MUSIC REVIEWS
The Passionate Chamber Music of Liszt and Tchaikovsky
Virtuoso Canadian pianist Marc-André Hamelin was the featured performer in Wednesday’s (August 24) La Jolla SummerFest concert. No stranger to San Diego audiences, he gave winning accounts of piano concertos by Ravel and Gershwin with the San Diego Symphony earlier this year, and this marked his third successful visit to La Jolla’s Sherwood Auditorium . . .
Read MoreA Touch of Ragtime Lightens the La Jolla SummerFest Regimen
La Jolla SummerFest’s August 21 concert opened with William Bolcom’s charming, droll “Three Rags for String Quartet” and continued with quintets by Mozart and Robert Schumann . . .
Read MoreThe Blistering Virtuosity of Paquito D’Rivera
La Jolla Music Society offered a unique program featuring the Cuban-born woodwind master Paquito D’Rivera in several alluring combinations with other SummerFest artists . . .
Read MoreMaisky’s Transcendent, Romantic Approach to J. S. Bach
Cellist Mischa Maisky, a protégé of the late Mstislav Rostropovich, brought his solo recital of three J. S. Bach Suites for Unaccompanied Cello to SummerFest 2016 . . .
Read MoreA Spiritual Journey With Messiaen As Guide
Among the few pivotal works of chamber music from the first half of the last century, nothing touches Olivier Messiaen’s “Quartet for the End of Time” for its combination of radical technique and sumptuous beauty. Written under grim conditions—in 1941 the composer was a prisoner-of-war in a German stalag near Dresden—it is nevertheless an audacious…
Read MoreA Bouquet of SummerFest Commissions
On Sunday (August 14) La Jolla SummerFest 2016 offered a program devoted to chamber music commissioned by the festival, some recent and some from previous seasons . . .
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