Recent Reviews |
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CHAMBER
NOT A SEVENTH BUT A FIRST AT SPRING LAKE VILLAGE CONCERT
by Terry McNeill
Wednesday, March 20, 2024
Telegraph Quartet |
Felix Mendelssohn wrote six wonderful string quartets, pillars of the repertoire. But wait, there is a seventh, and the Telegraph Quartet played Fannie Mendelssohn’s E-Flat Major Quartet March 20 at the Spring Lake Village Concert Series.
Before a full house the Telegraph, in residence at the San ...
THIRTY-THREE PLUS VARIATIONS AND AN OCEAN VIEW
by Terry McNeill
Saturday, March 16, 2024
Pianist Paul Smith Feb. 16 |
In my career of reviewing hundreds of piano recitals, and personally producing more than 80, all have used grand pianos. Except one, Paul Smith’s commanding concert March 16 in Marin’s Muir Beach’s Community Center that had an upright instrument on tiny stage overlooking ocean.
However, it was a g...
CHORAL AND VOCAL
A ST. JOHN PASSION FOR THE AGES
by Abby Wasserman
Friday, March 8, 2024
Baritone Mischa Bouvier (A. Wasserman Photo) |
Bach’s Saint John Passion, 300 years old this Easter, may not be as well known as his Saint Matthew Passion, but it is a sublime musical experience. As performed by American Bach Soloists March 8 in Belvedere’s St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church, it was profoundly stirring, and one did not have to be a ...
CHORAL AND VOCAL
SPLENDID SCHUBERT SONGS IN SANET ALLEN RECITAL
by Terry McNeill
Saturday, March 2, 2024
William Corbett-Jones and (r) Sanet Allen 3/2/24 |
Classical music house concerts often slowly unfold, as some in the audience notice in the back of the room the champagne bottles and smell the lasagna. Musical attention wavers, but this didn’t happen March 2 in a lovely San Rafael home recital.
An audience of 35 heard soprano Sanet Allen in fou...
CHAMBER
SHAW'S MICROFICTIONS HIGHLIGHTS MIRO QUARTET'S SEBASTOPOL CONCERT
by Peter Lert
Friday, March 1, 2024
Miró Quartet March 1 in Sebastopol (P. Lert Photo) |
As with cellist Amit Peled’s cello recital last month in the Sebastopol Community Church, a March 1 performance by the Miró Quartet in the same acoustically rewarding venue proved once again that heavy rain could not prevent a capacity audience from enjoying an excellent evening of chamber music. Fo...
CHAMBER
FRY ST. SQ PLAYS A DEMANDING 222 GALLERY CONCERT
by Terry McNeill
Friday, March 1, 2024
Fry St. SQ March 1 at the 222 |
Continuing a string of exemplary chamber music programs, Healdsburg’s 222 Gallery presented Utah-based Fry Street Quartet March 1 over two evenings that included a movie, two demanding quartets and a newly minted work by a local composer.
Newly minted? Gabriela Lena Frank’s A Psalm of Disquiet wa...
SYMPHONY
YOUTH ORCHESTRA CHARMS BIG SPRING LAKE AUDIENCE
by Terry McNeill
Wednesday, February 28, 2024
Usually the Spring Lake Village auditorium stage is pretty empty, with a small chamber music ensembles. In February it was a solo harpist, and April’s concert will be a solo pianist. All that changed Feb. 28 when the 53 musicians of Santa Rosa Symphony’s Youth Orchestra took the stage before a packe...
CHAMBER
SPIRITUAL CHAMBER MUSIC MARIN TRIO CONCERT
by Abby Wasserman
Sunday, February 25, 2024
J. Nakamatsu J. Frautschi J.Manasse Feb. 25 (A. Wasserman Photo) |
It’s difficult to write without superlatives about Chamber Music Marin’s February 25 concert by the trio of Jon Nakamatsu, piano, clarinetist Jon Manasse and violinist Jennifer Frautschi. There aren’t a lot of compositions for this ensemble, and while Mr. Nakamatsu and Mr. Manasse have been a perfor...
RECITAL
ELEGANT VOCAL MASTERY AT ROSES SIGNATURE RECITAL
by Pamela Hicks Gailey
Sunday, February 25, 2024
M. Thompson C. Menke Feb. 25 |
February was a month for sopranos in recital. Earlier superstar Renée Fleming and the highly touted young newcomer Magdalena Kúzma delighted audiences in very lovely and different art song programs in Weill Hall. Then Feb. 25 at Santa Rosa’s Church of the Roses, Sonoma County’s venerable choral cond...
SYMPHONY
SOLO BRILLIANCE IN SANTA ROSA SYMPHONY CONCERT
by Terry McNeill
Saturday, February 17, 2024
Conductor/Pianist Jeffrey Kahane |
In a program widely advertised as Kahane Returns, the former Santa Rosa Symphony conductor’s performance at the piano Feb. 17 was almost upstaged by a potent performance of Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 1 and a sensuous small orchestra piece in its local premiere.
