There are composers, and there are compositeurs, and there are Komponists, but few of them working today have anything like the buzz that surrounds young Nico Muhly. At just age 32, Muhly (whose Twitter page uses the Icelandic word for composer, tónlist), has the kind of monstrously busy, high-profile, engaged career that would be the envy of any artist, not just contemporary … [Read more...]
PBO’s ‘Macbeth,’ first cast: Chioldi, Boross impressive; Panikkar a discovery
Even though the Giuseppe Verdi of Macbeth is not the Verdi of Don Carlo or Otello, one hears the earlier score today with a shock of understanding why this composer’s work seized the ears of his contemporaries: It is bold, fierce and unrelentingly exciting. It helps if the performance in question of the opera does it justice, of course, and fortunately, Palm Beach Opera’s … [Read more...]
Music roundup 2: French Baroque beauty from Seraphic Fire; a mixed bag at Lynn Phil
The authentic-performance movement of three or so decades ago had several benefits other than just the experience of hearing familiar Baroque and Classical music in fresh guise. What it also did was open the doors to rediscovery of celebrated composers from the past whose work had been overlooked in modern times, and on Jan. 18 at All Saints Episcopal in Fort Lauderdale, … [Read more...]
Chioldi to bring fresh Verdi experiences to PBO’s ‘Macbeth’
It’s a common, affectionate criticism of opera to point out how fast improbable things happen in the stories the art form tells. Rodolfo and Mimi, for instance, in Puccini’s La Bohème, are strangers in a Paris apartment building who meet cute when her candle goes out, and are pledging undying love 10 minutes later. But Michael Chioldi knows differently. “Opera really is a … [Read more...]
Symphonia makes fine showing at Eissey with Platt, Schubert
It was a pleasure to see Alexander Platt back at the helm of The Symphonia Boca Raton last week, and to see the orchestra trying out a new venue at the Eissey Campus Theatre in Palm Beach Gardens. But seeing the conductor who led the band for three of its nine seasons would not have been as pleasurable had the music not been as good as it was, in particular in his choice of a … [Read more...]
Seamless Beethoven, Elgar from the Brentano SQ
In Yaron Zilberman’s film A Late Quartet, which came out in 2012, the soundtrack recording of the Beethoven Op. 131 quartet was played by the Brentano String Quartet, and there were appearances in the film by the actual Brentano cellist, Nina Lee. Newly named the quartet in residence at the Yale School of Music, the Brentanos — violinists Mark Steinberg and Serena Canin, … [Read more...]
Hahn, New World triumphant in Mozart, Prokofiev
Here’s something we can agree on for 2014: It might be time to stop worrying so much about the future of classical music, and of the symphony orchestra. Two superlative reasons why that is came together Saturday night when the great American violinist Hilary Hahn appeared for the first time with the New World Symphony, in the Knight Concert Hall at Miami’s Adrienne Arsht … [Read more...]
Atlantic Classical Orchestra debuts in PB County with free rehearsal, world premiere
Not so many years ago, conductor Stewart Robertson made a point of saying that he was determined to bring his Atlantic Classical Orchestra down from the Treasure Coast into Palm Beach County. That intention is finally to be realized Wednesday afternoon when the Fort Pierce-based chamber orchestra opens its 24th season with the first of four free rehearsals at the Eissey Campus … [Read more...]
Community dance: A brace of Nutcrackers
As aficionados are happy to point out, The Nutcracker is a most unusual classical ballet in that it doesn’t really have a central character. What it does have is a first half in which mime is crucial to telling the story, and a collection of widely varied dances for the second. It’s a strange story, too, drawn from a tale by the German Romantic writer E.T.A. Hoffmann, and no … [Read more...]
Tenor Valenti to showcase star power for PB Opera
James Valenti has just gotten off a plane to West Palm Beach, so he’s dressed casually in shirt, shorts and flip-flops as he tucks into some salad and crudités before talking about his career on the operatic stage. No one passing by at CityPlace on a beautiful December afternoon realizes that the tall, friendly, dark-haired man at the table will soon be breaking the heart of a … [Read more...]