The two canonical clarinet quintets, and there are really only two, attain that status at least in part because listening to them, one wonders why such a beautiful combination isn’t regularly attempted by composers everywhere. For now, no one’s done it better than Mozart in 1789 and Brahms in 1891, and it was their respective clarinet quintets that occupied a program of the … [Read more...]
At Lynn, a laudable ‘Te Deum,’ compelling Copland
We are going to be treated to a lot of Berlioz at the Lynn Philharmonia over the next year or so, thanks to the championing of the French composer by its director, Guillermo Figueroa. Truth to tell, Berlioz has already loomed large on Philharmonic programs. Figueroa has presented the song cycle Les Nuits d’Été and the dramatic symphony Romeo et Juliette in previous seasons, … [Read more...]
Akropolis Reed Quintet stellar at Flagler
The usual round of chamber music visits to South Florida in season favors assemblies of string instruments, sometimes with piano, and the occasional woodwind quintet. That’s part of what made the Feb. 19 concert by the Akropolis Reed Quintet at the Flagler Museum so special: Unlike a standard wind quintet of flute, oboe, clarinet, horn and bassoon, the Akropolis has oboe … [Read more...]
PB Opera scores with stylish, fast-moving ‘Giovanni’
Mozart called his opera Don Giovanni an opera buffa, and his librettist Lorenzo da Ponte called it a “dramma giocoso” (playful drama), but the work’s ending, with its protagonist being swallowed by the earth after the statue of a man he killed comes to dinner and implores him to repent, has seemed to many stage directors of the past two centuries to define the opera as a piece … [Read more...]
Seraphic Fire’s women stellar in all-Vivaldi program
Late in his life, he was “an old man with a mania for composing,” but the Rev. Antonio Vivaldi’s musical productivity was also stoked by his decades of service on behalf of the conservatory-orphanage for girls and women known as the Ospedalle della Pietà in his native Venice. Novelists and filmmakers have been unable to resist the salacious possibilities of a red-haired … [Read more...]
Huang sensational in Mendelssohn at strong ACO concert
It was fitting that in the first concert program after its founder’s passing, the Atlantic Classical Orchestra and a guest soloist could present an evening so full of life and eventful music-making. On Wednesday night at the Eissey Campus Theatre in Palm Beach Gardens, the young American violinist Sirena Huang gave the orchestra and its audience an astoundingly vital reading … [Read more...]
Pianist’s comedy needs stronger musicianship
There is a healthy tradition of clowning in classical music performance, as could be witnessed just this past Monday in New York when the splendid Chinese pianist Yuja Wang joined the British music-and-comedy duo of Igudesman and Joo for a night of general goofing around at Zankel Hall. Looking back a little bit further, we find compositional satire with Peter Schickele and … [Read more...]
Canada’s Gryphon Trio stellar at Flagler
The Gryphon Trio, a Canadian threesome that played the Flagler Museum music series in 2006, returned Feb. 5 to Whitehall with three works from the Austro-German canon. Violinist Annalee Patipatanakoon, cellist Roman Borys and pianist Jamie Parker offered music by Haydn, Beethoven and Brahms, playing the trios in chronological order, with Parker commenting as they went about … [Read more...]
Lincoln Center duo brings week of Romantic music to Four Arts
It’s one thing to come and do a concert during the South Florida season, but it rises to another level when you’re able to bring your friends. This month at the Society of the Four Arts in Palm Beach, the proprietors of New York’s Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, the husband-and-wife team of cellist David Finckel and pianist Wu Han, will settle in for a week of … [Read more...]
Echols a gently winning Violetta in PB Opera’s ‘Traviata’
It’s a commonplace of Verdi scholarship that the composer’s “big three” operas of the early 1850s – Il Trovatore, Rigoletto and La Traviata – were game-changers for him in that they announced a consistent mature style in addition to introducing tunes so catchy they hold their popularity today. All of which is true, but it takes an especially sensitive and musical performance … [Read more...]