Previews

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).

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.

Hans von Bülow once described Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier and Beethoven’s 32 Piano Sonatas as the Old and New Testaments of music.

You think things are worse now than in the days of Franz Joseph Haydn?

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.

New string quartets inspired by older masterworks in the genre have a long tradition. The latest composer to add to it is John Adams. Hearing the St. Lawrence Quartet perform late Beethoven inspired him to write a new quartet, which the St. Lawrence will give the premiere performance of at this Stanford Lively Arts concert. It's an important new work by a major composer.

The American String Quartet, longtime quartet-in-residence at the Manhattan School of Music, has made relatively few recordings (and those mostly for small labels), and it's likely that most Bay Area chamber music lovers are unfamiliar with it.

The Catacoustic Consort delves into an intriguing era in musical history with music of the French Baroque for the rare pardessus de viole, a hybrid that blends violin and viola da gamba. While the viola da gamba first appeared around 1480 in Italy, the pardessus did not appear until the early 1700s in France, when it became a staple of Versailles heyday.

“The man breathes music,” exclaimed one longtime San Francisco Opera Orchestra member after Music Director designate Nicola Luisotti conducted performances of Puccini’s La Bohème a few months back. Since Luisotti clearly has the grand sweep of music in his blood, why should he limit himself to opera?