Previews

It Takes Three

Lisa Petrie - March 30, 2009

While visiting artists often draw the crowds, many fine musicians live in the Bay Area and perform here on occasion.

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Preview

Call and Response

Be'eri Moalem - March 30, 2009
The Cypress Quartet is rethinking the traditional concept of concerts, in which the musicians play a piece typically written some 150 years ago, the audience listens and then claps their hands, the performers bow, and everyone goes home. The Cypress is turning that experience into a two-week project that involves the entire community.

Alfonso Alberti:The Music of Niccolò Castiglioni

Michael Zwiebach - March 24, 2009
A rare opportunity to hear one of the 20th century’s underplayed composers. Though Niccolò Castiglioni (1932-1996) isn’t often mentioned in histories of 20th-century music, his music seems more contemporary than many composers who are.

Magnificat: Scarlatti Serenata

Michael Zwiebach - March 24, 2009
In the old days, when classical music was reserved for upper-crust audiences, a lot of music got one or two performances and then was put away in a library and forgotten. That’s why a group like Magnificat, Warren Stewart’s 17th-century music band, is so much fun to see. Often their performance of a piece is the only chance you’ll get to experience it live.
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Preview

A Century’s Worth of Piano

Heuwell Tircuit - March 24, 2009
One of the best-planned and at the same time oddest-looking piano recitals I’ve ever encountered is coming up two Sundays hence, in San Francisco’s Herbst Theatre. There, the distinguished French pianist Pascal Rogé will play a survey of basic French piano music from 1830 (Chopin’s Op. 10 Étude No. 1) to 1929 (Poulenc’s First Nocturne).
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Preview

The Music of a War Long, Long Ago

Janos Gereben - March 23, 2009
John Glover

The Trojan War, history books tell us (without too much certainty), took place “in the 13th or 12th century B.C.E.,” and Troy must have been somewhere

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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

Schiff at the Summit

Jerry Kuderna - March 21, 2009
Hans von Bülow once described Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier and Beethoven’s 32 Piano Sonatas as the Old and New Testaments of music.
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Preview

Civilization Saved by Woodwinds

Jeff Dunn - March 17, 2009
You think things are worse now than in the days of Franz Joseph Haydn?
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Preview

Old Friends, Getting It Right Again

Michael Zwiebach - March 17, 2009
You often hear chamber music described as a conversation, but really it’s like a meeting of friends. Back in the old days, chamber music was one way to pass the time with friends, and also to indulge a love of music (since there were no radios or stereos to turn on).

Think about that as you listen to the Kalichstein-Laredo-Robinson Trio in their concert for Chamber Music San Francisco.