A full house turned out for members of the Emerson Quartet, with pianist Wu Han, Thursday at Reed College's Kaul Auditorium. They were terrific, of course. Here's my review:
Three months ago the strapped listeners into the Tilt-A-Whirl ride of Dmitri Shostakovich's string quartets -- nine quartets on three consecutive days.

Life had just got back to normal before members of the Grammy-winning group returned to Portland with more Shostakovich on Thursday.
Is there another work like his Piano Trio in E Minor? Frenzied Yiddish dances, twanging strings and anguished laments take listeners from misery to exhilaration in quick succession.

Along the way, the individual instruments seem to morph into earthy, Eastern European voices, shouting and keening with unabashed feeling.
Cellist David Finckel played the spidery opening with calm, poetic assurance. In the slow movement, pianist Wu Han spread desolation with tolling chords she repeated the series of chords five times.

Violinist Eugene Drucker and Finckel did the dervish dance, whipping back and forth between wild folk tunes and somber elegies. Shostakovich wrote the Trio in 1944 as a memorial to his friend, Ivan Sollertinsky, but history's larger context also intrudes on the music.
The Emerson had planned to play the remaining six Shostakovich quartets this month, but violist Lawrence Dutton is recovering from shoulder surgery.

His rehabilitation is on schedule, said David Shifrin, Chamber Music Northwest's artistic director. The full quartet will return in July to complete the cycle.
Thursday's concert at Kaul Auditorium began in full sunshine with five charming Bagatelles for two violins, cello and piano by Antonin Dvorak.

Beethovens lovely Violin Sonata in G Major, Op. 96 followed, a gentle anomaly among the composers more turbulent late-period works.
Wu simplified phrases with non-invasive tone and shapely phrasing while Setzer found warmth and lyricism in the notes.

Wu's supple physical approach to the piano allowed her great flexibility of tone. She has more experience than most pianists who play with the Emerson -- Finckel is her husband -- and like them, she subsumes her personality into the music.
Next up for Chamber Music Northwest: Windscape, a woodwind quintet, with that fabulous flutist Tara Helen OConnor, Tuesday, Nov.

28.
has received a $2.1 million grant from the James F.

and Marion L. Miller Foundation. The grant is the largest in the opera company's 42- year history and will provide general operating support over three years.

Receiving this grant bolsters our confidence in our plans for the future, said Christopher Mattaliano, general director.
Portland Opera will use the money for opera productions, salaries and other expenses related to running the $8 million company. Portland Opera ended its fiscal year in June with a deficit of $978,788
This grant will help us return to our history of posting annual surpluses and increasing the balance sheet's net worth, said Jim Fullan, director of marketing and public relations.

Portland Opera opens its season Nov. 4 with Charles Gounod's Faust at Keller Auditorium.
To speed the hiring of an orchestra expert from Canada, the has offered Eaine Calder a contract as a consultant.

Calder, who manages the , has been the Oregon Symphony's preferred choice for president, the symphony's top administrative position. The switch to consultant means that Calder can begin work in Portland more quickly.
In a statement Wednesday, Calder said she was applying for a temporary visa from U.

S. Immigration that would allow her to work as a consultant for the Oregon Symphony.
Management consultant is one of many job titles approved for temporary visa status by U.

S. immigration officials. President and CEO are not on the list, said James Mei, a Portland lawyer who specializes in immigration law at Davis Wright Tremaine.

The list of approved positions includes accountant, lawyer, scientist, social worker and librarian. To qualify for a temporary visa, which lasts for one year and can be renewed, a person's job title must match one of the positions on the list, Mei said.
Walter Weyler, board chair, would not say when Calder could begin, nor would he say how long Calder would remain a consultant.

Calder, who was born in London, said in her statement that she will consult with the Oregon Symphony over the coming months to provide analysis and planning advice essential to that orchestra's long-term sustainability. She will continue as the Edmonton Symphony's managing director and use vacation time and unpaid leaves of absence to work in Portland, she said. The arrangement is subject to approval by the Edmonton Symphony board of directors.

