music

Earplay explores limits of form in end-of-season concert Earplay, a mainstay of the Bay Area contemporary music scene, ended their 23rd season with “Intricate Inventions,” a program which samples the last 30 years of musical evolution. Just as art movements question their basic tenets, exploring perspective and ground, reality and ownership, these modern composers argue with conventional uses of texture, tension and found-form. Nor...

Continue reading

Categories: music

Greenberg and the Alexander String Quartet explore Haydn and Carter What could Franz Josef Haydn and Elliott Carter possibly have to say to each other across a 200-year divide? More than you might think, according to educator and composer Robert Greenberg, at a Saturday morning matinee in Herbst Theatre. Standing alongside the Alexander String Quartet, long-time collaborators in the “Inspiration” series of...

Continue reading

Categories: music

Alexander Quartet tunes strings to songs of death Robert Greenberg and the Alexander String Quartet teamed up for their last joint presentation of this year’s “Inspirations” series, four lectures and concerts drawing parallels between older and modern works. Their Saturday morning concert on May 17 focused on Franz Schubert’s String Quartet in D minor, D.810 (“Death and the Maiden”), and George Crumb’s modern use of that piece in his string quartet,...

Continue reading

Categories: music

Brahms Festival a knock-out at Davies Symphony Hall Ah, Bach, Beethoven and Brahms. There is a reason Brahms is elevated as one of Western Music’s masters--his truths are human truths. His delicacy has a restraint born of love and his grandeur speaks of the inevitability of time. And the deep sadness and arresting beauty of his themes? Perhaps it derives from a fin de siècle view of life’s hopes wedded to mortality. The San Francisco Symphony has dedicated...

Continue reading

Categories: music

San Francisco Performances presents legendary pianist in concert Lightning struck from a clear sky Tuesday night, May 6, at San Francisco's Herbst Theater, as thunder rolled from the keyboard of young piano sensation Mihaela Ursuleasa. I was stunned to hear such fierce and passionate playing. A demanding program of Medtner, Schumann and Rachmaninoff was all one could ask for, as the pianist flowed from tender opening to ferocious...

Continue reading

Categories: music

Anne-Sophie Mutter brings schwing to symphony hall When a great artist performs one gets to ask questions of interpretation and style and artistic integrity. Anne-Sophie Mutter had that in spades last Monday at S.F.’s Davies Symphony Hall, wowing the crowd in three Brahms violin sonatas and returning, after multiple standing ovations, for four encores. Spilling out of her tight trademark dress, she appeared daisy fresh but dead serious. Her long-time accompanist Lambert...

Continue reading

Categories: music