Reviews

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Review

Rare Treat From Ma and Ax

John Lutterman - February 1, 2010
Last Tuesday’s performance by Yo-Yo Ma and Emanuel Ax at Davies Symphony Hall was designed to celebrate the 200th anniversary of the birth of two of the most iconic Romantic era musicians, Frédéric Chopin and Robert Schumann. Piano works are the foundation of both composers’ oeuvre, but
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Review

Gluzman and the Three Bs

Steven Winn - February 1, 2010

Brimming with earnest and tender melodies by a 20th-century version of the Three B’s — Bernstein, Bloch, and Barber — this BIS recording showcases the abundant gifts of violinist Vadim Gluzman.

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Review

Operatic Heaven From Hell

Jason Victor Serinus - January 31, 2010

Ensemble Parallèle sold itself short by emphasizing that their two performances of Alban Berg’s nightmarish early-20th-century opera, Wozzeck, would fill the breach left since San Francisco Opera last performed the work in November, 1999. Heard and seen in the relative intimacy of Novellus Theater at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, the West Coast premiere of John Rea’s 21-musician chamber reorchestration needed no apologia. Ensemble Parallèle’s oft-devastating, 90-minute multimedia wow of a production was whole and complete unto itself.

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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.