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Month: December 2019

SURPRISE BAROQUE THRILLS AND TRILLS

SURPRISE BAROQUE THRILLS AND TRILLS

Credit the Bach Soloists for filling the week’s vacuum around New Year’s with goodies, specifically by addressing that yawning concert void we have before and after the most celebrated Eve since, well, maybe Adam. On the year’s final afternoon they paraded forth a splendid cornucopia of baroque operatic arias with two imported vocalists, and even an authentic period-instruments orchestra of 27 playing as if Frederick the Great himself was in the boxes at Herbst Theatre, demanding the best. I’m delighted…

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TAPESTRIES, AND TEMPLE-TO-TANGO TRANSITIONS

TAPESTRIES, AND TEMPLE-TO-TANGO TRANSITIONS

PALO ALTO, CA—A touring chorus and a homeless orchestra combined for a highly innovative holiday program that, I hope, will inspire others to broaden out beyond humdrum traditional-standards-and-sing-alongs Christmas formats. What you had to like about the Choral Project is that it’s not one of the elite choruses vocally. Nonetheless it assembles stunning programs with varied forces leaving crowds talking animatedly well after the First United Methodist Church concert. High point was what you might call a new “United-Nations cantata,”…

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The Beethoven-Biss ‘Moonlight’ Approach

The Beethoven-Biss ‘Moonlight’ Approach

BERKELEY—Pianist Jonathan Biss must be winning grateful nods from the composer high above right about now. Biss meticulously adhered to all the score markings in his all-Beethoven recital, avoiding all flimflam, personal touches or effusive messages from the heart in getting down to brass tacks (as this observer verified, with score in lap as it firmly poured out its instructions in black and white). Consider Biss’ playing the “Moonlight” Sonata. Many interpreters will douse it in perfume, draw out the…

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NEW CONDUCTOR EARNING HIS SPURS FAST

NEW CONDUCTOR EARNING HIS SPURS FAST

ROHNERT PARK, CA—The unfinished Mozart Requiem got a refined performance, deserving of both the sellouts and the ensuing ovations. Clearly, in this first year leading the Santa Rosa Symphony, Francesco Lecce-Chong is fast earning his spurs as music director, exhibiting his finesse and his deft 18th-century styling. For once we avoided the excess romanticization encountered so often. The emphasis was clearly on clarity and articulation, achieved best with the instrumentalists. (The otherwise effective massed chorus of 75 or so singing…

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Nareh Arghamanyan
Music To Be Seen, Not Heard

Music To Be Seen, Not Heard

SAN JOSE—The composer Aram Khachaturian was in a quandary, which probably explains most of the shortcomings of his grandiose Piano Concerto. In the 1930s composing in the Soviet Union, he was very much under the thumb of the fearsome dictator Stalin, who unfortunately thought himself an outstanding music critic. The pressure to survive and not have to vegetate in the gulags forever led several Soviet composers at that time, including also Shostakovich, to write shallow, flashy music “of the people”…

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It’s All About the Pianist Upstage

It’s All About the Pianist Upstage

How gratifying, that the musician in the back row can be the star of the performance, whether the percussionist, or the lady harpist, or the pianist. This time, it turned out to be the South-African-born guest pianist Anton Nel, unobtrusively hidden behind the row of S.F. Symphony string players in an all-French chamber program. Nel, who had been a Naumberg Award winner three decades ago, brings to the keyboard a deft and nimble touch, a thousand shadings of dynamics, and…

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