Back in the early days of Seraphic Fire, the Miami concert choir took on the challenge of all six motets by J.S. Bach. The performance I saw 12 years ago was very fine, but effortful: The difficulty of the music took its toll on the singers, and it was noticeable by the end of the concert. The group has done one or another of the motets individually since then, but this … [Read more...]
Cellist Moreau impressive at PB Chamber Society
The violoncello is an instrument that often gets tapped for the most soulful kind of music, and its kinship to the human voice gives it a unique communicative power. But except for certain concerti, it’s rarer to hear the cello as a barn-burning virtuosic instrument. Thursday night, the young French cellist Edgar Moreau reminded a West Palm Beach audience what they might … [Read more...]
Violinist Sirena Huang wins first Oliveira Competition
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...]