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It resonates: The year's best classical – Mercury News Wednesday, December 28, 2005

By Richard Scheinin

The Bay Area is such a fertile oasis for classical music that squeezing the year’s concerts down to the 10 best was almost a joke of an exercise. But here they are.

I wish everyone who avoids or just hasn’t experienced this type of music could have heard what I heard: music that is surprising, beautiful, strange, tense, wild, challenging, emotionally evocative, entertaining and, at its best, transcendent. I’ve dipped back into my 2005 reviews for these highlights:

January: Christian Tetzlaff plays Schoenberg at Davies Symphony Hall, San Francisco. The violinist, performing with the San Francisco Symphony and conductor Michael Tilson Thomas, .. A steely and utterly authoritative performance.

April: Matt Haimovitz at Espresso Garden & Cafe, San Jose. The Peninsula-bred cellist, who made his Carnegie Hall debut at age 13 with Isaac Stern, .

May: musical rescue by Jason Klein and the Saratoga Symphony at St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church, Saratoga. .

May: Ives Quartet and clarinetist Dmitri Ashkenazy at Le Petit Trianon, San Jose. A genuine Event: This outstanding string quartet was joined by Ashkenazy for the U.S. premiere of British composer Peter Maxwell Davies’ “Hymn to Artemis Locheia.” Inspired by a trip to a fertility clinic, the music gurgled and whistled, growing thick, then dissolving, struggling, occasionally spurting melody. A sensitive and virtuosic performance of a strangely mystical piece. Then the Ives — which is based in Santa Clara County and should be better-known — turned to works by Beethoven and Mendelssohn. Wow! The music sounded almost alarmingly alive and new: songful, surging, very special.

August: Gilbert Kalish at the Music@Menlo chamber music festival, the Menlo School, Atherton. The pianist was a picture of dogged concentration, .

October: “Doctor Atomic,” San Francisco Opera. John Adams’ eagerly awaited new opera about J. Robert Oppenheimer, father of the A-bomb, fell flat. .

October: Symphony Silicon Valley at the California Theatre, San Jose. Now in its fourth season, the South Bay’s orchestra is willing to take risks. .

November: Peter Serkin at the Montalvo Arts Center, Saratoga. The tiny Carriage House Theatre was, unbelievably, only half-full for this brilliant recital by the pianist who, at 58, retains the rare ability to make listeners experience music in new ways, .

November: So Percussion at the University of California-Santa Cruz Recital Hall. .

November: “Un Ballo in Maschera” (“A Masked Ball”), Opera San José at the California Theatre. A winning production of Verdi’s masterpiece .

Contact Richard Scheinin at rscheinin@mercurynews.com or (408) 920-5069.