Before we all wax euphoric over the new S.F. Symphony maestro—which the sold-out house did the other night—let’s pause and look at the bigger picture. Esa-Pekka Salonen, who becomes the music director in fall, 2020, got a standing ovation before he had led a single note guesting Jan. 18. He’s dashing and elegant, all right, 60 but looking like 39, and he led a marvelous set of tone poems before an enraptured audience. But no real judgment on a maestro…
With little more than an array of cellos, composer Clarice Assad portrayed the rise and fall of an entire fictional civilization in a fascinating world premiere having, alas, one major defect, emanating from one seat, back around the eighth row. In the space of 22 minutes, her “Lemuria” followed the Lemurians from crude beginnings through cultural evolution, developing humble instruments like ocarinas, chanting in rituals, gorgeous sonorities and even dances, then falling victim to thunderstorms and upheaval. Despite the bizarre…
The Fresh Festival, which plays at the Joe Goode Annex in San Francisco every Friday and Saturday evening in January, proposes a series of performances that show a “bold, wild, vulnerable willingness to try something new in front of your eyes, have the power to change your mind, your day, your life,” according Kathleen Hermesdorf, the Festival curator. The Festival is celebrating its tenth anniversary around the theme of “Reckoning,” a political ambition, in which “we are . . ….
Performances of Bruckner symphonies can get reactions ranging from whee to a wheeze. The current stab at Bruckner’s Fifth certainly elicits no whee of delight—Z-z-z-z’s more than whee’s—-but the concert by the S.F. Symphony fortunately offered a first-rate Mozart Clarinet Concerto by way of compensation. As the Mozart soloist, Carey Bell made a strong case for being placed in the league of the top actives in clarinet like New Yorker Anthony McGill. His arpeggios are like waterfalls, his legatos are…
BERKELEY—To revive an excellent but forgotten oratorio by Antonin Dvorak, it took not the professional players, nor the downtown arts centers, but rather a thoroughly committed community orchestra and chorus to present “The Spectre’s Bride” of 1885. Dvorak’s prowess at high drama, compelling orchestration and choral writing as an integral component of story-telling was never more effective than in this evening-length Bohemian-Czech fairy tale about a damsel in distress bedeviled and abducted by a specter in the night. Coming in…
BERKELEY, CA—Even in previews, Berkeley Rep’s world premiere production of “Paradise Square” has the feel of a hit Broadway musical. This theatrical exuberance has legs! Set in the Manhattan race riots of the Civil War era, it plays out an unaccustomed harmony of blacks (some of them escaped slaves) and Irish immigrants. It was that great melting pot rarely in a full-melt. All coalescing in that unique mixed-race bar called Paradise Square. The vitality of this show is electric. Imagine the…
BERKELEY—The best lecture-demonstrations on the music and life of Dmitri Shostakovich these Saturday mornings has unfolded by way of the informal visiting San Franciscans of the Alexander String Quartet and the entertaining lecturer Robert Greenberg. These “play-lects” have been profound, funny, insightful, leading you to hear the master’s music through new ears. Shostakovich (1906-75) you recall was under the Soviet yoke all his life. Furthermore, at least till the 1960s, he was derided by the cognoscenti over here as being…