Reviews

Heuwell Tircuit - July 13, 2009

A program titled “Romancing the Voice” opened Old First Church’s summer season Friday evening, with the Eos Ensemble and guest mezzo-soprano Daniela Mack as featured soloist. The basic ensemble of five chamber musicians was made up of violinists Craig Reiss and Mariya Borozina, violist Caroline Lee, cellist Thalia Moore, and pianist Marilyn Thompson.

Janos Gereben - July 13, 2009

Although Friday was July 10, the evening presented a Lucky 13 at Herbst Theatre as exactly one-third of the San Francisco Opera Merola Program's 39 participants made their debut here.

Jason Victor Serinus - July 13, 2009

Chromatic gales, emotion-churning dissonances, and vocal writing so torturous it makes you wonder whether the all-star cast is composed of masochists: Such is the score for Thomas Adès’ three-act opera, The Tempest.

James Keolker - July 13, 2009

Everything about Puccini’s opera Turandot is big: big orchestra, big voices, big chorus, enormous sets, and massive emotions. So it is daring for a company the size of Festival Opera to undertake such a giant. But no need to worry, for this is a triumphant Turandot.

Jason Victor Serinus - July 7, 2009
Pentatone Classics has issued a veritable bonanza of recent American song, half of which come from Bay Area composers. And if the Song Be Worth a Smile, which takes its name from a line in Gordon Getty’s setting of his poem “The Ballad of Poor Peter,” features songs by William Bolcom, Jake Heggie, David Garner, John Corigliano, Luna Pearl Woolf, and Getty himself.
Steven Winn - July 6, 2009
In this striking double-disc of contrasting moods and temperaments, violinist Gidon Kremer and pianist Martha Argerich take up a program of Schumann and Bartók sonatas. From Kremer’s leisurely, sun-dappled pizzicato statement of the third-movement theme in Schumann’s Violin Sonata No.
Heuwell Tircuit - July 6, 2009
Before opening the annual Midsummer Mozart Festival, there’s a tradition that musicians from the festival orchestra get together for smaller chamber music concerts of the great composer’s music. Because the possibilities are nearly infinite as regards instrumentation, anything can turn up as they preach to the faithful.
Jason Victor Serinus - June 30, 2009

What a difference a change of principals can make. Instead of the overhyped Anna Netrebko, who, as Violetta in the first five performances of San Francisco Opera’s production of Verdi’s La traviata, simplified her coloratura, shunned the much-anticipated E-flat at the end of a hardly free “Sempre libera” (Forever free), and mostly scratched the surface of her role, we now have the alive-in-the-moment soprano of Elizabeth Futral.

Jeff Dunn - June 28, 2009
In 1997, the American pianist Donald Berman forced open three old file cabinets in a musty attic above the Janiculum, the highest hill within walled Rome, and found enough years of work for each of his 10 fingers.
Jeff Dunn - June 28, 2009
Channel has released another in its series of Mahler symphonies under Iván Fischer and the Budapest Festival Orchestra, the Symphony No. 4 in G Major. The engineering is by far the most impressive thing about it: This SACD sounded terrific, even on my non-SACD player, displaying impressive depth and clarity of tone.