Reviews

On Thursday night at Davies Hall, Michael Tilson Thomas and the San Francisco Symphony took a huge and potentially unwieldy work, Mahler's Symphony No. 7, and graced it with a heady and absorbing performance.

Aiding and encouraging young careers is the noble cause behind the Irving M. Klein International String Competition, which held the finals of its 22nd competition Sunday afternoon at San Francisco State University. Three talented musicians each played a full virtuoso concerto, supported by the Marin Symphony under conductor Alasdair Neale.

The Cantabile Chorale has a new sound. Some aspects of this hold great promise, while other aspects suggest areas that could do with some ironing out. Friday night's concert at St. Gregory Nyssa in San Francisco, titled "Bach, Beatles, and Beyond," demonstrated this ably.

In a program note written for San Francisco Opera some years ago and republished in his book The Ultimate Art, David Littlejohn called Don Giovanni "The Impossible Opera." He went into some detail about the reasons the work is so difficult to stage effectively.

Ah, it's that time again. Spring is in the air, school's almost out, and summer music festivals beckon legions of young musicians.

From a listener's perspective, one of the joys of pedagogically oriented programs like the Yehudi Menuhin Chamber Music Seminar and Festival is the opportunity it affords to hear both the faculty and the seminar participants in two roles — the former teaching as well as playing, the latter learning as well as performing.

One of the most individual aspects of music in the Bay Area is the incredible number of choral organizations and the variety of repertoire they offer. As of Saturday evening in San Francisco's Trinity Episcopal Church, that pleasure was increased as Richard Sparks directed the premiere concert of Choralis.

Sometimes it's better not to know too much of what goes on behind the scenes in the making of a performance. History is replete with examples of acrimonious, not to say borderline murderous, artistic partnerships resulting in splendid performances (and, for that matter, of unfailingly genial partnerships that never managed to spark).

You don't have to be a critical genius to figure out that Talise Trevigne, the star of San Francisco Lyric Opera's new production of Lucia di Lammermoor has a major-league voice and star quality to match. She lit a fire under Saturday's satisfying, if basic, performance at the Florence Gould Theater at the Legion of Honor.

Seeing and hearing is believing, though evidence from these senses is sometimes hard to balance against a third kind of sense: the common kind. A pertinent example of this occurred Sunday afternoon in Davies Symphony Hall, when the San Francisco Symphony Youth Orchestra mounted the stage to perform two major repertory pieces, against considerable odds.