified her coloratura, shunned the much-anticipated E-flat at the end of a hardly free “Sempre libera” (Forever free), and mostly scratched the surface of her role, we now have the alive-in-the-moment soprano of Elizabeth Futral.

Review

Donald Berman Shakes Off Some Roman Dust

Jeff Dunn - June 28, 2009

In 1997, the American pianist Donald Berman forced open three old file cabinets in a musty attic above the Janiculum, the highest hill within walled Rome, and found enough years of work for each of his 10 fingers.

Review

Heaven Only for Engineers

Jeff Dunn - June 28, 2009

Channel has released another in its series of Mahler symphonies under Iván Fischer and the Budapest Festival Orchestra, the Symphony No. 4 in G Major. The engineering is by far the most impressive thing about it: This SACD sounded terrific, even on my non-SACD player, displaying impressive depth and clarity of tone.

Review

Soprano Kate Royal's Sweet Midsummer Night

Jason Victor Serinus - June 22, 2009

For her much-anticipated second EMI recital disc, the elegant British
soprano Kate Royal (b. 1979) graces us with a collection of gorgeously
sung arias from the last century. Inspired by the role of the Governess
in Benjamin Britten’s gothic psychodrama The Turn of the Screw, which
she sang with Glyndebourne on Tour in 2006, Royal hones in on
20th-century operatic females who, in her own words, share the
Governess’ combination of “intensity and abandon.”

Review

Venturing Onto Kronos' Floodplain

Jeff Kaliss - June 22, 2009

There’s so much music, and more, in Kronos’ latest CD that I felt compelled to question the quartet’s founder and violinist David Harrington at his Sunset District base of operations, seeking details and explanations beyond the liner notes. Much of that conversation will be the source of a future artist profile.

Review

Esterházy Plays Haydn's Big Hits

Michelle Dulak Thomson - June 16, 2009

The principal delight of the New Esterházy Quartet’s two-year trek through the complete Haydn string quartets has been hearing the works that never get played. The NEQ’s first CD of recordings from the series stuck to the earliest clutch of quartets, the ones eventually called Opp. 1 and 2.