Reviews

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Review

Faithfully Yours

Joseph Sargent - October 14, 2008

Medieval secular music has a way of inspiring a startling array of interpretive approaches. There are those ensembles that gussy up their performances with (literally) all manner of whistles and bells, mystical in sound but dubious in authenticity. At the other end are the extreme purists, demanding authenticity to a fault and using only the barest surviving historical evidence to generate "faithful" but lifeless performances.

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Review

Respite in the Unusual

Be'eri Moalem - October 14, 2008

For those seeking respite from overplayed classics (See Jeff Dunn's feature), there are a handful of daring ensembles in San Francisco that specialize in new and unusual pieces. While the mainstream presenters lure audiences with Mozart or Beethoven, the marketed draw for sfSoundSeries' Sunday night concert at the ODC Commons was Gino Robair’s Percussion Potluck.

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Review

Vision of Excellence

John Lutterman - October 14, 2008
Judging from its performance at the Crowden Music Center in Berkeley on Sunday afternoon, the Afiara String Quartet faces a future both promising and challenging.

An Evening of Beauty

Jason Victor Serinus - October 7, 2008
Sometimes the act of artistic creation is more involving than the music itself. On the first stop of a coast-to-coast “"Remembrance Concert Tour” that will culminate in Carnegie Hall, soprano Isabel Bayrakdarian graced the stage of Herbst Theatre on Saturday night.
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Review

It's All in the Feet

Mark Wardlaw - October 7, 2008
It’s a rare occurrence when a symphony orchestra devotes an entire half of a subscription concert to music that wasn’t intended for a concert hall.

Royal Delights

Joseph Sargent - October 7, 2008
For several years now, the Baroque ensemble Magnificat has made seventeenth-century French composer Marc-Antoine Charpentier into something of a cottage industry. A regular fixture on the ensemble's season calendars, this composer embodies Magnificat's stated mission of uncovering the "'new music' of the early Baroque" — masters of the era who have yet to receive their due.

Swing Time

Kwami Coleman - October 7, 2008
Before an attentive and animated audience on Sunday afternoon, Artistic and Executive Director of Stanford Lively Arts Jenny Bilfield concluded her opening remarks on what we should expect from this, the presenter's 39th season opener, by restating part of its mission: “We bring artists that don’t fall neatly into artistic guidelines and categories.” Sunday's crowd understood that they were going

Pianistic Revelations

Jerry Kuderna - October 7, 2008
Call it the Wall Street Willies or what you will, the audience attending Richard Goode's Cal Performances recital at Zellerbach Hall on Sunday afternoon was in need of a musical bailout. Despite the somber tone of Bach's G-minor prelude from Bk.
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Review

Sullivan Sans Gilbert

David Bratman - October 7, 2008
The Rose of Persia, currently being performed by Lyric Theatre at the Montgomery Theater in San Jose, was originally produced in 1899. It was probably the most successful operetta penned by Sir Arthur Sullivan after his collaboration with W.S. Gilbert.

Curious and Curiouser

Heuwell Tircuit - October 7, 2008
A listener could easily have ended up feeling a bit like Alice wandering through Wonderland, Monday evening at a program titled "Struck, Plucked, Scraped & Shaken," which San Francisco Contemporary Music Players presented in the Arts Forum in Yerba Buena Center. A large crowd greeted the event with loud cheers for a semiritualistic program exhaling new music for percussion instruments.