If memory serves Mr. Kahane made his...
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Composer Michael Djupstrom |
TWO OLD, TWO NEW AT THE SR SYMPHONY'S MARCH CONCERT IN WEILL
by Peter Lert
Saturday, March 23, 2024
Santa Rosa Symphony's March 23 concert combined well-known favorites with two new pieces. There are those who look down upon such “warhorses” as Tchaikovsky's violin concerto or Ravel's Bolero, but it must be borne in mind that such crowd pleasers do, indeed, bring the crowds to concerts to be pleased.
More than 1,000 filled Weill Hall, which in the present era is what's necessary in three weekend sets to sustain a professional orchestra, a point underscored when music director Francesco Lecce-Chong began the concert’s second half by reminding subscription holders that their participation in this and future seasons makes possible long-term planning, commissioning new works and participation by top artists such as the evening’s violin soloist, Geneva Lewis.
Icelandic composer Hildur Guðnadóttir's versatility extends from performance in progressive rock bands to Oscar-winning film scores and even video games, and her short piece Folk faer andlit (“People get faces”) opened the concert. It commemorates a shameful 2015 episode when the Icelandic government denied residency to Albanian immigrants and deported them, including children with terminal illnesses. Originally scored for chorus, its text includes the Icelandic words for “mercy” and “forgive us for...”
The string orchestra version performed by the SRS was no less wrenching. It began with a melody performed by a string trio placed upstage right, well behind the rest of the orchestra, and this melody was repeated, as in a passacaglia, while the rest of the strings developed motifs on an A minor scale. Having heard a recording of the choral version, I can only hope that we get the chance to hear it live in the future. In the meantime, the string orchestra version may someday attain the status of works like Barber's Adagio for strings.
Tchaikovsky's D Major violin concerto, written in 1878, is one of the big five of the 19th century fiddle concertos (the others are the Mendelssohn, Bruch, Brahms, and Beethoven). This was a period of significant transition in concerto writing. The earlier violin and piano concertos by, for example Mozart, were scored for what would today be considered a chamber orchestra. By mid-century orchestras had grown to the 80 musicians with which we're familiar, and the piano of Mozart and Beethoven's day had grown to concert grand that could hold its own against them. The violin, weighing barely a pound (and in those days with gut strings) was unchanged since the Baroque era, and so could easily be overwhelmed unless the difference in sound was carefully considered by the composer.
This notwithstanding, Tchaikovsky wrote his concerto in only three weeks, and saved his typically exuberant orchestral flourishes for moments in which the soloist had rests, while passages in which the orchestra accompanies the violin are much less densely scored. The solo part, splendidly performed by Ms. Lewis, makes effective use of features as double stops and the instrument's sonorous lower range. Her instrumental sound was well suited to Weill Hall's famously excellent acoustics, and even from my seat in the balcony every note from the fortes on the G string to the highest harmonics in the first movement cadenza stood out clearly. Throughout the piece Mr. Lecce-Chong conducted, and the orchestra played, with commendable restraint while preserving the lush sound so beloved by Tchaikovsky enthusiasts. If the horns may have sounded a bit prominent in some passages, this could have been a combination of my balcony seat in the hall and the horn’s placement on top of the third riser in the orchestra. Ms. Lewis's performance was technically flawless and nuanced yet passionate, particularly in the cadenza, and resulted in a spontaneous standing ovation at its end.
The quieter canzonetta of the second movement, with the solo violin's duets with flute (Kathleen Reynolds) and clarinetist Roy Zajac, was a contrast to the soloistic pyrotechnics of the Russian themed finale, leading almost inevitably to another standing ovation. The audience was destined to be on their feet yet one more time after Ms. Lewis's encore, Bach's E Major Partita (BWV 1006), in which she was able to bring out the seeming polyphonies from a single instrument, similar to the Bach cello suites.
The Symphony's performance of Michael Djupstrom's Dreams of Flight for large orchestra was the work’s California premiere (and only its second performance altogether, as it was first played by the Eugene Symphony this past February. In addition to the usual symphonic instrumentation it includes augmented percussion instruments such as various suspended cymbals, tom-toms, ratchet, crotales (small chromatically tuned cymbals), vibraphone, and xylophone.
The composer was present and offered explanatory remarks from the stage, noting that the “Dream of Flight” title came to him after the work was completed, and that he felt that the first movement seemed to evoke motion through water rather than flight, except in its final moment. Similarly the second of the two large movements (they're separated by a short interlude) seemed to him to have more the feel of running than of flying, save at the end where once again it was “poised to leap off and hover.”
