ArtsSF

MENLO PARK, CA—The Menlo miracle is that for three weeks every summer, a dozen or so musicians turn out on any given date and play repertory well into the night, despite the summer doldrums all over. Instead of repeating the overplayed potboilers, it’s about  presenting unfamiliar chamber works by name composers of the 20th century in very  creative programming indeed. The July 31 foray to Budapest by Music@Menlo featured the crack Calidore String Quartet as well as Anthony McGill, clarinet…

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MENLO PARK, CA—With the chamber concert focused on 19th-century St. Petersburg, Russia, you expected Tchaikovsky and Rimsky-Korsakov. Instead, the focus was on lesser names having great ideas, especially in innovative instrumental combinations. Glinka, Balakirev and Arensky. Not exactly household names—more likely, a Russian law firm. Their style and textures offered few surprises, but their instruments were innovative. How about Anton Arensky’s string quartet, with the second violin replaced by a second cello, immediately placing the spotlight on low notes? And…

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ATHERTON, CA—The Music@Menlo chamber-music festival  fills a major summer void in concerts with players from all over who are downright virtuosic. The three-week cornucopia of performances, now in its 16th  season, draws robust crowds to intimate venues, some more suitable acoustically  than others. This year’s format for the (mostly) 18th and 19th century  music has each concert focusing on a single European arts capital. Vienna got the call on July 19, with works of Webern, Haydn and a master named…

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The four musicians arrived from some unfamiliar far-off planet, I think, perhaps grads of some galactic conservatory, and the results could not have been more refreshing. The secret of the Circadian Quartet is breaking with routine and pushing the envelope. The players will set aside their strings in favor of drumming, hitting a tamtam or tambourine, and singing some Russian folk song. A narrator will intersperse some poetry about love, even translated lines from the 14th-century Persian legend Hafez. If…

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BERKELEY, CA—-Readings and live music, a format once avidly pursued in various cities, is making a comeback. In the past month, local concerts have featured small musical ensembles with a live interview of Meredith Monk, or a discussion about Philip Glass, or simply readings of poetry and prose. We’ll see if it develops into a broader trend. That pairing is the meat-and-potatoes of the five-year-old Circadian String Quartet, an inventive  local group focusing on music “with folkloric or cultural significance.”…

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The brother-sister act Plus Two known as the Tetzlaff Quartet played gorgeous music. Sometimes like a well-oiled sports car, the sound purrs at you seductively or inflames you, leaving  the sell-out crowd wishing for more. First violinist Christian Tetzlaff is a legend both as recitalist and concerto soloist, but here he was in a third guise leading a chamber music group in Austrian standards. It was a study in contrasts: Three tall women, poised and disciplined, anchored by sister Tanja…

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During its interregnum period, the crack New Century Chamber Orchestra  is inviting various contrasting guest leaders. The latest is Benjamin Beilman, a supremely gifted East Coast violinist, who was younger than any of the 19 players in the ensemble that he led on Nov. 9. Though a superb soloist, Beilman has neither the experience nor the knack of integrating into an ensemble and blending his sound seamlessly into the orchestra. Indeed, according to his detailed and impressive CV, he has…

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Talk about depth. The chamber-music festival Music@Menlo showed off four different lead violinists in baroque concertos, each one better than the previous, and on the under-40 side too. If alone, any one of them could be the star of this bucolic festival running through Aug. 5, though none of them (yet) command wide-spread name recognition, at least on the West Coast. Unlike the past 14 seasons, when the pianists often had the upper hand, this year’s spotlight is on all-strings,…

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Those fire-eaters from Southern Cal known as the Calder Quartet played some bristling contemporary works, plus one of Beethoven’s most whimsical efforts. The four mid-career men—identically dressed in dark suits, with matching ties—show an uncanny rhythmic bent able to decipher and render the most complex metric signatures that only modern composers like Thomas  Adès and Boulez dare to call for and to dabble in. Seven beats to the measure, 11, 13, even 25 (or almost any prime number you might…

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Chamber Works Focused 1850-1945  By Paul Hertelendy  artssf.com, the independent observer of San Francisco Bay Area music and dance  Week of July 20-27, 2016 Vol. 18, No. 78 ATHERTON, CA—During the summer doldrums, count on Music@Menlo to liven up the scene with prime chamber music. Admittedly, it’s a challenge, given this year’s Russian theme. Serious Russian music didn’t stir noticeably  till Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert were gone. But in the opening week, Music@Menlo offered a package of early works by…

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