It’s seldom that the high points of a piano recital are contained in repertoire that is short, dissonant, unfamiliar and mostly loud. At Lydia Artymiw’s March 7 recital for Concerts Grand in SRJC’s Newman Auditorium, the music of Kurtag and Messiaen had for this reviewer emotional impact far beyon...

Symphony

The fourth “chapter” of the Marin Symphony’s “Season of the Scribe” continued Feb. 28 when Alasdair Neale conducted an inspiring program of Debussy, Copland, and Tchaikovsky in the Marin Civic Center Auditorium. Debussy’s “Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun” began the concert with the Orchestra p...

Chamber

In a sharp change from past concerts, the Trio Navarro gave an abbreviated program Feb. 28 in Sonoma State University’s Ives Hall, reflecting a temporary substitution in personnel. Marilyn Thompson, the Trio’s founding pianist, was absent due to pending shoulder surgery, and the anticipated trios of...

Chamber

Cuban-American pianist Antonio Iturrioz alternately thrilled and charmed a capacity Sebastopol Center for the Arts audience Feb. 28 with an eclectic progam of popular and rarely-heard music As a tribute to Schumann and Chopin’s 200th birthdays in 2010, Mr. Iturrioz mixed seldom heard works as ...

Chamber

The little white Community Church in Occidental was bursting at the seams with recorder enthusiasts and their friends February 27 when the Flanders Recorder Quartet came on stage in the fifth concert in the Redwood Arts Council’s series. The quartet, from Belgium, includes Bart Spanhove, Tom Beets,...

Recital

Ukrainian-American virtuoso Valentina Lisitsa came to her Feb. 21 Santa Rosa recital carrying the fame of a massive YouTube video presence and as among the handful of the most popular woman pianists on the international scene. Whether she is among the best remained to be seen and heard. Performing...

Recitals entirely devoted to the works of Chopin are not rare, and the 200th anniversary of the great Pole’s birth has already spawned world-wide concerts of his music and for memorializing his artistry. What was basically new in pianist Gustavo Romero’s Oakmont (Feb. 18) and SRJC (Feb. 19) recital...

Chamber

David Rounds, founder of the Deep Valley Chamber Music Series in Ukiah, has done it once again by engaging the exciting Afiara String Quartet for a Valentine’s Day performance in the Grace Hudson Museum. For an overflow audience, the young players from Canada provided a demonstration of the evolvi...

Symphony

In the fifth set of Santa Rosa Symphony concerts in the current season, conductor Bruno Ferrandis programmed a world premiere and ended with a familiar Schumann symphony. In between were Chopin’s F Minor Piano Concerto, Op. 21, with soloist Berenika Zakrzewski, and Schumann's "Manfred" overture. Be...

Organ music enthusiasts received a treat Feb. 12 in Santa Rosa with David Parsons playing the monthly “Mini Recital” American Guild of Organists twilight concert at Santa Rosa’s Church of the Incarnation on the sonorous Casavant pipe organ. Forty pipe organ enthusiasts attended. On the program wer...

The versatile Ukiah Symphony did it again Feb.6 with a fine performance of Gustav Holst’s “The Planets” in Mendocino College’s Center Theater. The driving force was Conductor Les Pfutzenreuter, who persistently demands better performances each season from the orchestra. After 20 years on the Ukiah ...

Symphony

Upon entering the Marin Civic Center Auditorium Feb. 2 the reviewer was greeted by the spectacle of the chorus warming up on stage. Did Frank Lloyd Wright not provide a choral room? The distinguishing characteristic of this warm up was that not one singer managed to hit the high notes despite the ...

Symphony

Conductor Asher Raboy, in his final season with the Napa Valley Symphony, has established in a 20-year tenure a responsive orchestral sound and an interest in large and crowd-pleasing works. During a Jan. 31 concert in Yountville’s Lincoln Theater, Mr. Raboy had the opportunity to shine in two mass...

The American Bach Soloists celebrated Jan. 29 the four-hundredth anniversary of Monteverdi’s towering Vespero della Beata Vergine (1610) at St. Stephen’s Church in Belvedere. It was a stunning performance. Conductor Jeffrey Thomas presided over a stellar collection of singers and instrumental...

Symphony

In the old days, barbers were also surgeons, as adept with a scalpel as a razor, their red-and-white barber pole an emblem of both surgery (red) and hair-cutting (white). At its Jan. 23 concert, the well-coiffed Santa Rosa Symphony enacted this dual role, offering both some serious blood (from a rea...

