David Bratman

David Bratman is a librarian who lives with his lawfully wedded soprano and a wall full of symphony recordings.

Articles By This Author

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Review

Pacing the Centuries

David Bratman - April 7, 2009

Many string quartet concerts are programmed as miniature histories of the medium. Few, though, can have had a chronological spread so wide as the St. Lawrence String Quartet’s Stanford Lively Arts concert at Dinkelspiel Auditorium on Sunday.

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Preview

Ear-Bending Sounds

David Bratman - March 30, 2009
Music from Eastern Europe, especially if it’s also from the earlier part of the 20th century, has a reputation for being rugged and rough-hewn, full of exotic sounds and hypnotic motifs over catchy rhythms. Sometimes that reputation is deserved.
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Review

Americanism on the Rise

David Bratman - March 24, 2009
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.
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Preview

Firm Hand at the Tiller

David Bratman - March 22, 2009
George Cleve is best-known these days as director of the Midsummer Mozart Festival, but in person, with his beard and his solid presence at the podium, he looks rather like Johannes Brahms. Born in Vienna, though long a resident of the Bay Area, he’s a conductor who actually specializes in both these great Viennese composers.
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Preview

St. Lawrence String Quartet

David Bratman - March 11, 2009
New string quartets inspired by older masterworks in the genre have a long tradition. The latest composer to add to it is John Adams. Hearing the St. Lawrence Quartet perform late Beethoven inspired him to write a new quartet, which the St. Lawrence will give the premiere performance of at this Stanford Lively Arts concert. It's an important new work by a major composer.
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Preview

Symphony Silicon Valley

David Bratman - March 11, 2009
Symphony Silicon Valley's chorale is one of its best features, so the opportunity to hear them led by the renowned choral conductor Vance George, retired San Francisco Symphony choirmaster, should be a local highlight — especially when the program features the elegant and airy Requiem of Gabriel Fauré. This concert is not part of the regular Symphony Silicon Valley season.
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Review

For Whom the Bell Tolls

David Bratman - February 3, 2009

The San Francisco Chamber Orchestra likes varied and unusual programs. Saturday's free concert at St. Mark's Church in Palo Alto was perhaps a little more unusual than most. The program, led by SFCO Music Director Benjamin Simon, featured two clarinet concertos and a handbell concerto, and the shortest piece was by Gustav Mahler, a composer not noted for brevity.

Pedals, Portamentos, and Pianolas

David Bratman - January 20, 2009
The battle of the musicologists broke out on Friday afternoon in Stanford University's Campbell Recital Hall. Joseph Horowitz, noted author of several books on the history of classical music in America, played a 1932 recording of Leopold Stokowski conducting the slow movement of Beethoven's Fifth.

Goodbye to All That

David Bratman - January 6, 2009
Haydn's "Farewell" Symphony — the dark, somber one in a weird key (F-sharp minor), which ends with the musicians quietly leaving the stage by ones and twos, until only a pair of violinists are left to finish the piece — is the perfect work to serve as a metaphor for the end of a questionable year.
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Review

Holiday Cheer

David Bratman - December 16, 2008

Christmas time is here, by golly. Time to mix a punch of Baroque orchestral music, sacred vocal music of various periods, and a medley of Christmas carols and Hanukkah songs. That's what the New Century Chamber Orchestra served up for its December concerts last weekend. I heard Friday's performance at First United Methodist Church, the "concrete tent," in downtown Palo Alto.