Steven Winnis a San Francisco-based writer and critic and frequent interviewer for City Arts & Lectures. His work has appeared in Gramophone, Musical America, Opera, Symphony, and the San Francisco Chronicle.
In its second of three all-Tchaikovsky concerts, the Mariinsky Orchestra shines a revealing light on the Fifth Symphony, giving it both dramatic urgency and ravishing lyricism.
Valery Gergiev’s Mariinsky Orchestra, playing two Tchaikovsky symphonies, scrubbed the varnish off the Pathétique and made “Winter Dreams” sound substantial.
Bucking nationwide trends, the city by the Bay's premier orchestra worked its way to the top of the symphonic world and improved its financial health, while reaching thousands of new listeners.
With flair and precision, the S.F. Symphony presents a Bartók concerto, with Yuja Wang at the keyboard, and an excerpt from Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake ballet.
The San Francisco Symphony’s Keeping Score programs have broken new ground, both in the stories they tell and in the way they present live performance onscreen.
The Berkeley Symphony Orchestra closed its 2010-2011 season with a concert at Zellerbach Hall that both segregated and showcased the ensemble’s considerable musical assets.
The Vienna Philharmonic, one of the world’s great orchestras, plumbs the depths and heights of Mahler’s Symphony No. 6, in its final Berkeley performance Sunday.
