Orchestra plays Britten, Strauss and Mahler

Clothes make the music man

Oboist Richard Woodhams took the stage in a tailored blue shirt, worn outside his pants— It symbolizes a change in attitude— a signal that the Philadelphia Orchestra understands its need to experiment and adapt.

Tom Purdom

Oct 08, 2013 · Articles · 4 minute read

Yannick leads Beethoven’s Ninth (2nd review)

Yannick leaps off a musical cliff

Yannick Nézet-Séguin is emerging as an artist of notable imagination and daring. In the final movement of Beethoven’s Ninth he was maybe a little too daring.

Oct 05, 2013 · Articles · 3 minute read

Yannick leads Beethoven’s Ninth (1st review)

In the quest for goose bumps, size matters

Yannick-Nézet Séguin’s version of Beethoven’s Ninth inadvertently demonstrated that the same work can be performed in radically different ways. He made the most of the Philadelphia Orchestra’s major asset: Its size.

Tom Purdom

Oct 01, 2013 · Articles · 4 minute read

Opera Philadelphia’s ‘Nabucco’ (2nd review)

The mightiest man on Earth? (and other flaws in Verdi’s Nabucco)

Nabucco’s characters lack depth, and the music is less accomplished than what Verdi would write just a few years later. So director/designer Thaddeus Strassberger was indeed clever to mount this Nabucco as it might have been performed in Italy in the 1840s.

Steve Cohen

Oct 01, 2013 · Articles · 4 minute read

Opera Philadelphia’s ‘Nabucco’ (1st review)

Jehovah vs. Baal, then and now

Verdi’s dramatically clunky Nabucco was a broadly drawn metaphor for Austria’s domination of Italy. Thaddeus Strassberger constructs a play around a play in an effort to mask some of the drama’s weaknesses. Its virtues include a fiery new soprano and a final moment of genuine theatrical magic.

Sep 30, 2013 · Articles · 4 minute read

Philadelphia Orchestra’s Tchaikovsky opening

Back to the future with Yannick and Anne-Sophie

What have the Russians done for us lately? Well, Tchaikovsky is timeless, as the violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter reminded us on opening night.

Steve Cohen

Sep 28, 2013 · Articles · 2 minute read

Orchestra 2001’s opening weekend (2nd review)

Young composer, astonishing head

Sometimes I dread poems set to music. But when it works, it’s art. Chris Rogerson's Fishing was one of three new works, each giving a prominent role to the keyboard.

Lesley Valdes

Sep 28, 2013 · Articles · 5 minute read

Orchestra 2001’s opening weekend (1st review)

Confronting death (and Utah, too)

Orchestra 2001 opened its season with two moving glimpses at family life and a less rewarding visit to Utah’s national parks.

Tom Purdom

Sep 24, 2013 · Articles · 5 minute read

Chamber Orchestra plays Beethoven and Mendelssohn

Lighter and brighter?

This kind of Chamber Orchestra concert inevitably raises a question: Do we hear anything we wouldn’t hear in a big orchestra performance?

Tom Purdom

Sep 17, 2013 · Articles · 4 minute read

A selective guide to the 2013-14 season

I'm marking these on my calendar

Here's my idiosyncratic rundown on the coming year's musical events that arouse extra anticipation in this particular reviewer. But remember: My taste may not be yours.

Tom Purdom

Sep 10, 2013 · Articles · 5 minute read