music – Page 22 – Repeat Performances

February 6, 2014

Samuel Adams violin concerto with Berkeley Symphony

On Thursday, Feb. 6, Joana Carneiro led the Berkeley Symphony in three works that at first glance had little to do with each other. But a deeper look revealed two clever connections: these three composers returned to older forms to make a modern case, and all three did so without the Sturm und drang of so many new dramatic efforts. Pulcinella Suite was written as Stravinsky was transitioning from his primal early works into sophistication, and leaving behind the...

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January 26, 2014

Cypress Quartet at Palo Alto’s Woman’s Club

Up-close with an extraordinary foursome Last weekend, the Cypress String Quartet performed three salon concerts in intimate venues around the Bay Area. This is the second year of their Salon Series, designed to bring intense music into such close quarters with the audience that the experience borders on the visceral. After one night each in Berkeley and San Francisco, on Sunday, January 26, their lush sound overflowed the small hall of the Woman’s Club...

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January 11, 2014

Alexander String Quartet and Robert Greenberg at St. Johns

SF Performances’ popular concert/lecture series in Berkeley Our appreciation for music often deepens with knowledge and familiarity. When a top Bay Area string quartet and a top musicologist join...

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December 15, 2013

Opera Gala at Kohl Mansion

Celebrating 30 years of music, Kohl Mansion mines the gold Burlingame’s Kohl Mansion, arguably the best place to hear chamber music in the Bay Area, has been hosting a concert series for thirty years, and this year’s programs have gone all out to mark this anniversary. On Sunday, December 15, they held a Holiday Gala with three extraordinary opera singers titled, “A Night at the Opera.” ...

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December 9, 2013

Left Coast Chamber Ensemble: “String Bands”

String textures—from Hungarian shock to Brahmsian awe At their December 9 concert, the Left Coast Chamber Ensemble emphasized the unlikely breadth of string writing with moods that ranged from nostalgic to sarcastic. Like the facility of emotion in black and white photography, which deals in texture rather than color, strings are freighted with feeling in the right hands, perhaps because they have the densest overlap of vibrations of any tonal...

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November 22, 2013

New Century premiere in Berkeley

Of shadows and shenanigans A program of the elegiac and the electric filled Berkeley’s First Congregational Church last Friday, November 22. Celebrated violinist Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg led the New Century Chamber Orchestra in their fall concert series, “Legacies and Concertos,” and soloed in two dramatic works. This was the culmination of Michael Daugherty’s residency as composer, featuring the premiere of his Fallingwater for...

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