Heuwell Tircuit

Heuwell Tircuit is a composer, performer, and writer who was chief writer for Gramophone Japan and for 21 years a music reviewer for the San Francisco Chronicle. He wrote previously for Chicago American and the Asahi Evening News.

Articles By This Author

Heuwell Tircuit - February 17, 2009

For those of an eclectic bent, pianist Ivan Ilić’s Friday recital at San Francisco’s Old First Church proved a delight. The program was an adventure in learning as well as a brilliant display of technical prowess, all free of clichés.

Heuwell Tircuit - February 10, 2009

It was almost as if Herbst Theatre itself were smiling in delight Thursday as Nicholas McGegan and his Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra played a memorial tribute to Felix Mendelssohn’s bicentennial. The audience seemed even more delighted. Glancing up and down my aisle, I noted that every face had a broad expression of pure pleasure.

Heuwell Tircuit - February 3, 2009
Of all the underrated genius-level composers of the 19th century, none is more undeserving of his second-tier status than Felix Mendelssohn, whose bicentennial occurs this Tuesday, February 3. Few displayed a more natural or more all-encompassing talent than he, and from a remarkably early age, at that. In a way, he was the Mozart of the Romantic age.
Heuwell Tircuit - January 27, 2009

While not flawless, pianist Lise de la Salle's Sunday afternoon recital in San Francisco Conservatory's Concert Hall proved that, at all of age 20, she's already a virtuoso of the front rank. A few minor problems turned up along the way, but nothing that could dim an otherwise startling event. Her San Francisco Performances program opened with Mozart's showy Sonata No. 9 in D Major, K.

Heuwell Tircuit - January 20, 2009
Contrary to my apprehension, Sunday’s festival of youth orchestras went smoothly in Davies Symphony Hall, via a grand display of musical talent around Northern California. Under the banner "Bay of Hope 2009," the concert presented six youth orchestras playing major and often virtuoso music by six composers of the 19th and 20th centuries.
Heuwell Tircuit - January 13, 2009
Disappointed that his relatively bland Third Symphony had won the Pulitzer Prize in 1947, Charles Ives called awards "badges of mediocrity." Sometimes that's true, though not always.
Heuwell Tircuit - December 29, 2008

Yo-Yo Ma’s and his Silk Road Project have come up with a new CD featuring a host of young performers supported by the Chicago Symphony. Titled Traditions and Transformations, the disc includes two standard works, Ernest Bloch’s Schelomo and Prokofiev rambunctious Scythian Suite, Op.

Heuwell Tircuit - December 16, 2008

Cello recitals have rarely created the kind of audience reactions witnessed Thursday evening at Herbst Theatre, under the auspices of San Francisco Performances. There, cellist Alisa Weilerstein and pianist Inon Barnatan blew the crowd away with several performances of a lifetime — all the while largely avoiding repertoire that is frequently performed. That's doing it the hard way.

Heuwell Tircuit - December 9, 2008
The San Francisco Bach Choir came up with an unusual idea for its Sunday afternoon concert in Calvary Presbyterian Church: a program, titled "Aleluya! A Candlelight Christmas," devoted largely to Christmas music created mostly in Spain or Latin America.
Heuwell Tircuit - December 9, 2008
The California Bach Society has a long history of elegant performances, but it rather outdid itself Friday with a program titled "A Venetian Christmas." Director Paul Flight assembled a program, performed at Saint Gregory of Nyssa Episcopal Church in San Francisco, entirely devoted to the glories of Venetian Christmas music from the late 16th and early 17th centuries. The program was highlighted b