Reviews

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Review

Terry Riley's Brilliant Sun Rings

Jason Victor Serinus - January 22, 2008
“I closed my eyes so I wouldn’t be distracted by the visuals,” my companion explained after the concert. All well and good, if in fact music had been the primary component of this performance of Terry Riley’s Sun Rings (2002).

Opposite Attractions

Terry McNeill - January 22, 2008
A conventional all-Russian program sidetracked the Marin Symphony’s “Salute to the Silver Screen” season theme Jan. 20, but few seemed to miss the cinematic connections. All evening the playing was first rank, and violinist Vadim Gluzman’s interpretation of the Tchaikovsky concerto provided plenty of pyrotechnical sizzle to excite an audience that not quite filled the Marin Veteran’s Auditorium.
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Review

Eclecticism on Parade

Jonathan Wilkes - January 22, 2008

Friday night's concert of the ensemble Adesso at Old First Church showcased an eclectic selection of music. The pieces programmed doubtless had little in common, but the quality of the playing made the evening hang together nevertheless.

Clarity, but Little Fire

Noel Verzosa - January 22, 2008
“Intoxicated and With Fire” is the title of the third movement of Schumann’s Phantasiestücke for cello and piano, written five years before the composer’s attempted suicide and seven years before his death in an insane asylum.
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Review

High Artistry

Jason Victor Serinus - January 15, 2008

Even before countertenor David Daniels reached center stage, it was clear that we were in for a special afternoon. The grin on his face, matched by the smile from accompanist Martin Katz, was unforced, relaxed, and filled with confidence. Daniels was letting us know that he expected to be in top form, and take us on a joyride.

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Review

A Chinese Classic in European Style

Angela Hsiao - January 15, 2008
In an all-out effort to embrace modernity, China’s first Western-style opera, Farewell My Concubine, made its premiere this weekend at the San Francisco War Memorial Opera House. It marked the first time that a brand-new opera was presented in the United States by the China National Opera.
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Review

Illuminating the Chanson

Michelle Dulak Thomson - January 15, 2008
One of the pleasures of working in the field of early music — really early music, that is, music from well outside the ordinary classical musician's realm of experience — must be the sense of having found a corner of the repertoire and built a relationship to it, minutely and intimately and genuinely from scratch.
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Review

Halves and Have-Nots

Jeff Dunn - January 15, 2008
Last Wednesday's San Francisco Symphony concert presented a strong contrast in luster. The second half had it; the first lacked it. First, there was a fairly opaque opening number, Oliver Knussen's Symphony No.
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Review

Vocal Epiphanies

Anna Carol Dudley - January 15, 2008
For 21 years, the Coro Hispano de San Francisco has been singing to accompany the Three Kings who make their annual Epiphany trip 12 nights after Christmas. Saturday's "Concierto del Dia de los Reyes," the fourth of five performances around the Bay Area, was held at St. Joseph the Worker Church in Berkeley.
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Review

A Musical Conversation

Lisa Hirsch - January 15, 2008

The Pacifica Quartet performed at Stanford Lively Arts on Wednesday, bringing with it a program of Beethoven, Carter, and Smetana. The program notes made much of the fact that the Beethoven (Op. 18, No. 2) and the Smetana (Quartet No. 1 in E Minor, "From My Life") were written when their composers were going deaf. Still, the works themselves, which respectively opened and closed the concert, don't have much in common.