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...]
Violinist Mracek shows star potential at Boca Symphonia
One of the joys of being a music critic is getting a chance to have an early encounter with a major talent you’ve never heard before. You don’t know when that’s going to happen, but it comes as a sure thing when it does. And Sunday afternoon at the Roberts Theater, it happened: An audience got to hear a young standout, new to American audiences, who it seems to me stands a … [Read more...]
Master Chorale’s Bach largely a triumph
By any reasonable measure, staging J.S. Bach’s epic Mass in B Minor with a community chorus is a remarkable achievement. And Brett Karlin, who directs the Master Chorale of South Florida, was not to be deterred from mounting a performance of this, his favorite choral composition. He put his 121 singers through numerous extra rehearsals, brought The Symphonia Boca Raton in … [Read more...]
French requiems get deep Seraphic Fire treatment
The idea of putting two requiems back to back on one program might seem to promise an overdose of despair, but when the two funeral pieces in question are among the two best-known such works by French composers, it’s a notion that makes more sense. For the second concert of its season, the Miami chamber choir Seraphic Fire offered the requiems of Gabriel Fauré and Maurice … [Read more...]
Delray Quartet makes strong case for Piston
It’s probably not well-known among average concertgoers that American composers in the 20th century created a significant body of music for string quartet. While a movement from one of those quartets, the slow movement from Samuel Barber’s lone effort in the medium, now better known as the Adagio for Strings, is famous the world over, the rest of that quartet, as well as … [Read more...]
Erin Manning: In search of the Flagler spirit
Erin Manning took over as executive director of the Flagler Museum earlier this year from the retiring John Blades, coming to Henry Flagler’s 1902 Whitehall mansion from the Historical Society of Princeton in her home state of New Jersey, where she was executive director for nine years. She holds a bachelor’s degree in Middle Eastern and North African studies from the … [Read more...]
Seraphic Fire opens 15th season with impressive premieres
For this, its 15th season, Seraphic Fire is going all-in with contemporary music and at the same time returning to some of the monuments of its past. The first concert in its series, as presented Oct. 22 at All Saints Episcopal Church in Fort Lauderdale, offered two world premieres, one by the choir’s founder, Patrick Dupré Quigley, and the other by one of the country’s … [Read more...]
Singing the ‘elephant’: Master Chorale tackles Bach’s epic Mass
When it comes to the concert season, says Brett Karlin, it may be that we’re all taking it a little too easy. Consider: A music-loving South Florida resident in the winter months is a lucky creature, with performers from around the globe as well as much closer to home willing to offer almost any kind of musical experience he or she desires. But maybe a majority of those … [Read more...]
‘Snow White’ another strong effort from Ballet Palm Beach
The usual first seasonal appearance of our community ballet companies comes at Thanksgiving, when the arts world is suddenly flush with performances of The Nutcracker. This year, though, Ballet Palm Beach has changed that by mounting a show in October that featured not only its first Balanchine ballet but also a new work based on a classic fairy tale. That new work, … [Read more...]