Sitting alone deep in the ancient cedar forests on the Japanese island of Yukushima, Antoine Wagner came in direct contact with his quest for silence. “You spend three days living in a dense forest in tents, and then suddenly the guide says, ‘You have to stay here for an hour, someone will come get you,’” he said. “There’s not a single sound in the forest, and you feel like … [Read more...]
Summer season preview: Three classical festivals
Classical events during the high season are distinguished by big stars and ensembles coming through South Florida in times of chilly weather up north. And while the summer months have always had things going on if you knew where to look, these days there are bigger and more elaborate events that bring out the permanent residents. Here’s an overview: Palm Beach Chamber … [Read more...]
FGO’s ‘Florencia’ takes pleasant journey down faux-Puccini river
Continuing with her effort to modernize and update her company, Florida Grand Opera general director Susan Danis closes the troupe’s 77th season with Florencia en el Amazonas, the 1996 magic-realist opera by the late Mexican composer Daniel Catán. Although set in the grandeur of the Amazon River as a boat wends its way to the city of Manaus in northwestern Brazil, Florencia … [Read more...]
Young pianist makes persuasive case for Medtner
Americans have had a long love affair with the music of Russia, particularly that of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Works by Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninov, especially, are guaranteed box office today as they have been for decades. But there are other, less well-known Russian composers whose work, while perhaps not as immediate as those two composers, offer rewarding … [Read more...]
Pianist sparkles at South Florida Symphony, ‘Fantastique’ doesn’t
With several chamber orchestras filling the symphonic gap in this part of the state, the South Florida Symphony offers a full-size group, which gives it the opportunity to present the largest works of the repertoire. And so it was on Sunday night at the Spanish River Worship Center in Boca Raton that a huge orchestra sat on the stage for a performance of the Symphonie … [Read more...]
Pärt’s ‘Passio’ gets rigorous Seraphic Fire reading
As we move further past the high-water mark of minimalism, the stature of its major practitioners can be seen more clearly in our rearview. A performance Saturday night of the Passio, a 1982 setting of the Passion according to St. John by the eminent Estonian composer Arvo Pärt, now 82, brought something particular about Pärt’s work into high relief: He is the purest and … [Read more...]
Composer Lash readies for ACO world premiere
To say that music is organized sound in motion is merely to say something obvious and non-controversial about it. But for composer Hannah Lash, the idea of movement is central to the very bones of her artistic project. Lines, harmonies and intervals constantly shift and alter in a relatively generous sonic environment that is tonal without being retrograde. “What was … [Read more...]
Beautiful new ‘Figaro’ charms at Palm Beach Opera
A good production of Le Nozze di Figaro that doesn’t get in the way of its music can demonstrate to its audience this work’s surprising modernity, even rooted as it is in the late 18th century. It’s Mozart who speaks to us most clearly from his 1786 vantage point, writing a kind of operatic music that lives and breathes with its characters, a music that mirrors their manic … [Read more...]
FGO’s ‘Orfeo’ too sensitive for Gluck’s own good
Aside from Claudio Monteverdi’s operas, Christoph Willibald Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice, which premiered in Vienna in 1762, is the earliest opera in regular repertory. Its abundance of graceful melody, compelling story and absence of the stiffness of the prevailing opera seria put it there, and not incidentally so did its use of orchestral accompaniment in the recitatives … [Read more...]
Voices carry the day for a ‘Candide’ that tries too hard
The celebration of the Leonard Bernstein centenary is bringing a lot of the composer-conductor’s music back into the public eye, and last weekend at Palm Beach Opera, the company tackled Candide for the second production of its current season. Like all troubled theater works, Candide has had several iterations since its relatively unsuccessful 1956 debut, with multiple … [Read more...]