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Vienna Philharmonic at Verizon Hall (2nd review)
The odd couple: Lang Lang with the Vienna
The extremely well balanced Vienna Philharmonic is accustomed to shouldering a huge and diverse workload. But last week it assumed what struck me as a dispiriting assignment: playing second fiddle to the histrionics of piano virtuoso Lang Lang.
Articles
4 minute read
Vienna Philharmonic at Verizon Hall (1st review)
An orchestra like a seamless bolt of cloth
The Vienna Philharmonic, in its first Philadelphia appearance in six years, showed again why it's in a class by itself among the world's orchestras in a program of Wagner, Chopin, and Schubert. Soloist Lang Lang, alternately brilliant and frustrating by turns, left a more mixed impression.
Articles
4 minute read
Astral Artists' "Musical Tapestry'
Musicians who care about their audience
So you want challenging new music that's nevertheless comprehensible and digestible? Astral Artists' “Musical Tapestry” offered young musicians who are not only talented but also eager to recruit converts to their unusual repertory.
Curtis grads play Schubert trios
Young composer, young musicians— and grownup emotions
Three of Curtis Institute's most successful graduates of the past 20 years took on two of Schubert's best-loved trios in a concert that explained, among other things, why chamber music audiences tend to be older than Olympic swimmers.
Articles
3 minute read
Opera Company's "Turandot'
A little more light on the subject
The Opera Company's Turandot boasts a pleasant tenor in Francesco Hong, an innovative director in Renaud Doucet and a colorful set borrowed from the Dallas Opera. Why, then, was the stage in near-darkness for much of the opera?
Articles
3 minute read
"Milk' and gay reality
A take on Milk, from a straight lady on the fringe
Oscars or not, Milk is not a perfect film because it depicts gay men's lives in those Stonewall days as more about reckless sex than loneliness and terror. Back in the day, I learned firsthand how lonely and alienating the gay life was and still is, for many.
Articles
5 minute read
"Cézanne and Beyond' at the Art Museum (2nd review)
The man who freed us from the Renaissance (yes, even Picasso and Ellsworth Kelly)
Paul Cézanne changed our way of seeing, and we are all his heirs. This remarkable once-in-a-lifetime testimony to his influence is a tonic for any jaded cultural appetite. More important, it demonstrates how Cézanne liberated all of us from the visual art strictures of the Renaissance.
Articles
4 minute read
Vertigo String Quartet at Curtis Institute
To be young and tackling mature masters
The youthful Vertigo String Quartet, all Curtis graduates in their mid-20s, returned to give an alumni recital in Field Concert Hall with one of their teachers, Steven Tenenbom, in a program of late Brahms and Shostakovich, followed by compositions by two of their own members. Already accomplished, this group should, happily, be with us for some time to come.
Articles
4 minute read
'Philip Guston: The '50s,' in New York
Back to the '50s with Philip Guston
“Philip Guston: 1954-1958” occupies the ground floor of New York's L & M gallery, and there is no more beautiful art space on display in that city. These Abstract Expressionist masterpieces reflect the haunting pressure of withheld images, but the sheer gorgeousness of their color and texture gives them a luminous splendor.
Articles
4 minute read
Ballets Jazz de Montreal at Annenberg
Amid the absurdity, one humbling moment
Both MAPA and Rossini Cards, performed at Annenberg by Les Ballets Jazz de Montreal, largely wasted the dancers' talents with repetition and inanity. But one stunning five-minute interlude left me speechless at my own inadequacy to ever approach such a moment of ideal human beauty.
Articles
5 minute read