Younis Raza – Page 33 – Repeat Performances

February 15, 2013

Lucia di Lammermoor at West Bay Opera

When Italians sing of Scottish blood feuds… A master of bel canto writing, Gaetano Donizetti created his operas out of direct and touching melodies, showcasing a soaring “beautiful song” vocal line. Lucia di Lammermoor, performing this Saturday Feb. 23 and Sunday Feb 24 by Palo Alto’s West Bay Opera, is a pinnacle of the bel canto style. Building on the inevitability and elegance of Mozart, Donizetti added...

Categories: opera

February 7, 2013

Lynn Harrell joins Berkeley Symphony at Zellerbach

Cello artistry and mugging… Finding the sweet spot in a program that mixed nostalgia with bitter cynicism would tax most conductors, but Joana Carneiro energetically led the Berkeley Symphony through that confusing vale last Thursday, Feb. 7 at Zellerbach Auditorium. What they achieved was luminously coloristic. They eased into those back-and-forth emotional demands with the world premiere of Alfama by Andreia Pinto-Correia, the...

Categories: music

February 1, 2013

L’Incoronazione di Poppea at West Edge Opera

Springtime for Nero… Judging by a seventeenth century opera, human nature does not seem to have changed very much in the last 400 years. Claudio Monteverdi’s...

Categories: opera

January 18, 2013

Tango! with Quartet San Francisco and the Peninsula Symphony

Bridging the divide between classical music and the dockside brothels of Buenos Aires, bandoneon player and composer Astor Piazzolla first used popular counter rhythms, sharp whips, and an accordion’s sonority alongside traditional string instruments, to create a new slant on older European musical canons. He and other composers thus redefined Tango as a form of demanding musicality and development, but celebrating its arch sensuality....

Categories: music

January 17, 2013

“Peer Gynt” with the SF Symphony

Riffs on a theme Emboldened by the success of last year’s Martyrdom of St. Sebastian, which involved massive editing and multiple media, Michael Tilson...

Categories: music

December 15, 2012

Alexander String Quartet and Robert Greenberg

A lifetime of joy and grief—and humor—on a Saturday morning “And then a most bizarre chord—the Neapolitan. Don’t worry, it won’t be on the test,” quipped lecturer Robert Greenberg, as he described the development of Franz Schubert’s final string quintet. School was back in session at St. John’s Presbyterian Church of Berkeley with a near-capacity audience surprisingly attentive for an early morning...

Categories: music