Music
1926 results
Page 159
Orchestra's season finale
Odd couple: The Orchestra's difficult season ends
The Philadelphia Orchestra ended its season with a program that unprofitably yoked Debussy's meandering composite, Images, with the Shostakovich Fifth Symphony. The latter, though unevenly played, sent the musicians home with a standing ovation that, one hopes, will leave them with a final good memory of what has been a difficult year.
Articles
4 minute read
Opera Company's "Rape of Lucretia' (1st review)
Raping Lucretia, raping Europa
The Opera Company of Philadelphia's deft staging of Benjamin Britten's The Rape of Lucretia is both a welcome revival of a pioneering work of chamber opera and, in the midst of our own current wars, a timely reminder of man's inhumanity to man.
Articles
3 minute read
The Crossing's unique niche
Class act
Donald Nally's choir, The Crossing, occupies a unique niche in the musical ecosystem: Its singers perform new and unfamiliar music for a small chamber choir. It presents novel, beautiful, complex music that requires precise coordination and first-class voices.
Articles
4 minute read
1807 & Friends season finale
The Archduke also rises
Three of the city's most active chamber musicians transmit a chronic infection to their audience.
Articles
4 minute read
Harp Music Festival's third edition
What Fellini and John Williams knew about the harp
Harpist Saul Davis Zlatkovski mounted the third edition of his welcome addition to the fading days of the Philadelphia music season. Zlatkovski has put some impressive organizational work into this project, but he can use help with the administrative details.
Articles
4 minute read
Orchestra 2001: Three composers, four soloists
The surprising 20th Century
Orchestra 2001 ended its season with a program guaranteed to please most audiences: four attractive concertos featuring four first-class soloists.
Articles
4 minute read
Philadelphia Orchestra's eclectic program
The turn of two centuries: Three Romantics and a modern
Guest conductor David Robertson, in an eclectic Philadelphia Orchestra program, offered three works of a century ago, and one of our own moment: the Philadelphia premiere of Thomas Ades's impressive new Violin Concerto, with Leila Josefowicz.
Articles
6 minute read
Wagner's "Ring' cycle (Part 5: "Siegfried')
Siegfried: Wagner's All-American boy
Wagner's Siegfried is a dumb, muscular bully”“ a hard fellow to like. But 19th-Century Americans had no such problem: Wagner deliberately created an aggressive modern man who defies all the rules of the past, just like the Americans who were boldly opening the West by pushing aside everything that stood in their way.
Articles
7 minute read
Chamber Orchestra turns cautious
Et tu, Chamber Orchestra? Or: The bland leading the bland
After two seasons of adventurous programming, the Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia has reacted to hard economic times with a coming season that will offend nobody. Symphonic repertory in Philadelphia has become the musical equivalent of the menu at a high-end retirement community: pretty good, meal by meal, but deadly dull over the long run.
Kalichstein-Laredo-Robinson Trio at the Perelman
Enormous changes at the last minute
A late cancellation turned what promised to be an unusual and intriguing program of trios— with clarinet, horn, and piano joining the strings— into more ordinary fare. But the Kalichstein-Laredo-Robinson Trio, with guest Ricardo Morales, performed with the aplomb of a fine veteran group in works by Beethoven, Mendelssohn, and Tchaikovsky.
Articles
3 minute read