Reviews

Pianistic Revelations

Jerry Kuderna - October 7, 2008

Call it the Wall Street Willies or what you will, the audience attending Richard Goode's Cal Performances recital at Zellerbach Hall on Sunday afternoon was in need of a musical bailout. Despite the somber tone of Bach's G-minor prelude from Bk.

Review

Sullivan Sans Gilbert

David Bratman - October 7, 2008

The Rose of Persia, currently being performed by Lyric Theatre at the Montgomery Theater in San Jose, was originally produced in 1899. It was probably the most successful operetta penned by Sir Arthur Sullivan after his collaboration with W.S. Gilbert.

Curious and Curiouser

Heuwell Tircuit - October 7, 2008

A listener could easily have ended up feeling a bit like Alice wandering through Wonderland, Monday evening at a program titled "Struck, Plucked, Scraped & Shaken," which San Francisco Contemporary Music Players presented in the Arts Forum in Yerba Buena Center. A large crowd greeted the event with loud cheers for a semiritualistic program exhaling new music for percussion instruments.

Review

Belying Bluegrass and Bach

Be'eri Moalem - October 7, 2008

Used to be that the mention of bluegrass conjured up thoughts of a throng of senior citizens sitting in folding armchairs listening to foot-stomping, string-twanging folk music. The mention of Bach conjured up a dark church and powdered wigs.

Airs on an Autumn Night

Michelle Dulak Thomson - September 30, 2008

Once a year or so, it's well to remember what we really owe the San Francisco Early Music Society.

Dance to the Music

Kwami Coleman - September 30, 2008

The California Theater looked sparkling and effervescent both inside and out on the opening night of Symphony Silicon Valley's 2008-2009 season. The program, "Dances at an Opening," featured three multimovement dance-inspired and dance-related works by Alberto Ginastera, Duke Ellington, and Sergei Prokofiev.

Review

Ever Wonderful

Jason Victor Serinus - September 30, 2008

Chanticleer celebrates several musical milestones this fall. The men's chorus' opening program of the season, titled "Wondrous Free," honors the 250th anniversary of America's earliest surviving secular composition, Frances Hopkinson's My Days Have Been So Wondrous Free. The concert program, heard last Thursday, was a marvelous gambol through five centuries of the repertoire Chanticleer so frequently champions, choral music of the Americas.

Review

Mark Morris, Star-Crossed

Janice Berman - September 30, 2008

Mark Morris has said that one of the things he finds puzzling about Romeo and Juliet ballets is that when the couple awakens after their night of nuptial passion, Juliet's still wearing toe shoes. When modern choreographers snipe at toe shoes, they're drawing distinctions between ballet's contrivances and modern dance's lack thereof.

Review

Keeping Passion at Bay

David Bratman - September 30, 2008

In its three years of existence, the Escher String Quartet has built a reputation as a highly intellectual ensemble of mechanical perfection but one that, at its worst, plays aridly without genuine emotion.

Review

Home Wins

Thomas Busse - September 30, 2008

Saturday night's concert by San Francisco's full-range men's vocal ensemble Clerestory witnessed a rare occurrence in the world of concert music — a set of new works by local composers that were both the strongest pieces on the program and the best received by the audience.