Michael Tilson Thomas conducts Four Preludes on Playthings of the Wind at the New World Center on Saturday. (Photo by Gregory Reed) When the music had finished and the audience in the New World Center had risen to its collective feet, Michael Tilson Thomas knelt down on one knee and kissed the garment of his soloist, soprano Measha Brueggergosman. And well he might: … [Read more...]
Weak Handel, strong Rimsky at Lynn Phil’s final season concert
The current season of the Lynn Philharmonia, which ended April 17 with a concert at the Wold Performing Arts Center, has been largely triumphant. Continuing on its path of notable improvement under the direction of conductor Guillermo Figueroa, the students of the Lynn Conservatory have displayed impressive chops and discipline in their concerts this year, which have been … [Read more...]
Seraphic Fire, New World bring major Reich score to vivid life
Patrick Dupre Quigley rehearses the New World Symphony and Seraphic Fire in Steve Reich's The Desert Music. (from Facebook) The season now in its final weeks has been a particularly good one for Beethoven, but performances of contemporary music have been relatively rare. Which is why it was great fun Saturday night to be at the New World Center in Miami Beach, where … [Read more...]
Brilliant, absorbing ‘The Passenger’ marks FGO milestone
A scene from The Passenger. (Photo by Brittany Mazzurco-Muscato) Florida Grand Opera’s current production of Mieczyslaw Weinberg’s Holocaust opera The Passenger is more than just a show that opera devotees and fans of the arts in general should make sure to see in its brief run this week at the Ziff Ballet Opera House. The Passenger is a milestone for FGO’s 75th season in … [Read more...]
Dichter’s Beethoven sparkles at last Symphonia concert
It says something important about the connections our area arts leaders have in that for the last concerts of the season for the Symphonia Boca Raton, the orchestra was able to feature one of the leading pianists of the older generation and an encore appearance by one of the country’s most intriguing conductors. The final Symphonia Boca Raton concert of its Connoisseur Series … [Read more...]
Cellist Parnas shows she’s one to watch
The young cellist Cicely Parnas grew up listening to recordings of her celebrated cellist grandfather Leslie, and there’s little doubt that aural education has paid off. Cicely Parnas, now 23, gave a recital Thursday night at the Eissey Campus Theatre in Palm Beach Gardens, and in everything she played on her program, which consisted of sonatas by Barber, Brahms and Ravel, she … [Read more...]
PBO’s ‘Ariadne’; ‘A’ cast: Top-to-bottom vocal strength lifts Strauss confection
Wendy Bryn Harmer and Brian Jagde in Ariadne auf Naxos. The audience response Sunday afternoon to Palm Beach Opera’s final presentation of Richard Strauss’s Ariadne auf Naxos wasn’t the kind of enthusiastic ovation a more familiar opera from the Italian repertory would have won. But if they weren’t crazy about the opera itself, the troupe deserved all the warm approbation … [Read more...]
Impressive Berlioz, Ravel at Lynn Philharmonia’s fifth
Guillermo Figueroa directed the largest bicentenary celebration in the United States of the work of Hector Berlioz back in 2003 when he was director of the New Mexico Symphony. Saturday night, he brought his regard for his favorite composer to a concert by his current charges, the Lynn Philharmonia Orchestra, which he led in an all-French program at the Wold Center for the … [Read more...]
Composer celebrates Miami for Cleveland Orchestra’s 10th local anniversary
Avner Dorman. Take a break from your alfresco waterfront nosh someday, walk out to the shore and take a close look at the waves of the Atlantic Ocean. You’ll see that the small waves are, except for their size, exactly like the big ones, but all of them join together to make an unstoppable force. So says Avner Dorman, whose sonic realization of that fact —and its metaphor … [Read more...]
Ballet Palm Beach creates dance take on ‘Great Gatsby’
Just before Nick Carraway meets Jay Gatsby in his big mansion on West Egg, the party his neighbor is throwing for a large number of people is in full Roaring Twenties swing. And inevitably, that means dancing, from “old men pushing young girls backward in eternal graceless circles” to “a great number of single girls dancing individualistically,” all of it part of the … [Read more...]