Reviews

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Review

Brahms: It's What's for Dinner

Michelle Dulak Thomson - February 12, 2008
There's concert programming as science, programming as art — and programming as pure, primal indulgence.

Renaissance Faire

Joseph Sargent - February 12, 2008
In an increasingly crowded field of Bay Area choral ensembles, certain groups have devised creative methods of garnering attention.

Musical Alchemy

Jonathan Wilkes - February 5, 2008
The San Francisco Contemporary Music Players performed its first concert of 2008 on Monday. Some last-minute changes to the program affected its theme, as the “Strongbox of American Music” was pried open to accommodate British and French composers who live in the U.S.
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Review

Walking a Tightrope

Michelle Dulak Thomson - February 5, 2008
Grateful though we must be for the continual flow of new, exciting young ensembles to Bay Area concert halls, it's another and possibly greater pleasure when the most impressive of them drop in a second time.
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Review

Fill 'er Up

Janice Berman - February 5, 2008
Virgil Thomson isn't the composer who pops automatically to mind when you think of dance, but he was a major presence at San Francisco Ballet over the weekend.
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Review

Illuminating Inspirations

Brett Campbell - February 5, 2008

The next time I hear someone bewailing the moribund state of classical music, I'll point them to the Herbst Theatre, where last Saturday morning (a dreary day) a couple hundred music lovers paid to hear a couple of string quartets and an hour of explanation about them.

Wild Ride on Horn and Hide

Jonathan Russell - February 5, 2008
Swedish trumpeter Håkan Hardenberger and British percussionist Colin Currie offered a virtuosic and highly polished performance last Tuesday at Herbst Theatre in San Francisco.

A Beautiful Müllerin

Janos Gereben - February 5, 2008
Schubert’s song cycle Die Schöne Müllerin may be the richest treatment of a simple story in all music. Young man loves the miller's daughter, she prefers a hunter, young man drowns himself in the brook — and that's all there is. And yet, for some 70 minutes, there is a universe of variety and beauty unfolding before the listener.
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Review

Joyous Eclecticism

Michelle Dulak Thomson - February 5, 2008
In a Bay Area music scene crammed full of resolute, relentless eclectics, the Del Sol Quartet stands out less for packing bewilderingly various elements into its programs than for doing it with such ease and stylishness.
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Review

Fierce Winds

Mark Wardlaw - February 5, 2008

Chamber Music is alive and well in Mill Valley — even on Super Bowl Sunday. Even during the Super Bowl. Improbable as this may seem, a near-capacity audience eschewed the day’s customary revelries in favor of a highly polished and at times wildly exhilarating performance by the superb Zephyros Winds.