Reviews

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Review

Effervescent “Pulcinella”

Georgia Rowe - January 30, 2010
It’s been a decade since the San Francisco Symphony presented an entire festival devoted to the music of Igor Stravinsky, but music lovers with fond memories of the two-week extravaganza in June 1999 had to be somewhat assuaged by the orchestra’s program last week at Davies Symphony Hall.
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Review

Dancers Lead Swan Lake Out of the Woods

Rachel Howard - January 28, 2010
No one enjoys breaking the news that San Francisco Ballet Artistic Director Helgi Tomasson’s production of Swan Lake, unveiled last year, has serious flaws. After all, even a distantly faithful combination of the Tchaikovsky score and what has been handed down of the 1895 Ivanov/Petipa choreography is practically guaranteed to cast a spell on a general audience — who wants to kill that buzz?
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Review

Plumbing Oceanic Depths

Jessica Balik - January 26, 2010
Even though atonal music has existed for a long time, the composer Helmut Lachenmann has observed that many listeners are still so accustomed to tonal music that tonality continues to govern their listening habits.
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Review

Zing! Went the Strings of My Heart

Michelle Dulak Thomson - January 26, 2010
A number of the audience members at David Aaron Carpenter’s Sunday afternoon recital at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music (under the auspices of San Francisco Performances) didn’t seem entirely sure what they were getting into. Viola? All 20th-century? Is it all going to be atonal?

Yes, viola; yes, all 20th-century; no, hardly at all atonal.

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Review

Barren Diplomacy Makes for Mesmerizing Music

Jason Victor Serinus - January 26, 2010

Those of us fortunate enough to attend Opera Colorado’s 2008 production of John Adams’ engrossing opera Nixon in China were swept to our feet by its cumulative impact.

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Review

A Toast to Armenia

Jeff Dunn - January 25, 2010

The Armenian proverb “We learn more from a clever rival than a stupid ally” was much in evidence in the second half of Friday’s Oakland East Bay Symphony concert. During that segment, the music of three little-known Armenian composers proved that derivative music can nevertheless be persuasive.

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Review

Subtle Symphonic Surprises

Heuwell Tircuit - January 23, 2010
Thursday’s program of the San Francisco Symphony, under Michael Tilson Thomas, offered something new in my concert experience. Noting that the two works on the first half of the program were rather glum, MTT said he wanted to open with something lighter.
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Review

Stake in the Heart

Michelle Dulak Thomson - January 19, 2010

The Cypress Quartet is probably best known for an enterprising commissioning program that by now has added a dozen or so substantial works to the string-quartet literature. It is heartening, then, to see the ensemble stake its claim to the heart of the literature that it didn’t engender itself.

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Review

The Baroque Oboe, in Spades

Michelle Dulak Thomson - January 19, 2010
Voices of Music is one of those rare ensembles built from the bottom up: Founders and Codirectors David Tayler (lutes) and Hanneke van Proosdij (harpsichord) make up the bones of a continuo team that supports anything from solo singers or instrumentalists to a small orchestra. On Saturday at St.
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Review

From the “Simple” to the Sublime

Lisa Hirsch - January 18, 2010
The San Francisco Symphony Chamber Music concert on Sunday marked George Benjamin’s third and last appearance as the Phyllis C. Wattis Composer in Residence. He was represented on the program by two works, Viola, Viola; and Piano Figures. Both are superb additions to their respective repertories.