NEXT CONCERT
The Shoulders of Giants
MILL VALLEY
142Throckmorton Theatre
Thursday, March 22, 2012 at 8pm
Buy tickets | Directions
SAN FRANCISCO
Green Room
Monday, March 26, 2012 at 8pm
Buy tickets | Directions
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San Francisco Classical Voice by Benjamin Frandzel
The Left Coast Chamber Ensemble organized its April 5 concert at the War Memorial’s Green Room around the idea of visual inspirations for music. The theme of “Audible Visions” led to a creative program, with all but one piece written in the past 25 years, and many kinds of musical thinking. What really mattered, of course, was what we heard, and that was marvelous.
In the midst of many excellent performances, the most affecting moments of the evening came in the program’s one solo piece, Kaija Saariaho’s Sept papillons (Seven Butterflies) for solo cello, exquisitely rendered by Leighton Fong. The music transports the listener into Saariaho’s unique sound world, as her imagination unites tone color and gesture in a deeply musical manner. Fong’s beautifully shaped performance made the most of what are, at their core, simple musical gestures that through the composer’s craft become more than the sum of their parts. This piece, written in 2000, is so fine that I would count it as a major addition to the solo cello repertoire, and I hope Fong will repeat it in future seasons.
San Francisco Classical Voice by Janos Gereben
photo by Ben Janken
Says San Francisco composer Kurt Rohde of his Concertino, which will receive its world premiere June 3 (in Mill Valley) and June 7 (in San Francisco) with the Left Coast Chamber Ensemble:
Just completed, this is the last piece I began in Rome. There is an odd tinge of sadness and closure about the fact that all the music I began in Rome is now finished, that the year there really is over, and whatever changes happened to me while in Rome are up to me to maintain and nurture at this point.
San Francisco Examiner by Stephen Smoliar
The Left Coast Chamber Ensemble is a community of friends who enjoy coming together to make music, and they consider their audience to be part of that community. Their concert season takes place in both Mill Valley and San Francisco, offering the same programs at both venues.
San Francisco Classical Voice by Michelle Dulak Thomson
As for pianist Eric Zivian, whose bright-toned playing showered fistfuls of glittering notes on the second and fifth movements, and whose slow, serene pulse underlay the fifth and eighth, he was, as ever, alert to the music’s every gesture. (It would be fascinating to hear him tackle some of the solo piano music. I wonder if he has.)
Messiaen often leaves the four instruments to their own separate paths, as in that opening movement, but when they’re together, it’s with a vengeance. Presler’s, Tomkins’, and Simas’ taut, cheekily inflected performance of the fourth-movement “Interm’d” was scant preparation for the entire quartet’s blistering performance of the sixth, “Danse de la Fureur, pour le sept trompettes” (Dance of fury, for the seven trumpets), another of those things calculated to knock the unwary listener into the middle of next week.
San Francisco Classical Voice by Jonathan Wilkes
Programming contemporary works with standard repertoire seems tricky: The danger is that the new, unfamiliar piece might easily sound like commentary on the towering masterwork. (Imagine if a writer were forced to publish a novel as a foreword to Joyce’s Ulysses.)
But Monday night, as the Left Coast Chamber Ensemble presented three string quartets at the Green Room of the War Memorial Veterans Building, the two living composers, Karl Kohn and Lei Liang, chose to create their own contexts. The dead one, a fellow by the name of Ludwig van Beethoven, was left to fend for himself, and of course did a fine job of it. Kohn and Liang were in attendance for the superb renditions of their works in the concert’s first half. Beethoven was of course present only in spirit, his String Quartet in F Major, Op. 135, completing the evening.