Reviews

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Review

Turanga-lite

Steve Osborn - May 18, 2009
Olivier Messiaen’s 10-movement Turangalîla-Symphonie is rarely performed because of its length (about an hour and a quarter) and its unusual instrumentation (the score calls for ondes martenot, vibraphone, and glockenspiel, among many other instruments). The double whammy makes performances of this 20th-century masterpiece hard to find — and fund.
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Review

Medium-Rare Roasted Swan

David Bratman - May 18, 2009
Everybody knows Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana. Each century has its standard, default large-scale choral work (Messiah, Verdi’s Requiem), and, like it or not, Carmina Burana fills that role for the 20th.
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Review

Saved From Drowning, by The Trout

Jeff Dunn - May 13, 2009

Radical contrast was the name of the game at Monday’s Left Coast Chamber Ensemble concert. A pair of impressive but gloomy premieres weighed listeners down during the first half. Then the sun came out for the second half: Franz Schubert’s “Trout” quintet restored faith in the future, from deep in the past.

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Review

Songs That Serenade, Scintillate, and Provoke

Jason Victor Serinus - May 12, 2009

Jake Heggie. There are few contemporary composers so loved and adored, yet so controversial. When he’s on, his music can be touching, endearing, entertaining, hilarious, and/or heart-shakingly profound by turns. As a person, he’s handsome, delightful, and admirably out about his gayness.

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Review

Alive Recording

Jonathan Rhodes Lee - May 11, 2009
When Baroque Nouveau’s new disc of Jean Philippe Rameau’s Pièces de clavecin en concert first came across my desk, a cursory glance down the playlist raised a perplexing question: Why did the group present the pieces out of order? There are five concerts in this collection, and the group orders them 4, 5, 1, 2, 3. Listening to the disc dispels any qualms with the arrangement.
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Review

Masters Without Apology

David Bratman - May 11, 2009
“Spring Symphonies” is the title that Symphony Silicon Valley gave to its May program, which I heard Saturday at the California Theatre in San José. Sure, it’s adequately descriptive for a concert performed in the spring. Yet neither of the symphonies on the program had Spring or Pastoral in their titles, or any other obvious programmatic connection with the season.
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Review

Early Music Meetsthe Electronic Age

Jason Victor Serinus - May 11, 2009
This is a remarkable CD. At first glance, its pairing of Ambrose Field’s live and studio electronics with the voice of former Hilliard Ensemble tenor John Potter singing the music of Guillaume Dufay (1397-1474) may seem like an update of Officium, the best-selling ECM early music recording from 1994 that partnered Jan Garbarek’s distinctive saxophone with the voices of the Hilliard Ensemble.
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Review

Grandmotherly Inspiration

Be'eri Moalem - May 10, 2009
The Presidio is a dark corner of the City by the Bay, surrounded by thick forest, ancient military architecture, and a memorial cemetery. It’s one of the few places on San Francisco’s map where the relentless grid of straight roads gives bending way to some of the steep hills.
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Review

The Perfect Score

Dan Leeson - May 9, 2009

Some orchestral programs are naturally perfect — the compositions are linked by friendly key relationships, similar temperaments, and compatible styles.

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Review

Spaced-Out Mussorgsky

Jeff Dunn - May 7, 2009

Another milestone in the history of American showmanship hit Walnut Creek’s Hofmann Theater last Sunday and Tuesday: California Symphony's claim to the world’s first presentation of a 3-D video to accompany — or rather, subordinate — a live performance of a symphonic work. The plea for more funding that followed was justified by the quality of the previous numbers on the program.