The first movement was a bit reminiscent of Stravinsky's Firebird, beginning quietly in low strings and moving onward through a gradual but relentless stringendo. The short interlude has a misty texture of divisi strings beneath a soaring flute solo. The last movement seemed indeed to give an impression of a run, with occasional pauses for breath before moving forward once again. It's obviously a challenging piece for an orchestra with very inventive use of all the different percussion sounds sometimes fitting in, sometimes standing out. It was clearly enjoyable for the audience, a view I share.
The concert concluded with another perennial audience favorite, Ravel's Bolero written in 1928. Sometimes derided as a concerto for snare drum and orchestra, it has none the less become his most frequently performed work, appearing beyond the concert hall as film scores, the accompaniment to Olympic gold medal winning figure skating performances, flash mob performances by both professional and amateur orchestras, and arrangements ranging from brass bands to (alas!) massed kazoos.
It was originally written for a ballet, so perhaps conceived with that visual distraction in mind. As it is, its unswerving adherence to a two-bar ostinato in strictly constant tempo, an unchanged 3/4 time signature throughout, the only melody a repetition of two 16-bar phrases, and a similarly unchanged key of C major save for brief excursion into E major in the last few measures, suggest that the word “development” is probably mis-applied. Its description as “consisting wholly of orchestral texture without music, of one long, very gradual crescendo” could probably be considered derogatory, had it not come from the composer himself.
As it was, Symphony gave it a convincing performance, starting at the bare threshold of audibility and building almost imperceptibly at first to the fortissimo finale and almost shockingly sudden ending. As could be expected, the audience loved it, and Mr. Lecce-Chong gave various individual players solo bows, culminating with snare drum percussionist Jack Rutledge, who was ostentatiously fanned by neighboring players with their sheet music in recognition of his metronomic performance of the same two bars of music no less than 169 times.
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CHAMBER
Roses Signature Concert Series
Friday, March 29, 2024
7:30 PM - Santa Rosa
Musicians TBA
Annual Good Friday Concert. Program: Dan Forest -Requiem for the Living.
Free admission; donations gladly accepted....
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RECITAL
Spring Lake Village Classical Music Series
Wednesday, April 3, 2024
7:00 PM - Santa Rosa
Frederick Moyer, piano
Program: TBA.
SLV concerts are open to SLV residents and their guests...
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SYMPHONY
Ukiah Symphony
Sunday, April 7, 2024
2:00 PM - Ukiah
Phillip Lenberg, conductor. Aaron Westman and Anna Washburn, violin; Daniela Mineva, piano
Wagner: Siegfried Idyll; Beethoven: Symphony No. 2 in D Major, Op. 36; Clara Schumann: A Minor Concerto, Op. 7; Bach: Concerto for Two Violins, BWV 1043, in D Minor...
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SYMPHONY
Sonoma County Philharmonic
Saturday, April 13, 2024
7:30 PM - Santa Rosa
Norman Gamboa, conductor
Michael Haydn: Symphony No. 25; Mahler: Symphony No. 5
Tickets: $15...
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SYMPHONY
Marin Symphony
Saturday, April 13, 2024
3:00 PM - Kentfield
Daniel Stewart, conductor; John Wilson, piano; John Freeman, trumpet
Montgomery: Starburst; Shostakovich: Piano Concerto No. 1 in C Minor, Op. 35; Mozart: Symphony in C Major, No. 41 K. 551
The program will be repeated at 7:30 p.m in the same hall, and April 14 (3 p.m...
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SYMPHONY
Sonoma County Philharmonic
Sunday, April 14, 2024
2:00 PM - Santa Rosa
Norman Gamboa, conductor
Mahler: Symphony No. 5; Michael Haydn: Symphony No. 25
Tickets: $15...
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SYMPHONY
Vallejo Symphony
Saturday, April 20, 2024
8:00 PM - Vallejo
Marc Taddei, conductor; Tiffany Austin, soprano
Gershwin: Porgy and Bess. Arranged by Russell Garcia...
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CHAMBER
Sonoma State University Department of Music
Sunday, April 21, 2024
2:00 PM - Rohnert Park
Trio Navarro. Tammie Dyer, violin; Jill Rachuay Brindel, cello;
Marilyn Thompson, piano; Roy Za
Brian Wilson: Clarinet Quartet; other works TBA
Admission is $12; students free...
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SYMPHONY
Vallejo Symphony
Sunday, April 21, 2024
3:00 PM - Vallejo
Marc Taddei, conductor; Tiffany Austin, soprano
Gershwin: Porgy and Bess. Arranged by Russell Garcia...
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OTHER
Sonoma State University Department of Music
Saturday, April 27, 2024
7:30 PM - Rohnert Park
Alexander Kahn, conductor. Charlie Whitaker, mezzo-soprano
Valerie Coleman: Umoja; Copland: Appalachian Spring Suite from the Ballet, and Old American Songs...
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