Reviews

Mark Winges, composer for and advisor to the chamber choir Volti, certainly knows how to initiate an intriguing conversation. The proof can be heard on his second CD, But This Is This. Released on the Chicago-based Centaur label, the music on this all-instrumental recording is a bona fide Bay Area effort.

Like other great countertenors before him, David Daniels established his career singing works from the Baroque repertoire. Since then, he’s made a point of expanding his horizons — and the public’s perception of what the high male voice type can do — with composers from other eras up to the present.

The March 25-28 concerts of the San Francisco Symphony, under guest conductor Vladimir Ashkenazy, offered a masterpiece, a super masterpiece, and one outright dud. Along the way, we heard a new wunderkind pianist and an up-and-coming bass-baritone as soloist, plus astounding mastery from the Symphony Chorus.

Valery Gergiev, one of the heavyweights on the international music scene, does have his detractors. Just within the context of his Sunday-Monday appearances in Davies Symphony Hall, leading the London Symphony Orchestra in two eventful concerts, there were numerous items possibly contradicting what may well be a general enthusiasm about the conductor.

The production may be unique, but it’s not just the computer animation, puppetry, and “authentic” musical approach that make this week's staging of a great Baroque opera so special.

The San Francisco Piano Quartet discovered American music on Sunday afternoon at the Noe Valley Ministry in the city, as part of the Noe Valley Chamber Music series. That is to say, they presented a program tracing the discovery of self-awareness of Americanism in the works of several generations of composers.

The San Francisco Bach Choir celebrated the 324th anniversary of Bach's birth on Sunday afternoon in Calvary Presbyterian Church by presenting three of his cantatas and three of his even finer motets. Actually, the concert was a repeat of their Saturday performance, his actual birthday.

When violinist and co-concertmaster Elizabeth Blumenstock takes over the reins of the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra, as she generally does once a season, the orchestra assumes a slightly different cast, a more intimate one. Part of that comes from the exigencies of leading from the violin rather than the podium.

Chanticleer was founded in 1978 to explore the vocal music of the Renaissance, but the ever-questing 12-man chorus makes a regular habit of looking to the future. Last Tuesday, at Berkeley’s First Congregational Church, the San Francisco–based ensemble ushered three newly commissioned works into the repertoire, giving each the kind of vibrant, lustrous performance that has become synonymous with t

The symphonic chorale of the Oakland-based Cantare Con Vivo paid homage to Felix Mendelssohn on Saturday by performing one of his last compositions, the massive, two-hours-plus oratorio Elijah. Artistic Director David Morales led the excellent chorale and orchestra.