It’s a 1950s Saturday in Tel Aviv, in the fledgling state of Israel, and the radio’s playing cantorial music, as it always does on Saturdays. It’s music that sticks with one person in particular, a young, prodigiously talented young violinist who will soon make his mark in the world as a teenage phenomenon. But through all the decades and accolades that followed, Itzhak … [Read more...]
Strong corps of singers lifts charming ‘Barber’ at PB Opera
There is a celebrated passage in Stendhal’s Life of Rossini in which the French writer describes an outing he and his friends took to Lake Como exactly 200 years ago, in the summer of 1814. The party had a wonderful time on the road from Brescia to Como, and an even better time staying at the beautiful inn run by one of Stendhal’s other friends once they got there. That night, … [Read more...]
Slatkin, Detroit Symphony ready to show what they’re made of
The big industrial cities of the Midwest — Minneapolis, Detroit, Chicago, Cleveland, St. Louis — grew up with the country in the mid-19th century, and added cultural institutions as they moved into the Gilded Age and the early 20th century. The symphonic ensembles their prominent citizens brought into being have long been prized institutions, and gained importance as this … [Read more...]
Violinist Lee gives Rinker audience Szymanowski, Ives to remember
The classical music world these days is replete with fine young female violinists, and one of the most promising ones I’ve heard visited the Rinker Playhouse on Feb. 17. Kristin Lee, a South Korea-born American of just 27 years who is a protégé of Itzhak Perlman, appeared in the Kravis Center’s Young Artists series, accompanied by the splendid pianist Kwan Yi. She chose a … [Read more...]
PB Opera turns to the timeless magic of Rossini’s ‘Barber’
Scratch the surface of a typical Rossini scholar you happen to meet and he or she will tell you that the Italian composer’s greatest contribution to the art of opera was in his serious works. It was there, the scholar will say, in works such as Elisabetta, Semiramide, Tancredi, Otello and Guillaume Tell, that Gioachino Rossini blazed a path that would be followed to great … [Read more...]
Violinist Kutik, conductor Cooper impressive at Symphonia
The young Russian-American violinist Yevgeny Kutik was the able soloist Feb. 9 in a concert by The Symphonia Boca Raton, under the guest baton of West Virginia Symphony Orchestra director Grant Cooper. Kutik was the soloist in a work violinists know better than audiences do: the Concerto No. 22 (in A minor) of the Italian violinist and opera conductor Giovanni Battista Viotti … [Read more...]
At Lynn, the sound of an orchestra transformed
Someone over at the Lynn Conservatory of Music got the memo. After three very middling concerts in which the student orchestra at Lynn University’s music school sounded haphazard, unfocused, and in its brass section, something shy of competent, the orchestra turned it all around Feb. 8 and gave a rousing performance of three well-known orchestral virtuoso pieces. Not … [Read more...]
SoFla SO, soloist do right by Russian masters
A mostly Russian program featuring a stellar pianist and an important symphony made a strong impression on what appeared to be a growing and enthusiastic audience in Delray Beach last week for the South Florida Symphony. The Feb. 3 concert at the Delray Beach Center for the Arts’ Crest Theatre featured American pianist Christopher Taylor in the Third Piano Concerto (in C, Op. … [Read more...]
Conductor Falletta always searching for fresh challenges
Although it has had eminent leaders in the past, these days the name of the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra is indelibly associated with that of its current director, JoAnn Falletta. It’s not just that, along with Marin Alsop, she is one of the top two female conductors in the country. It’s also that she’s a tireless seeker-out of new repertoire, and has the discography to … [Read more...]
FGO’s ‘Nabucco’ an old-fashioned pleasure
There is something about Florida Grand Opera’s current production of Nabucco that brings out what I imagine to be the atmosphere of its first groundbreaking performances in 1842. It may have to do with the way the set and the costumes combine with the conviction of the performers, the prominence with which the chorus is used, or the ferocity of fresh discovery that its … [Read more...]