Arts & Entertainment SFist Reviews: Charles Dutoit & Pinchas Zukerman The US Top 6 orchestras will visit Davies Symphony Hall for the SF Symphony 100th anniversary season, leaving Cal Performances at Zellerbach to import the foreign best ensembles. Case in point last Saturday:
Arts & Entertainment SFist Reviews: Palo Heras-Casado At The SF Symphony While we wish MTT to keep doing his SF Symphony gig for a long long time, he's the longest tenured music director here ever. He doesn't look it, but at 67, he's twice
Arts & Entertainment SFist Reviews: Le Martyre de Saint Sebastien The Martyre de Saint Sebastien, a play by Gabriele D'Annunzio with music by Claude Debussy, was, according to its original producer, "bad." Says the program notes of the SF Symphony. The run which
Arts & Entertainment SFist Interview: Violinist Christian Tetzlaff At the San Francisco Symphony it's new year, new stuff. The 1992 Ligeti violin concerto will be heard live in San Francisco for the first time ever tomorrow through Sunday. You may recall
Arts & Entertainment SFist Interviews: SFS Concertmaster Sasha Barantschik The 100th anniversary of the SF Symphony is such a big deal, it's sucking the air out of some other impressive milestones. One of these: Alexander Barantschik's tenth year as concert master of
Arts & Entertainment SFist Reviews: Verdi's Requiem at the SF Symphony James Conlon conducted a superb Verdi requiem with the SF Symphony five years ago, so we were not particularly surprised he delivered again last night with the same score. Technically, without the score,
Arts & Entertainment SFist Reviews: James Conlon at the SF Symphony James Conlon, the LA Opera music director is in town for two weeks conducting the SF Symphony, the past week in the Pictures at an Exhibition and this week in the Verdi Requiem
Arts & Entertainment SFist Reviews: Polaris at SF Symphony For its 100th birthday, the SF Symphony is offering itself new works to unwrap all season long. This week: Polaris: Voyage for Orchestra by British composer Tom Adès, one of the hottest commodities
Arts & Entertainment SF Symphony Celebrates 100th Season With Free Lunch-Time Concert in Civic Center Plaza 9/8 You might have seen the posters around town -- hey, print media does still work! The San Francisco Symphony is kicking off its 100th season with a free lunch-time concert in Civic Center
Arts & Entertainment SFist Wraps Up the 2010-11 Classical Music Season A few things to wrap up the 2010-11 classical music season: Walküre: the SF Opera Ring Cycle keeps on going strong, it's almost done with its third and final circling of the bases.
Arts & Entertainment SFist Interviews: Cellist Joan Jeanrenaud Joan Jeanrenaud was for twenty years the cellist of the Kronos Quartet. Kronos, of course, is the San Francisco based string quartet which specializes in contemporary music and has created and commissioned hundreds
Arts & Entertainment SFist Reviews: Kurt Masur at the Symphony A grab bag of a few items about classical music in the bay: Kurt Masur with the SF Symphony Zheng Cao with the Philharmonia Baroque Tanya Tomkins performs Bach Cello Suites Magnificat Baroque's
Arts & Entertainment SFist Interviews: Pianist David Greilsammer Israeli-born pianist David Greilsammer had his San Francisco debut yesterday, playing two early Mozart concertos with Canadian conductor Bernard Labadie. Those were early concertos, since they were performed at a 2pm matinee. But
Arts & Entertainment SFist Reviews: Hot Air at the Conservatory, Janowski with the Symphony Hot Air at the Conservatory: the Conservatory hosted on Sunday its second Hot Air festival, dedicated to the music of the last 50 years. The whole thing lasted from 2pm to 10pm, and
Arts & Entertainment SFist Reviews: Lang-Lang at Davies Symphony Hall. Lang-Lang is the antidote to recessions and deaths of classical music. There are only a few others than the Chinese piano superstar who can sell out Davies Symphony hall on a Tuesday evening
Arts & Entertainment SFist Interviews: Pianist Hélène Grimaud The SF Symphony opens 2011 tomorrow with the San Francisco debut of the young and exciting Ukrainian conductor Kirill Karabits, and the return at the keys of French pianist Hélène Grimaud in the
Arts & Entertainment The Composer Is Dead SFist Jay covered the theatrical aspects of the Berkeley Rep's The Composer is Dead. But since it originated as a classical music edutainment piece from the SF Symphony, we got to see it
Arts & Entertainment This Weekend in Classical Music A bunch of classical music events happening over the weekend: The San Francisco Early Music Society presents Ciaramella tonight in Palo Alto, tomorrow in Berkeley and Sunday in San Francisco. Ciaramella is Italian
Arts & Entertainment SFist Reviews: Terfel, Aida, Bronfman A few performances we caught, before the Thanksgiving holidays distracted us from writing them up: Bryn Terfel at Cal Performances, Aida at SF Opera and Yefim Bronfman with the SF Symphony Few performers
Arts & Entertainment SFist Reviews: Elza van den Heever at the SF Symphony Richard Strauss Four Last Songs form a coda to the composer's career, who was over eighty when he wrote them, and selected texts of falling leaves, crepuscular vibe and mournful elegy. They're however
Arts & Entertainment SFist Reviews: Rufus Wainwright at the SF Symphony If Morpheus offers you the choice between taking the red score or the blue score, take the blue one. When maestro Michael Francis got on stage last night, he had the red one
Arts & Entertainment SFist Reviews: Alice Sara Ott & Pablo Heras-Casado at the SF Symphony It's a rare bird -and a reminder of how good our local symphony can be- who can take widely different orchestral pieces, and deliver them all with crisp perfection. Pablo Heras-Casado, a thirty-three
Arts & Entertainment SFist Reviews: Joshua Bell at the SF Symphony Joshua Bell must have in his attic a painting of himself looking old and playing out of tune. We were convinced the picture on his website were all softly lenses and careful airbrush.
Arts & Entertainment SFist Interviews Pianist Kirill Gerstein Kirill Gerstein has been playing the piano with such fervor and talent that he received the Nobel prize equivalent for pianists, the Gilmore prize with a purse of $300,000. Unlike the Nobel
Arts & Entertainment SFist Reviews: Varèse, Villa-Lobos and Beethoven There's MTT the evangelist, advocating for rarely heard works and composers. And there's MTT the maestro, conducting old chestnuts with fresh vigor. Both were in full display last night, with a first half