Chamber

On Jan. 23, the Redwood Arts Council showcased École Royale, a period instrument ensemble, in a chamber concert in Occidental’s charming and acoustically fine Community Church. This year is the Council’s 30th anniversary, and an enthusiastic and animated audience filled the room. École Royale inclu...

Innovative but not necessarily exciting programming characterized the Kirkwood Piano Quartet’s Jan. 14 performance in Oakmont’s Berger Auditorium. Unfamiliar works were perhaps the reason for an audience count far less than the usual Oakmont Concerts Series event, and the Kirkwood played a first ...

Chamber

In a 1778 letter to his father, Mozart observed, “It is far easier to play a thing quickly than slowly.” The truth of Mozart’s observation has been borne out repeatedly in the intervening centuries, as virtuosos of all stripes have sought to dazzle their audiences with high-speed prestidigitation, ...

Marin pianist John Boyajy can’t be neutral about any important musical matter. He has passion and the ability to speak extensive words about that passion, and his excitement about Schubert, Bach and Mozart was everywhere in evidence in a duo recital with soprano Bryn Jimenez Jan. 3 in Novato’s All ...

Chamber

Summerfield Waldorf School in Santa Rosa hosted a concert January 2 in their handsome West Santa Rosa Sophia Hall, featuring the Vermillian Ensemble. Frances Blaker, well-known to Bay Area recorder players as both a teacher and performer, brought a handful of fine baroque recorders to perform works...

3/5/2010 5:18:49 AM - "His tempo of the “Revolutionary” Etude was quite fast." What does this mean? Chopin's markings are ridiculously fast, is this to say he played it slower than ridiculously fast? or faster than quick? Am I missing something here? This reveiw seems incomplete. One thing I do know: this guy is a View Full Comment

2/23/2010 6:11:14 AM - I think Terry McNeill hit it on the head with respect to Berenika's playing. While some of the passagework was quite brilliant and even, particularly considering the fast tempo, other parts were faked and insecure. Overall, the playing was straightforward, unimaginative, and without any particular a View Full Comment

2/19/2010 8:11:10 AM; John Thompson - So far, looks like we have three hits for Mr. McNeill's review and one against. View Full Comment

2/18/2010 6:31:46 AM - Three hits below (one miss – Mr. Terry McNeill’s review): "The piano’s balance with the orchestra was fine. Although its sonority ideally might want a hall slightly less bright, the brilliant passagework in the Chopin, keenly mastered by the soloist, Berenika, was crystal clear, glistening in fac View Full Comment

2/18/2010 1:59:25 AM - I concur with the lack of rubato. I have an old recording of this concerto that is emotionally beautiful and it hurt to hear Berenika's version. View Full Comment

2/17/2010 3:02:45 AM - I have to admit, I agree totally about Berenika. The entire performance, including a myriad of blurred passages and missed notes, was a sub-par performance. There was almost no musicality in the whole concerto, just speed, followed by more speed. I really feel, at least on Monday night, that the con View Full Comment

2/17/2010 1:51:26 AM - A vibrant 30 minutes! I hope he agrees to perform again in the near future. RRC View Full Comment

2/14/2010 11:04:03 AM - I agree with Mr. McNeill's criticism of Berenika's performance and would add I noted three problems, all of which contributed to a less than desirable result: 1. Almost the entire concerto was played at the same dynamic level-- forte, and this combined with the lack of rubatos, reduced a lovely w View Full Comment

2/10/2010 10:16:47 AM - Apart from a couple details, that's not an honest review. It's petty, preachy, and largely irrelevent to the music-making that took place. No, the chorus shouldn't warm up on stage with the doors open, but that's a pretty pithy thing to churn out your huge opening paragraph on. And I doubt performer View Full Comment

2/9/2010 2:08:03 AM; John Thompson - It's refreshing to see a brutally honest review. And you have an interesting point about standing ovations. I was just remarking the other day that some audiences seem to always give a standing ovation. The Wikipedia article View Full Comment

1/27/2010 4:52:06 AM - I think that the reviewer was unduly critical of Falletta's podium presence, although it was overall a positive review, especially for the woodwinds (which I agree were outstanding). My sense is that her "immobility" was a conscious choice by her, allowing her to focus on some very complex material View Full Comment