Brahms' last piano compositions are often recorded together (at least three new sets have just hit the market) but hardly ever performed complete in recital.
For more than 40 years, San Francisco's Kronos Quartet has fused musical categories and erased borders. They are impossible to pigeonhole: classical, rock, jazz, or modern?
The San Francisco Opera announced season repertory and casting for 2019-20 this week, and positive first impressions were confirmed in a conversation with General Director Matthew Shilvock.
There was a certain electricity in Davies Symphony Hall last Friday night as Esa-Pekka Salonen conducted the San Francisco Symphony for the first time since his appointment as Music Director Designate was announced at the end of last year.
The New York Philharmonic's new music director Jaap van Zweden made his second appearance at DSH with his own strong-minded interpretation of Bruckner's Symphony #5.
When composer Bryce Dessner was named one of the collaborative partners who will be joining Music Director Designate Esa-Pekka Salonen and the San Francisco Symphony in 2020, his name rang a bell with Out There.
2018 was busy at the San Francisco Opera. Not really surprising, since it was the first season fully programmed (with one exception) by the administration of general director Matthew Shilvock.
His music may seem to say otherwise, but Claude Debussy came to a bitter end of an ill-tempered life begun in poverty and ended in complications from rectal cancer.
Looking back at the San Francisco Symphony's 2018-19 season so far, it is hard to find many highlights that could outshine the announcement early in December of a new Music Director.
Even though this is an end-of-year playlist, not one of these 10 recordings was released in 2018! How's them apples! Still, here's music that quenched our aural thirst as we worked through the year.