Calder has actually worked as a consultant for several arts organizations during the past two decades, including the Atlantic Theatre Festival and the National Ballet of Canada. She has also held senior posts at the Shaw Festival, the Canadian Opera Company and the National Arts Centre in Canada, according to the Edmonton Symphony's website. Before moving to Edmonton in 2001, she managed the Hartford Stage theater company in Connecticut for two years.

The enormous array of classical CDs can send shoppers into states of bewilderment. Of the 150 versions of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, which is the best?
The London-based magazine's 2006 awards -- insiders take them way more seriously than the Grammies -- help sort out the best recordings of the past year.

Here are the .
The , a new collaboration between the New York City classical music radio station and Gramophone, recognize American music and musicians, including , who celebrated his 70th birthday this week.
The call to concertmaster Amy Schwartz Moretti came out of the blue, in April.

This might come as a shock, said the caller, the distinguished violinist Robert McDuffie, but I might as well ask right out.
Would Moretti like to be the director and resident violin professor of a new, elite, string school at Mercer University in Macon, Georgia?
Moretti, 31, had just finished her second season as the Oregon Symphony's concertmaster.

The job fit like a glove and she and her husband, jazz drummer Steve Moretti, both liked Portland. They had no plans to leave. In addition, Amy Moretti had quickly embraced Portland's larger music community, performing with Chamber Music Northwest, leading the Oregon Symphony String Quartet and performing with other local groups.

I have to think about it, she told McDuffie.
She wrestled with the idea all summer, she said, listing pros and cons, but even that didn't help clarify her thoughts.
It meant leaving a career I've known all my professional life, she said.

But it would also open doors for solo and chamber music, more freedom in my schedule.
Last week, she revealed her decision to accept the Georgia job. It was a tough summer, she said.

It was very emotional to figure out what I wanted to do.
Moretti will begin her Georgia job in January, but continue to play several -- but not all -- of her previous concerts with the Oregon Symphony through the end of the season, in May.
In her new job, she will teach violin to a handful of highly talented students at the Robert McDuffie Center for Strings, leaving her time for more solo and chamber music.

Her decision to leave Portland was doubly hard, she said, because it meant uprooting her husband, again. It wasn't easy to tell her boss, either. She phoned music director Carlos Kalmar earlier this month, at his home in Vienna.

He was surprised, she said. He was also concerned that as a performer, was I giving that up?
Moretti, who joined the Oregon Symphony a year after Kalmar took over as music director, brought multiple skills to her position, playing a key role in the maestro's plan to improve the orchestra.

The musicians admired her amiable leadership, keen rhythmic style, ability to demonstrate the conductor's wishes and willingness to collaborate in performances outside the orchestra.
I feel like I've lived the orchestra, she said. It's been my family.

I love living in the Northwest. I love the lifestyle. I thought I was going to be here a long time, but you never know what life throws at you.

This is a curveball I didn't want to pass up.
But her ties to Portland are hard to cut. We may buy a one-bedroom apartment and keep a drum set here, she said.

We might also see her back in Portland as a soloist with the symphony, and possibly with other local groups, she hinted.
The Metropolitan Opera's drive for world domination, as bloggers are putting it, began Monday night with its season opener, Anthony Minghella's new production of Madama Butterfly. The Met broadcast the production into Lincoln Center Plaza and in Times Square, and Sirius Radio kicked off the .

Go to read the New York Times piece.
In addition, the is bursting with fresh material, including an advice column called . Sample question: Do I have to go out and find one of those glasses on a stick that Mrs.

Howell used to use on Gilligan's Island? Please help! A: They're called 'lorgnettes,' and they haven't been spotted at the Met in about 80 years.

But, hey, don't let that stop you. If you feel like making lorgnettes hip again, wielding a set on the Grand Tier would be a great place to start.