Music

1916 results
Page 84
Susan Watts with her mother, Elaine Hoffman (via hoffmanwattsklezmer.com)

Susan Watts in Chestnut Hill

A fourth-generation klezmer tackles jazz

Klezmer, which is derived from the Hebrew word for “instrument of song,” refers not only to the Eastern European Jewish music idiom itself but also to the musicians who specialize in its performance. Susan Watts is certainly one of its foremost practitioners, now boldly expanding into klezmer’s distant cousin jazz, which shares many of klezmer’s defining attributes.
Robert J. Robbins

Robert J. Robbins

Articles 3 minute read
Pairing cello and harpsichord (photo via earlymusichicago.org)

Cellist Hai-Ye Ni conducts and plays with the Chamber Orchestra

An event for the record books

The principal cellist of the Philadelphia Orchestra plays five concertos in one afternoon and takes on a bit of conducting while she does it.
Tom Purdom

Tom Purdom

Articles 4 minute read
Robert and Clara Schumann

Tenor Mark Padmore and pianist Jonathan Biss

Songs of ecstasy and painful longing

Schumann's music explores the pain and ecstasy of love. Adding compositions by two later composers, Michael Tippett and Gabriel Fauré, served to illustrate the sea change in the pleasure/pain principle between Romanticism and Modernism.
Victor L. Schermer

Victor L. Schermer

Articles 5 minute read
Gilbert: An outsider breaks fresh ground.

Gilbert conducts the Philadelphia Orchestra

Rare and well done

I’ve said it before, but the best orchestra programs are the ones that make you see how musical tradition evolves and reflects upon itself. This was one of them.
Robert Zaller

Robert Zaller

Articles 6 minute read
How about in the lobby? (Photo of the Kimmel Center by Wasted Time R, via Wikimedia)

When is it all right to interrupt a concert?

Protest is a right. But so is a legitimate expectation of enjoying a cultural event in peace.
Robert Zaller

Robert Zaller

Articles 4 minute read
Mimi and the guys tackle Piazzolla's "Libertango." (Photo by Pete Checchia, courtesy of Dolce Suono)

Dolce Suono's 10th-anniversary celebration

Celebrating a phenomenon

Dolce Suono celebrates a nine-year history that illustrates a Machiavellian adage.
Tom Purdom

Tom Purdom

Articles 4 minute read
Thibaudet: A revival, 66 years later.

Philadelphia Orchestra’s Russian program

First impressions can be misleading

The Philadelphia Orchestra was in top form under Yannick Nézet-Séguin in an all-Russian program of works that were mangled and misjudged at their inception.
Robert Zaller

Robert Zaller

Articles 6 minute read
More a living room than an auditorium: the Helen Corning Warden Theater at the Academy of Vocal Arts.

Lyric Fest's Vienna: City of Song

Art song in the age of the living room

Lyric Fest recreated the homey atmosphere in which the great art songs of the 18th and 19th centuries were performed in their season-opening program, Vienna, City of Song.

Susan Gould

Articles 4 minute read
There’s more to Philadelphia composers than George Crumb. (photo by Becky Starobin, via georgecrumb.net)

Contemporary Philadelphia composers

A school for the unschooled

Seven Philadelphia composers demonstrate that you can have a movement without stifling individuality.
Tom Purdom

Tom Purdom

Articles 4 minute read
What would Brahms say? (Photo by Rebecca Rivas, via NPR.org)

Michael Brown Protest at the St. Louis Symphony

The sanctity of the concert hall?

Some were alienated by the Michael Brown protest at a St. Louis Symphony concert, although some (a minority) applauded. As for “terrorism,” what a luxury it is to live in America, as opposed to, say, Iraq, where one can apply that label to what took place in St. Louis and mean it.
Maria Thompson Corley

Maria Thompson Corley

Articles 5 minute read