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Month: January 2018

RARE RUSSIAN FAIRY TALE OPERA INVADES THE BAY AREA

RARE RUSSIAN FAIRY TALE OPERA INVADES THE BAY AREA

ALAMEDA, CA—In the S.F. East Bay, the tranquil community of Alameda is the home of a new opera troupe, presenting an ambitious double bill of Rimsky-Korsakov, half of it representing an important staging of a neglected work. Using the ballroom of an Elks Lodge and making do with a modest budget, the Island City Opera gave what was termed the US premiere of the one-act fantasy “Kashchey the Immortal” (1902), named after the evil wizard also encountered in the subsequent…

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CELEBRATING LOU AT 101

CELEBRATING LOU AT 101

The happiest composer I ever met was the prolific Lou Harrison, whose centennial celebrations, like his large output of music,  couldn’t all be squeezed into 2017. The Harrison joy persisted up to Jan. 24 with a small-ensemble concert of amazing variety at the inviting and sold-out Strand Theatre. In the end, doing even an intimate all-Harrison concert  comes down to finding exotica like “junk-yard” instruments, gamelans and even genuine Studebaker brake drums to provide the ever broader sonic array needed…

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BROAD RANGE OF AN ORCHESTRA – St. Louis’ Rich Rep, and Student Co-Plays Too

BROAD RANGE OF AN ORCHESTRA – St. Louis’ Rich Rep, and Student Co-Plays Too

Going a big step beyond, the visiting St. Louis Symphony gives its concert, then spends a day interacting with music students to foster the inspiration for the future. This rare interaction made for a double-barreled impact at the University of California here, some 70 miles east of San Francisco. As if it were needed, the orchestra and its leader David Robertson showed their  mettle in unfamiliar 20th-century repertory created by precocious composers not even 30 years old. There’s a certain…

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RISING FROM THE ASHES – A Santa Rosa Symphonic Renaissance

RISING FROM THE ASHES – A Santa Rosa Symphonic Renaissance

A brave guest conductor indeed, the visitor who introduces Bartok with a 12-minute illustrated lecture. But the English conductor Graeme Jenkins got away with it and had the Santa Rosa Symphony crowd firmly in his corner for a modern masterpiece, Bartok’s “Concerto for Orchestra” (1943). Along the way, putting away his baton, he had led articulate readings of Haydn and Mozart. The evening as a whole was rousing—far more an experience than a concert. Clearly the night’s focus Jan. 13…

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A SMORGASBORD WITH GERMANIC ORIGINS

A SMORGASBORD WITH GERMANIC ORIGINS

It was the Manny-and-Michael Show, on a high musical plane, tackling a sharply contrasting set of works at the San Francisco Symphony. You love picaresque puckishness? Richard Strauss’ “Til Eulenspiegel’s Merry Pranks,” and you’re welcome. You yearn to discover the unknown crannies of Mozart? You had his Piano Concerto No. 14, written in his 20s. How about a generous dose of operatic drama? The “Leonore Overture No. 3” of Beethoven, arguably the most skillful quarter-hour condensation of an opera ever….

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