Music
1926 results
Page 104
Piffaro showcases Laughing Bird
The faces (and voices) are familiar
Piffaro gave a younger early music group a helping hand and hosted a Saturday night musical party.
Articles
3 minute read
Opera Philadelphia's "Magic Flute' (1st review)
Mozart's last hurrah (and a few kind words for the Masons)
Mozart's The Magic Flute is a triumph of comic genius over turgid plot and Masonic mumbo-jumbo. Opera Philadelphia's highly entertaining production, first staged by the Canadian Opera Company, brings it off nicely.
Articles
6 minute read
Orchestra 2001 plays Crumb and Gorecki
From Hitler to Apollo, in just 30 years
Small music groups get short shrift in this year's Philadelphia International Festival of the Arts. Orchestra 2001 earned a spot by contriving a program that focused on two wildly different historic events.
Articles
4 minute read
My ticket to glory, 1950 (a memoir)
How do you get to Philadelphia? Practice, practice
I was a small town boy of eight when I was drafted into a children's accordion band. My musical efforts paid off with a TV appearance and my first mind-boggling visit to a real city— Philadelphia— where I rode my first elevator and subway train, ate in my first automat, and saw my first black people.
Articles
10 minute read
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Verdi's "I Lombardi' in concert in NY
Verdi's forgotten stepchild
Verdi's much-neglected I Lombardi has much to offer in the way of innovative music and vivid scenes. A concert version featuring the superb voices of Angela Meade and Michael Fabiano may help rescue it from its undeserved obscurity.
Articles
4 minute read
Chamber Orchestra's "Fall of the Berlin Wall'
Another rebirth of freedom
The Philadelphia International Festival of the Arts commemorated a major 20th Century event with the right music conducted by the right conductor.
Articles
5 minute read
Bach's Passions, two ways (3rd review)
Ethereal music, disturbing words
Until a few decades ago, audiences who weren't German were not cognizant of the words in Bach's Passions. Now, with projected translations, audience members notice, and some of them are disturbed— and rightly so.
Articles
6 minute read
We speak in music
To peek inside the human soul, stop reading and listen
Our written language may be poetic, but a large part of our spoken communication is music. And often it's our music rather than our words that reveals our inner landscape to each other.
Articles
7 minute read
Bach's Passions, two ways (2nd review)
Back-to-back Bach, or: Sympathy for Pontius Pilate
The Philadelphia Orchestra's dramatic production of Bach's St. Matthew Passion won't soon be forgotten. But it benefitted from its juxtaposition with a traditional performance by Vox Amadeus.
Articles
5 minute read
Borodin Quartet plays Shostakovich and Beethoven
Shostakovich, by those who knew him well
The Borodin Quartet, in its first Philadelphia visit in 15 years, brought a more burnished Shostakovich than we're accustomed to hearing. That's because these Russian musicians are no longer “discovering” Shostakovich, as the West still is.
Articles
6 minute read