Reviews

Harpsichordist Lars Ulrik Mortensen, heard Sunday with the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra in Berkeley, is an interpretive genius. And, it was little surprise that pairing one of America’s great period orchestras with a harpsichordist of such dramatic flair would produce impressive results.

Classical music advocates often take a Eurocentric view of music history that leads them to question the importance of the guitar and its repertoire. John Williams deftly reverses the logic, maintaining that a global 20th- and 21st-century perspective the guitar makes a more vital contribution than any other instrument. Williams made his case on Sunday in a recital received by a packed audience.

It’s a rare Pulitzer Prize winner in music who can boast a major-label recording of the winning work issued the same year as the award. Indeed, Jennifer Higdon (who won the 2010 Music Pulitzer for her Violin Concerto) would seem to be the first in a long time. Of course, it doesn’t hurt to have been writing for Hilary Hahn.

Symphony Silicon Valley’s showcase of Hungary came in an exploration in the obscure but worthy corners of the repertoire and a young and dazzling solo performer. Three works by modern Hungarian composers of the same generation, plus three by foreigners evoking the country, were saved from being too much of the same thing by liveliness and a riot of orchestral color.

If no weapons are involved, next time I am facing a gang in a dark alley, I want Gabriel Manro on my side. Making his debut here, in the West Bay Opera’s sensational production of Verdi’s La Forza del Destino, Manro is a new kind of baritone: not lyric, not helden, not Kavalier, not Bariton-Martin — none of those. Rather, he’s a knock-down baritone.

The Kronos Quartet have taken program-planning to a new level, stitching together works by 12 different composers, played without pause and with carefully planned segues. In doing so, the group essentially created a new 90-minute masterpiece: Awakening, a “musical meditation on the anniversary of 9/11.” The program was first played on Sept. 11, 2006 and was repeated on Wednesday, as the opening concert of Stanford Lively Arts' season.

Can Madama Butterfly fail? “Impossible,” say some 195 performances by the San Francisco Opera alone. Only La bohème is more often performed, and that by a whisker. Both present us with a transient happiness whose precious fragility can never survive the pathos — the inescapable sadness — that is the destiny of human life.

On Sunday, the Czech Nonet opened the Morrison Artists Series’ 55th season, curated by a new artistic director, composer Ronald Caltabiano. It was heartening to see a large audience (including many students) turn out for Sunday’s well-balanced, relevant, and brilliantly executed program.

It seemed an exciting if daunting prospect: hearing all of Beethoven’s cello sonatas at one sitting. Chamber music has a way of enlivening performers and audiences, and of inspiring them in ways that the solo and concerto literature, with its focus on the individual artist, often can’t. Cal Performances gave us the chance to witness Beethoven’s development from kid-wonder to the visionary master he was to become.

“Recorded Music of the African Diaspora” is the first release of what promises to be a series in a partnership between Albany Records and the Center for Black Music Research at Columbia College Chicago. This series starter can be strongly recommended for the Wilson song cycle.