Reviews

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Review

Soldiering Through at the S.F. Symphony

Steven Winn - November 13, 2009
From the first downbeat of Jean Sibelius’ Symphony No. 5, conductor Semyon Bychkov and the San Francisco Symphony exuded the confidence and anticipatory pleasure of travelers setting out on a familiar journey. The audience at Davies Symphony Hall was warmly invited along for the ride.
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Review

Passion and Fireworks From Joyce DiDonato

Jason Victor Serinus - November 10, 2009

By the time she completes the first astounding 50-second musical statement of “D’Amor al dolce impero” (To the sweet rule of love), mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato has delivered her calling card.

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Review

One Voice, One Mind

Michelle Dulak Thomson - November 10, 2009
If there’s anything common to great string quartets, it’s that they have collective personalities much as great musicians have individual ones. What inflects a quartet’s performance of a work becomes, at some undefinable but high level of accomplishment, not only four individual wills but also, seemingly, one composite one.
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Review

Viva Verdi! Viva Luisotti!

Olivia Stapp - November 10, 2009
Giuseppe Verdi’s Otello is the final production of San Francisco Opera’s fall season. The opera might be more commonly performed, but it makes strenuous vocal demands on the protagonist and it's difficult to find singers who have mastered the role. Fortunately, Johan Botha, a South African dramatic tenor, is more than up to the job.
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Review

First-Rate Russian at S.F. Symphony

Heuwell Tircuit - November 9, 2009
Leaving Davies Symphony Hall Sunday afternoon at the conclusion of the San Francisco Symphony’s all-Sergei Rachmaninov program, I was wondering if I’d put on weight merely by listening to it.
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Review

Philharmonia Dido Highlights Purcell Collaboration

Jonathan Rhodes Lee - November 9, 2009
“Poetry and painting have arrived to their perfection in our own country; music is yet but in its nonage, a forward Child, which gives hope of what it may be hereafter in England, when the masters of it shall find more Encouragement.”

With these words from the dedication to his Dioclesian, Henry Purcell invited future Englishmen to claim him as founder of a modern musical tradition.

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Review

Best and Brightest of Bernstein

David Bratman - November 9, 2009
Nearly 20 years after his death, the name of Leonard Bernstein still carries magic among musicians and audiences, enough to ensure a full house Saturday at Stanford’s Dinkelspiel Auditorium for “A Portrait of Leonard Bernstein.”
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Review

What Dvořák Knew

Steve Osborn - November 8, 2009
On reading the score of Antonín Dvořák’s magnificent Cello Concerto in B Minor, Op. 104, Dvořák's mentor Brahms is reputed to have said, “Why on earth didn’t I know that one could write a cello concerto like this?
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Review

Exciting Young Singers Need Polish

Jason Victor Serinus - November 6, 2009

It’s no wonder that San Francisco Performances’ intimate Italian salon at San Francisco’s Hotel Rex sold out two weeks in advance.

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Review

Serving Up Tall Orders

Jules Langert - November 4, 2009
Monday’s concert by the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players was titled “Made to Order,” an allusion to the highly inventive and original sonic landscape of every piece on the program. Or, it could just be an acknowledgment that three of the four pieces were commissioned for performance by the SFCMP.