Articles

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Honeck's flourishes weren't all necesary, but neither were Ormandy's.

Manfred Honeck’s Philadelphia debut

Fresh wind from Pittsburgh

The Austrian conductor Manfred Honeck has excited audiences from Vienna to Pittsburgh with his flashy renditions and dramatic gestures. This weekend Philadelphians caught the fever as well.
Steve Cohen

Steve Cohen

Articles 2 minute read
Sophie Nelisse takes comfort where she finds it.

Brian Percival’s ‘The Book Thief’

Horrible events in pastel colors

The Book Thief paints the horrors of Nazi Germany in fairy tale pastels— which may be the only way today’s generations can begin to make sense of the unthinkable.
Naomi Orwin

Naomi Orwin

Articles 5 minute read
Yuja Wang reached a level that eluded even Horowitz.

Yuja and Yannick do Rachmaninoff

She’s young, she’s stylish, and she gets Rachmaninoff

Rachmaninoff’s Third Piano Concerto is one of the most technically challenging compositions in the piano literature. Yuja Wang transcended technique to reveal the very soul of the tormented composer’s music
Victor L. Schermer

Victor L. Schermer

Articles 4 minute read
These heroines have principles— and so do their men.

Austenmania: Moral fables for modern times

Beneath the cleavage: Jane Austen’s closet feminists

Why are 21st-century Americans attracted to narratives featuring heroines whose economic survival depends upon snaring a wealthy husband? Perhaps because they refuse to be passive victims.
Susan E. Washburn

Susan E. Washburn

Articles 3 minute read
McEneaney's 'Reading Viaduct': An observer who wants to change her city.

Sarah McEneaney’s ‘Trestletown’ at Locks

An artist, a woman and an urban activist

Sarah McEneaney’s unique voice invites viewers to experience the life of an artist who happens to be a woman living in Philadelphia and envisioning a future positive addition to the urban landscape: Trestletown.

Anne R. Fabbri

Articles 1 minute read
Ingo Hülsmann, Stefan Stern, Eva Meckbach: Not quite what Ibsen had in mind. (Photo: Julieta Cervantes.)

‘Enemy of the People’: The Berliner version

When the theater becomes a courtroom

The Schaubühne Theatre from Berlin is back, with a daring, defiant version of Ibsen’s An Enemy of the People that sheds new light on a generation struggling to disengage itself from Germany’s catastrophic 20th-Century history.

Carol Rocamora

Articles 5 minute read
DuPlantis: Echoes of Danny Kaye.

Orchestra 2001 and Network For New Music

91 years of novelty

The works presented at these two concerts spanned 91 years but were linked by a common interest in novelty, exploration and the relationship between words and music. The oldest piece looked peculiar in 1922 and still does.
Tom Purdom

Tom Purdom

Articles 4 minute read
Not quite in Daddy's footsteps.

Joshua Redman Quartet at Annenberg

Everything you wanted to know about sax

Joshua Redman can hit notes you’d swear couldn’t possibly come out of a tenor sax. At the Annenberg Center, his post-bop incarnation delivered a tight and virtuosic 90-minute set.
Judy Weightman

Judy Weightman

Articles 2 minute read
Hemsworth with Portman: Still pompous, but less wooden.

‘Thor: The Dark World’

Between superhero and myth

For 50 years, Marvel Comics’ Thor character has straddled the uneasy divide between the fantastic and the mundane. The latest installment of Thor’s cinematic franchise is a mixed bag but does a decent job of balancing the two genres.
Gary L. Day

Gary L. Day

Articles 3 minute read
Duchamp's 'Nude Descending a Staircase': A time when motion was everything

'Léger and the Metropolis’ at the Art Museum (2nd review)

Joys and neuroses of the machine age

Léger sought to escape the limits of the picture frame and use color to make an artwork part of the space in which it existed. But by celebrating mechanization, he and his contemporaries took the concept a bit too far.

Michael Lawrence

Articles 3 minute read