Reviews

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Review

In Festival Opener, Berg Trumps Schubert

Benjamin Frandzel - June 1, 2009
The San Francisco Symphony's "Dawn to Twilight" festival got off to a more than solid start with its opening run of concerts at Davies Symphony Hall beginning last Wednesday.
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Review

Iconic Kinetic Imagery

Jaime Robles - June 1, 2009
When L’Allegro, il penseroso, ed il moderato premiered in Brussels in 1988, it was the Mark Morris Dance Group’s first work as the resident company of the Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie, a post previously held by Maurice Béjart’s Ballet of the XXth Century.
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Review

Fare Thee Well, Maestro

Heuwell Tircuit - June 1, 2009

After 17 years as music director of the San Francisco Opera, Conductor Donald Runnicles was given a rousing farewell tribute Friday evening in the Opera House.

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Review

Bested by a Beat-Box

Be'eri Moalem - June 1, 2009
Mercury Soul’s Thursday program at downtown San Francisco’s Mezzanine club was yet another attempt to fuse classical music with what’s happening in the “real world.” Members of the San Francisco Symphony and other local freelancers attached electric pickups to their instruments and climbed onto raised platforms to accompany a hip-hop/techno/whatever-you-wanna-call-it beat.
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Review

Vocal Colors of the Golden State

Chelsea Nicole Spangler - June 1, 2009

The “California Fusion” program performed by the Artists’ Vocal Ensemble on Friday night brought music spanning several decades and continents to the audience at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church in Berkeley.

Cecilia Bartoli La Sonnambula
Review

Sleeper Awake, Bartoli Style

Jason Victor Serinus - May 26, 2009
La Sonnambula (The Sleepwalker) endures as one of the greatest operas of the bel canto era.
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Review

Advancing the Field

Jeff Dunn - May 26, 2009
Michael Tilson Thomas treated San Francisco Symphony patrons Friday to an extraordinary concert of works that advanced the field of classical music — each pushing the envelope in its own direction.A symphony built a monument to regenerative self-defeat, a concerto scaled heights of immediacy and technical difficulty, and a new suite blazed a path toward rapturous acceptance of electronica into the
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Review

Nimbly Nuanced

Jules Langert - May 25, 2009
Sheer inventiveness and originality were at the forefront of Earplay’s final concert of the season on Wednesday. This adventurous and enterprising group, which presents some of the best and most interesting contemporary music heard in the Bay Area, ended its 24th season with a fascinating, unusual program that looked both backward and forward from 1949 to the present.
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Review

Orff Gone Gaga

Jason Victor Serinus - May 25, 2009

Chora Nova certainly doesn’t shy away from challenges. Since its artistic director, the conductor and countertenor Paul Flight, came on board to direct the auditioned community chorus in July 2006, it has tackled the challenging works of Kodály, a number of greater and lesser Baroque masterworks, Brahms’ “German” Requiem and Neue Liebeslieder, and the music of Michael Haydn.

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Review

Another Triumph From the Peninsula

Janos Gereben - May 25, 2009
There is something in Kenneithia Mitchell's voice that goes straight to the heart. Her debut this weekend in the title role of a sensational West Bay Opera Madama Butterfly impressed with a singularly mellow voice, effortless, brilliant phrasing.