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Month: May 2019

The Song of the (Unsettled) Night

The Song of the (Unsettled) Night

Mahler’s rarely heard Seventh is for many an ugly duckling, but for others a connoisseur’s delight. For 84 minutes his giant forces hammer away, reflecting I believe the foment of the times (1905) and the breakdown of the old world order. Here Mahler puts aside his elegant opera-night chapeau and gets into the sonic nitty-gritty, bristling with abrasive exuberance while falling in love with dissonance and inner-orchestral conflicts. The Viennese composer is troubled, he is pessimistic, he unreels those dour…

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A Hope-ful Jam Session

A Hope-ful Jam Session

Is violinist Daniel Hope a reincarnation of the great California-born (but English) Yehudi Menuhin? He is headed down that very path in his versatility while hopping across the Atlantic, but this time in a westerly direction. Now he is whipping up Americana music like a local, then pairing with the amazing jazz of the Marcus Roberts Trio in idiomatic outpourings that are driving audiences wild. His Friday (May 10) audience in fact was so demanding of encores that, in order…

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DANCING TO THE DESPOTS

DANCING TO THE DESPOTS

Modern ballet at its most effusive marks the all-Ratmansky evening dubbed “The Shostakovich Trilogy.” In the modern mode, dancers bend, twist, lean, and go upside down, quite beyond classical ballet. And the San Francisco Ballet’s ensemble is impeccable in spinning an entire evening of Russian émigré Alexei Ratmansky’s choreography—-truly a winning combination to finish off a very rich SFB season. If at one extreme these performers can be compared to a well-tuned high-performance sports car, at the other they have…

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AROUND THE WORLD WITH KRONOS            

AROUND THE WORLD WITH KRONOS            

SAN RAFAEL, CA—As usual, the fast-flying Kronos Quartet was innovating mightily. Instead of the standard string quartet concert program, on May 4 they offered a 10-piece musical mosaic based on world music—a double-espresso of surprises, which is hardly the regular cup of tea for string quartets. Are you new to Kronos, our seemingly ageless ensemble? In a nutshell: The four string players are always amplified, giving a more assertive and metallic sound; living composers of both gendersalways dominate; music is…

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DANCE MADNESS AT THE SYMPHONY

DANCE MADNESS AT THE SYMPHONY

BERKELEY—The symphony crowd missed an evocative evening at the Berkeley Symphony that was offering two important mid-career composers, a mad, mad dance program, a foray to British creativity and a fast-rising guest conductor. But the rafts of empty seats in Zellerbach Hall suggested that it was all a bit too far off the beaten track, even for an orchestra as innovative as Berkeley. Having less than average advance media coverage didn’t help either. Covering the pit with a dance surface…

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