Orchestra plays Shostakovich and Mozart

Ingo Metzmacher’s eclectic program with the Philadelphia Orchestra included a radiant performance of Mozart’s Fifth Violin Concerto with Gil Shaham, and a welcome if not fully idiomatic reading of Shostakovich’s long-suppressed Fourth Symphony.

Philadelphia Orchestra: Weber Overture to Der Freischütz; Mozart Violin Concerto No. 5; Shostakovich Symphony No. 4. Ingo Metzmacher, conductor; Gil Shaham, violin. March 8-10, 2007 at Verizon Hall

Robert Zaller

Mar 13, 2007 · Articles · 6 minute read

Guide to Philadelphia music groups

These days Philadelphia abounds in serious music groups. How is a music lover of limited time and budget supposed to sort them out? Our highly opinionated critic, Tom Purdom, takes a stab at that challenge in the guide that follows. Bookmark this guide, or print it out and stick it on your refrigerator for quick reference, and your musical life is likely to become infinitely richer.

Tom Purdom

Mar 11, 2007 · Articles · 20 minute read

Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra

Riccardo Chailly and his Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra were in fine form in a program that juxtaposed sunny early Schumann and conflicted mid-period Mahler. Chailly represents the sterner European ethic, which asks performers and listeners alike to put in their time, and so we got a gracious plenty.

Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra performs Schumann and Mahler. Riccardo Chailly conducting. March 4, 2007 at Verizon Hall, Kimmel Center

Robert Zaller

Mar 06, 2007 · Articles · 4 minute read

A composer's education

As a child, I thought of music making as a very private, intimate activity that gave me comfort and a sense of all being right with the world. As an adult, I’m still struggling to shake off that notion and move on to a more mature sharing of ideas through music.

Lloyd Smith

Mar 06, 2007 · Articles · 7 minute read

Thomas Chimes at Art Museum (second review)

More than 100 works— some never seen before— invite us to share Chimes’s journey through life, thumbing his nose at the world and making art that will survive all of us. These are paintings of no man and every man in the solitude of his life’s journey.

“Thomas Chimes: Adventures in Pataphysics.” Through May 6, 2007 at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Ben Franklin Parkway and 267th St. (215) 763-8100 or

Anne R. Fabbri

Mar 06, 2007 · Articles · 5 minute read

Rubberbandance Group

Don’t be turned off by its gimmicky name. Rubberband’s dancers, some of them classically trained, are upping the ante in terms of what people expect from hip-hop.

Rubberbandance Group. February 27, 2007 at
Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts, 3680 Walnut St. (215) 898-3900 or www.pennpresents.org

Lewis Whittington

Mar 03, 2007 · Articles · 2 minute read

"How To Talk About Books'

Here is one of the necessary tools of modern life: a primer on how to impress one’s professors, one’s students, one’s friends and one’s enemies with the least effort and maximum results when chatting about books. There’s just one problem….

Comment parler de livres que l'on n'a pas lus (How to Talk About Books You Haven’t Read).
By Pierre Bayard.
Minuit, 198 pp., 15 euros

Leonard Boasberg

Mar 03, 2007 · Articles · 3 minute read

Penn Symphony plays Berlioz

I regard the Berlioz Symphonie Fantastique as a grisly accident on the highway of music history. It took guts for Penn’s student orchestra to perform it. Few other amateur orchestras could do as well with this hair-raising piece.

Penn Symphony Orchestra
February 24, 2007 at 
Irvine Auditorium. 215-898-6244 or www.sas.upenn.edu

Dan Coren

Mar 03, 2007 · Articles · 6 minute read

Wilma's "Enemies, A Love Story' (second revi

Sarah Schulman’s theatrical adaptation of Isaac Bashevis Singer’s novel is a misbegotten venture that mixes bad humor and worse philosophy in a travesty about Holocaust survivors in postwar New York. This is the perfect Seinfeld prequel, with angst by Adolf and body tattoos from Josef Mengele.

Enemies, A Love Story. By Sarah Schulman, from the novel by Isaac Bashevis Singer; directed by Jiri Zizka. Through March 11, 2007 at Wilma Theater, Broad and Spruce

Robert Zaller

Feb 27, 2007 · Articles · 3 minute read

Thomas Chimes at the Art Museum (first review)

Thomas Chimes has attended various schools in his artistic evolution, but none quite as fruitful and amusing as the College of Pataphysics.

“Thomas Chimes: Adventures in Pataphysics.” Through May 6, 2007 at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Ben Franklin Parkway and 267th St. (215) 763-8100 or www.philamuseum.org.

Andrew Mangravite

Feb 24, 2007 · Articles · 5 minute read