For some reason, the string quartets of Felix Mendelssohn don’t have the currency on our chamber music stages that their quality deserves. But all six of them, as well as the separate pieces for string quartet, are marvelous works, and it was with one of these pieces that the 23rd iteration of the Palm Beach Chamber Music Festival wrapped up last weekend. It’s also worth … [Read more...]
Onslow, Stephenson stand out in PBCMF Concert 3
If the Palm Beach Chamber Music Festival musicians went looking for a trove of unfamiliar but worthwhile music they could draw on year after year, they could do worse than the works of Georges (or George) Onslow. Onslow (1784-1853), the French offspring of an English lord’s wayward younger son, was the only substantial French composer of chamber music in his day, writing no … [Read more...]
Two rarities charm in second week of PB Chamber Festival
They buried Ernst von Dohnányi in Tallahassee back in 1960, and for some time afterward, it seemed like his compositions went with him. But the great Hungarian pianist, estimable composer and Florida State University professor is enjoying more attention these days from performers. His neo-Brahmsian aesthetic was out of fashion until very recently, but audiences enjoying the … [Read more...]
Sundays: The Great War’s technology lesson
One hundred years ago this month, Europe was in the throes of a buildup to catastrophe in the aftermath of the assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo on June 28. It would climax, as we all know, in a four-year conflict that for its savagery and scale of destruction was unequalled in all of human history. World War I set in motion the even more cataclysmic … [Read more...]
Fine discoveries, beautifully played, on Chamber Fest’s Week 1
A music series that employs a dedication to the rarer reaches of the repertory is necessarily about discovery, and when it all comes together, there’s a rich feeling of satisfaction when a well-programmed concert ends. The first series of concerts this past weekend in the 23rd iteration of the Palm Beach Chamber Music Festival fulfilled its mission of finding worthy, … [Read more...]
Palm Beach Chamber Festival set to open 23rd season
What is surely one of Palm Beach County’s longest-running summer concert series returns tonight for its 23rd season, as some of the area’s best-known classical musicians gather for four weekends of chamber music. The works on this year’s iteration of the Palm Beach Chamber Music Festival are perhaps more unfamiliar than usual, but the programming of music that’s off the beaten … [Read more...]
Mainly Mozart’s chamber music-dance finale enchants large audience
The directors of Miami’s Mainly Mozart Festival made much June 22 of the crowd they’d lured to the Knight Concert Hall for their chamber music summer season closer, subtitled My Homeland. And indeed the mood in the big hall at the Arsht Center downtown was festive and celebratory, and they were rewarded with a concert that took the strong and innovative format from last year’s … [Read more...]
Rare Mozart sparkles with Bergonzi, Todd
The richness of Mozart’s oeuvre can’t be fully appreciated unless you’re able to hear good performances of every part of it, from his church sonatas to his first attempts at opera. That applies, too, to his chamber music. While performances of the later string quartets and quintets are frequent, and the Clarinet Quintet always gets an airing when a good enough clarinetist is … [Read more...]
Violinist Meyers offers two premieres at Community Arts recital
It’s a one-off recital during a time when South Florida is beginning to swelter and all the snowbirds have gone home, but violinist Anne Akiko Meyers’s appearance tonight will include two new pieces of music that she’ll be championing all this year. Meyers, a native of Southern California, came to prominence at age 11 with two appearances on Johnny Carson’s Tonight Show (she … [Read more...]
Amernet’s Dvořák, Mozart shine at Mainly Mozart
Although technically it takes place in the very last days of spring, the Mainly Mozart Festival shares with the best summer festivals the idea that a sweltering month is just as good as a frigid one for pursuing music of the utmost seriousness and high caliber. This past Sunday, at the Danielson Gallery on the grounds of the Biltmore Hotel in Coral Gables, the veteran Miami … [Read more...]