Orchestra 2001 plays Crumb

George Crumb plays around with doctored pianos and odd effects, but he uses novel means to achieve classic ends. His techniques may look outré, but he’s doing the same thing that good accompanists do when they create scenes and moods as they play a standard piano accompaniment.

Orchestra 2001, James Freeman, conductor. Crumb’s Otherworldly Resonances (Marcantonio Barone and James Freeman, amplified piano); Tchaikovsky Concert Piece for Flute and Str

Tom Purdom

Sep 18, 2007 · Articles · 4 minute read

Best of the 2007-08 season

If you’re a Philadelphian whose tastes are eclectic and adventurous, and if you have a special liking for the French avant-garde of the 20th Century, this is your year.

Dan Coren

Sep 15, 2007 · Articles · 2 minute read

Pavarotti vs. Carreras

My brilliant brother Jack thought Pavarotti was the best tenor around. It was one of the few points on which I questioned his judgment and held my ground.

Andrew Kevorkian

Sep 15, 2007 · Articles · 4 minute read

Classical music and golf

Golf, like Classical music, is based on a set of immutable rules and stylistic conventions. Haydn and Mozart regarded their procedural rules the same way Tiger Woods, the Beethoven of golf, follows the rules of golf— that is, almost as unconsciously as we regard oxygen.

Dan Coren

Sep 11, 2007 · Articles · 4 minute read

Sonata-form made easy (Part 2)

Can you feel the ground shift? Or: Sonata-form in a nutshell

An elegant little tune from a Haydn Symphony contains in embryonic form all the essential ideas of sonata-form. The trick is learning to hear the same ideas on a time scale ten times as long. Listen closely and you’ll appreciate how a slight shift can send a tune off in an entirely new direction.

Dan Coren

Sep 01, 2007 · Articles · 4 minute read

Those who can, should

After I’d spent 50 years as a check-depositing writer, it took a chance remark by Yumi Kendall, the Philadelphia Orchestra’s young assistant principal cellist, to convince me once and for all that I hadn’t wasted my life.

Tom Purdom

Aug 28, 2007 · Articles · 7 minute read

Alan Gilbert: The conductor as leader

Conductors must possess three critical personal qualities. Alan Gilbert, the new music director of the New York Philharmonic, displayed two of them the first time I saw him conduct at Curtis. And that was before I heard him conduct a major symphony.

Tom Purdom

Aug 28, 2007 · Articles · 4 minute read

You too can enjoy sonata-form (really)

Sonata-form is to me what the New Testament is to a born-again Christian. If I can sell you on the beauties and pleasures of examining how Classical music is put together, you’ll hear sounds of a magnificence you’ve never encountered before.

Dan Coren

Aug 11, 2007 · Articles · 5 minute read

"Peter and the Wolf" at the Mann

If you feel children can’t achieve full adulthood without learning that an oboe can imitate a duck, you’d probably find this animated film version of Peter and the Wolf is less successful than a traditional narrated performance. But the kids on hand learned that a trip to the orchestra can be fun.

Philadelphia Orchestra: Britten Variations and Fugue on a Theme by Purcell, Prokofiev Peter and the Wolf, Shostakovich Violin Concerto No. 1 in A Min

Tom Purdom

Jul 31, 2007 · Articles · 4 minute read

Lang Lang at the Mann

Yellow River is that rare item, a successful piece of democratic art. But Lang Lang’s histrionics are no substitute for the passion he should communicate through his piano.

Philadelphia Orchestra: Mozart Overture to The Marriage of Figaro, Piano Concerto No. 17 in G Major; Various China Air Suite, Yellow River, concerto for piano and orchestra. Lang Lang, piano; Long Yu, conductor. July 18, 2007 at Mann Music Center. (215) 893-1900 or

Tom Purdom

Jul 24, 2007 · Articles · 4 minute read