The Opera Tattler
Reviews of Performances and their Audiences
Category: Concert Review
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* Notes * Kronos Quartet gave two performances under the title Women's Voices in San Francisco this weekend. The program featured four female composers and two female performers. Friday's concert began with the wry "Death to Kosmische" by Nicole Lizée, whose sense of humor came through the piece rather beautifully. Laurie Anderson's quieter Flow, arranged…
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* Notes * New Century Chamber Orchestra end the 2011-2012 season with a world premiere by Ellen Taafe Zwilich (pictured left). The Berkeley performance last night began with Grieg's Fra Holbergs tid, which was played with much vim. The likeable Zwilich piece, Commedia dell'Arte, followed. Music Director Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg was soloist, and stood surrounded by…
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* Notes * Cleveland Orchestra (pictured left at the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts in 2008, photograph by Roger Mastroianni) played a second concert at San Francisco Symphony on Monday night. The program, conducted by Franz Welser-Möst, began with Beethoven’s Violin Concerto. The soloist, Nikolaj Znaider, showed a predilection for strong contrasts. One of…
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* Notes * Cleveland Orchestra, conducted by Franz Welser-Möst (pictured left, photograph by Roger Mastroianni), played the first of a two night residency at San Francisco Symphony yesterday. The performance started with Mendelssohn's Symphony No. 3, Scottish. The quiet parts were restrained and tasteful, the louder parts appropriately ponderous. The musicians played rather smoothly. After the…
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* Notes * The amateur musicians of Symphony Parnassus barely all fit on the stage of San Francisco Conservatory of Music’s Concert Hall yesterday afternoon. The performance began with Copland’s Fanfare for the Common Man. The playing was not entirely clear but was quite hearty. Before the Der Rosenkavalier Suite and excerpts from that opera,…
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* Notes * Clarinetist Brenden Guy presented a genial afternoon of Bay Area music at First Unitarian Universalist Church in San Francisco on Sunday. The performance began with David Conte’s rather lyrical Sonata for Clarinet and Piano (1978), played by Guy and pianist Miles Graber. Valinor Winds played Nicholas Pavkovic’s Eight Figments (2010), whose movements…
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* Notes * The American Mavericks Festival at San Francisco Symphony had one last performance yesterday before heading on tour. The chamber music program included pieces by Steve Reich, Meredith Monk (pictured left), Lukas Foss, and David Del Tredici. The afternoon began with Reich's Music for Pieces of Wood (1973), which was played by Jack Van…
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* Notes * Tonight Quatuor Ebène (pictured left, photograph by Julien Mignot) had a San Francisco debut at Herbst Theatre. The evening started with Mozart's String Quartet in D minor, K. 421, which was played with much personality, and what seemed to be an entirely historically uninformed manner. Somehow the confidence and rapport of the…
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* Notes * Last weekend Jonathan Nott (pictured left, photograph by Thomas Müller) conducted Chicago Symphony Orchestra in a program of Schoenberg's Piano Concerto and Mahler's Das Lied von der Erde. The concert started with the former, the soloist being Pierre-Laurent Aimard, who played with clarity. The orchestra sounded neat and together. Schoenberg's music tends to…
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