Anna Carol Dudley is a singer, teacher, UC Berkeley faculty emerita, San Francisco State University lecturer emerita, and director emerita of the San Francisco Early Music Society's Baroque Music Workshop.
This strong early-instrument ensemble not only excels in Mozart and Haydn, but also performs an entertaining quartet by the latter’s contemporary (and a near-unknown) John Wikmanson.
Motets and songs of longing or loss made up Chora Nova’s fine Saturday program of moving works by Felix Mendelssohn and Josef Rheinberger, under Paul Flight’s direction.
Words and music came together (or didn’t) Sunday in five works sung by Volti and the Piedmont East Bay Children’s Choir — Robert Geary’s gift to creators and performers of new choral music.
Magnificat’s Christmas concert, a celebration of a midnight Mass by Marc-Antoine Charpentier, sung by a solo quintet and accompanied by an all-star early-music band of seven players combined for an excellent ensemble.
Advent has begun; Christmas is coming. And choruses are singing the Messiah. Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra’s performance was a triumph and the chorus and orchestra sang and played as one instrument.
And the winner is ... Claudio Monteverdi! He was well-served Saturday night in a Berkeley Festival performance at that city’s First Congregational Church. ARTEK (from The Art of the Early Keyboard), a New York–based ensemble of six singers and seven players of plucked and bowed strings, gave magnificent voice to Monteverdi’s Fifth Book of Madrigals.
