Highlights from October
I was so busy attending things in October that I didn’t get a chance to write about any of them at the time. Now that we’re well into November, I’ve had an opportunity to reflect on the best of what …...
View ArticleFour Nights of Music
The Bay Area has been a hotbed of concerts recently, and I’ve been out four nights in a row to something good. This would be a record of sorts even for New York, and in my part of California it’s …...
View ArticleUp Close
I have always loved the Pacifica Quartet, but I have never before listened to them play from five feet away. Last night, sitting in the front row of the Cosentino Winery’s barrel room, I was...
View ArticleShostakovich Redux
When you spend years writing a biography of a creative figure and thinking about everything he did, you might expect to be sick of him once the job is over. I thought I might be done with Shostakovich...
View ArticlePacifica Perfection
It’s no secret that the Pacifica Quartet is my favorite string quartet in the world, and this means I take every opportunity to see and hear them play. Yet as their September 30 date at Rockefeller...
View ArticleFilling Carnegie Hall
In the middle of April I heard three chamber-music concerts on the main stage of Carnegie Hall, and they were all, quite frankly, great. The first was the complete Brahms piano quartets, played by a...
View ArticlePacifica Shostakovich
When I’m in New York, good music is only a short subway ride away. But now that I’m back home in Berkeley, I have to range somewhat farther afield. Last night, my husband and I drove for well over an …...
View ArticleCarnegie Hall
Sometimes I think that my main reason for spending a lot of time in New York is Carnegie Hall. The city boasts many other attractions: great dance performances, occasional good theater, several opera...
View ArticleRussian Music
It’s not often you get to go to a chamber music concert of entirely unfamiliar pieces and have them all turn out to be good. But I had that experience last Saturday night at Music@Menlo’s “St....
View ArticleBallet in New York
In a kind of battle of the bands spanning Lincoln Center Plaza, the New York City Ballet and American Ballet Theatre both had their spring seasons running at nearly the same time during the past few...
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