It’s one thing to come and do a concert during the South Florida season, but it rises to another level when you’re able to bring your friends. This month at the Society of the Four Arts in Palm Beach, the proprietors of New York’s Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, the husband-and-wife team of cellist David Finckel and pianist Wu Han, will settle in for a week of … [Read more...]
Echols a gently winning Violetta in PB Opera’s ‘Traviata’
It’s a commonplace of Verdi scholarship that the composer’s “big three” operas of the early 1850s – Il Trovatore, Rigoletto and La Traviata – were game-changers for him in that they announced a consistent mature style in addition to introducing tunes so catchy they hold their popularity today. All of which is true, but it takes an especially sensitive and musical performance … [Read more...]
Seraphic Fire’s African-American program deep and vital
The African-American musical tradition is a vast one, extending as it does from that day 400 years ago that the first enslaved Africans were brought to the English colonies that became the United States, to the hip-hop titans of our current popular music universe. And while much of that music is steeped in sorrow, there is also much of it that expresses joy in life, and … [Read more...]
Seraphic Fire program to explore African-American musical legacy
When Seraphic Fire takes the stage tonight at St. Gregory’s Episcopal Church in Boca Raton for a concert called I Have a Dream, they’ll be doing more than bringing attention to the vital literature of the African-American spiritual tradition. In addition to such beloved examples of black American sacred folksong as “Joshua Fit the Battle of Jericho” and “Go Down, Moses,” the … [Read more...]
Violinist’s excellence obscured by poky tempi at Palm Beach Symphony
The arrival on the musical scene of a fresh young soloist talent is always worth noting, and in the case of the South Korean violinist SooBeen Lee, she’s been getting a lot of major attention. Lee, who turned 18 in September, is currently studying with the great pedagogue Miriam Fried at the New England Conservatory, the Boston school where she won the concerto competition … [Read more...]
Delphi Trio offers meaty program of canonical works at Flagler
The Delphi Trio, a San Francisco-based threesome of piano, violin and cello, made a stop in South Florida on Tuesday night in a different guise than expected. Founding pianist Jeffrey LaDeur has left the group to “pursue other projects,” said violinist Liana Bérubé, and so she and cellist Michelle Kwon were joined by Tampa-based pianist Eunmi Ko at the Flagler Museum for a … [Read more...]
Philadelphia visitors pay strong visit to Symphonia
David Kim, concertmaster of the Philadelphia Orchestra, has made himself a regular visitor to South Florida over the past few years, and on Sunday afternoon with the Symphonia Boca Raton he was back in the spotlight again, where his combination of skill and easy audience rapport was bountifully on display. Kim, who has led the Symphonia as guest conductor (and will do so … [Read more...]
St. Paul’s music director bids 2018 farewell with ‘Goldberg Variations’
It’s said that the insomniac Count Hermann von Keyserling, an ambassador from Russia to the royal court of Saxony, commissioned the work by Johann Sebastian Bach we know now as the Goldberg Variations as a sonic sleep aid to be played for him by one of the court’s musicians, Johann Goldberg. Although this monumental set of variations was out of the cultural mainstream for … [Read more...]
For PB Opera, it was a grand night of youthful singing
Time was when the Palm Beach Opera held a singing contest in April, inviting young opera performers from around the world to be heard in front of an elite panel of judges and a full orchestra. The contest is gone (though it may someday return), and with it the chance to hear a wide variety of new voices and not incidentally a broad sampling of repertoire that one will surely … [Read more...]
New York Polyphony’s excellence muted by dry acoustic
If the Christmas season revives a rich body of American song for the holiday, it also is a door into the vast, centuries-old library of sacred choral music that amplifies the observance. Following by three days a concert by Miami’s Seraphic Fire that also explored ancient classical repertoire, the vocal quartet New York Polyphony made its first stop in Florida in seven years … [Read more...]