Reviews

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.

Never have I understood the term “Papa Haydn” more clearly than I did at the Takács Quartet concert Saturday at Herbst Theatre, presented by San Francisco Performances. To open a string quartet concert with Haydn is standard procedure, but the Takács brought a distinct connection to Haydn.

The San Francisco Symphony has been placing its musicians in the solo spotlight this fall, and the results have been good enough to make you wonder if we couldn’t do without high-priced imports more often.

Sunday night’s concert by the Shanghai Quartet at Le Petit Trianon in San José opened the 25th season of the San José Chamber Music Society. It also served as the Society’s contribution to Shanghai Celebration 2010, a Bay Area–wide, yearlong festival commemorating San Francisco’s sister-city relationship with the Chinese city.

The city of Utrecht, Netherlands, is gearing up for a huge celebration in 2013 to celebrate the 300th anniversary of the signing of the Treaty of Utrecht. The city and province of Utrecht is investing in a party that will rival the pan-European celebrations that followed the actual Treaty’s signing. One of the first anticipatory fruits of all this excitement is the Netherlands Bach Society’s recording of music written by Handel and William Croft.

Michael Tilson Thomas and the San Francisco Symphony have a long history of successful and seemingly idiomatic performances of French music, and thus Saturday’s program, advertised as “French Classics,” looked both appealing and promising.

Last week marked the first return of the Mark Morris Dance Group to UC Berkeley since Robert Cole’s retirement and Matías Tarnopolsky’s start as director of Cal Performances; Friday at Zellerbach Hall, it was good to see that not much has changed. The choreographer best known for illuminating complex scores and the dancers known for making virtuosity out of unaffected humanity were both doing just that — yet, in unexpected ways, Morris may have raised the bar.

It's not just his face and body that are hot. Vittorio Grigolo is the real thing, an Italian tenor with a beautiful voice, ringing high C,  and genuine feel for the music. This is the recital we've been waiting for.

Does the personality of a composer matter? Will knowing more about the life of a composer enhance our experience of his or her music? “You bet!” is Other Minds’ answer, as judged from its Sept. 27 combo of exhibit, discussion, and performance that brought the remarkable Dane Rudhyar (1895-1985) back to life.