Sirena Huang, a 22-year-old violinist from South Windsor, Conn., won first prize tonight in the inaugural Elmar Oliveira International Violin Competition. Huang, who has soloed with more than 40 orchestras including the New York Philharmonic and Cleveland Orchestra, received $30,000, along with a new violin, bow and case, plus professional management and performance … [Read more...]
Beautifully sung ‘Butterfly’ opens PB Opera season
There are any number of tragic female heroines in the centuries since opera was created, but it’s hard to think of one more sympathetic than the Japanese geisha Cio-Cio-San, traduced by her caddish American husband and forced to take the only way out she knows. That’s Giacomo Puccini’s Madama Butterfly, and for this opera to come across successfully, it’s important that the … [Read more...]
Lark seeks ‘sincerity’ in music, career
Tonight, violinist Tessa Lark returns to Carnegie Hall for a recital. She wants you to know that while her program might seem unconventional, it will give you a good idea of who she is as a musician. “When you look at the program it doesn’t seem like the pieces relate, but it’s really just types of music I’ve loved my whole life and I’m putting them together in one … [Read more...]
Violinist Lark shines in Korngold at SoFla Symphony
The South Florida Symphony is a musical organization that likes to think big. In the first classical concerts of the season (a pops concert took place in November), the Fort Lauderdale-based ensemble took on an echt-Romantic violin concerto, a world premiere score, and one of Richard Strauss’s enormous tone poems. Credit the group and its maestra, Sebrina María Alfonso, with … [Read more...]
FGO’s ‘Onegin’ beautiful, satisfying
Of all the operas of Tchaikovsky, Eugene Onegin is the best-loved, and its profusion of engaging melody is surely one of the primary reasons. But it also helps when the cast is strong enough to give those melodies the ride they deserve, and happily, Florida Grand Opera’s current production of Eugene Onegin hits its marks in that regard, and in providing a fine night at the … [Read more...]
Seraphic Fire’s 15th anniversary concert masterful, eclectic
The South Florida classical music scene was rather different 15 years ago than it is today, and while in some aspects of those pre-recession days it was more robust, in one thing in particular there is no comparison. Today, there has been substantial growth in the appearance of smaller arts organizations, with chamber orchestras, chamber music series and even opera companies … [Read more...]
Soprano’s vocal fireworks give Boca Symphonia a joyful afternoon of Baroque
The European audiences of 300 years ago liked their singers to show off, and Jan. 8 at the second seasonal concert by the Symphonia Boca Raton, a local audience got a thrilling example of why that was. In all-Baroque program led by conductor Brett Karlin, who in November directed a strong account of the Mass in B Minor of J.S. Bach with his Master Chorale of South Florida, … [Read more...]
Composer Montgomery seeks the intersection of styles
A string quartet by Franz Joseph Haydn might not seem like the most obvious departure point for improvisation. But when the violinist and composer Jessie Montgomery was working with New York’s young PUBLIQuartet, that’s exactly what they did: Play Haydn, then riff on it. “I’ve always been interested in trying to find the intersection between different types of music, or … [Read more...]
Classical notes: The comeback orchestra; Casals Istomin in Palm Beach
In all the election turmoil over the past year, it might have escaped general notice that an orchestra that had almost been given up for lost only three years ago has recovered in award-winning form. It’s been three years to the month since the 16-month musicians’ lockout of the Minnesota Orchestra ended, an experience that left that arts-loving community reeling but that … [Read more...]
Violinist Oliveira launches international competition at Lynn this month
Elmar Oliveira knows a thing or two about music competitions. As an American violinist competing in Moscow in the 1978 Tchaikovsky Competition — where he won the Gold Medal, the first and still only American violinist to do so — Oliveira was thrust into a “cutthroat” environment in which the only goal was the top prize. “It was like an ocean with 100 sharks in it,” Oliveira … [Read more...]