The Jasper String Quartet is the young face of American chamber music, now and in the future. To my mind they are on their way to replacing the eminent, now disbanded, Emerson String Quartet. Formed at Oberlin College, they won the very prestigious Cleveland Quartet Award and the Astral Artists 2010 National Auditions, and sought out the daunting Tokyo String Quartet to learn … [Read more...]
Schubert Ensemble makes long-overdue visit to Florida
Britain’s Schubert Ensemble came to the Flagler Museum for a night of music-making Tuesday; two familiar works and a couple of rarities made up their program. As winners of the coveted Royal Philharmonic prize, Best Chamber Group Award in 1998, and shortlisted in 2010, this led to high expectations. There’s no greater honor in British music. The Royal Philharmonic Society, … [Read more...]
Rarities and masterworks, freshly played by Utrecht quartet
The city of Utrecht in Holland has a music conservatory that draws unto it teachers of high caliber. Students from all over the world cross its portals. Only two of the members of this version of the Utrecht String Quartet studied there, but they honor the school by taking its name. Renowned for searching for forgotten repertoire, the Utrecht opened the program at the Flagler … [Read more...]
‘Traviata,’ Cast 2: Sarah Joy Miller triumphs as Violetta
There were many young people at Saturday’s performance of Palm Beach Opera’s La Traviata: They came to hear tenor David Miller, a member of Simon Cowell’s Il Divo group, who’ve sold 37 million CDs already. He did not disappoint, giving the lead performance of his life as Alfredo. Miller’s tenor is warm and well-produced. He is very convincing as a singing actor and his finest … [Read more...]
Kuerti spellbinding in concerti with NY Chamber Soloists
About 2,000 music lovers filled the Kravis Center on Tuesday to hear the refined playing of the New York Chamber Soloists Orchestra ― 16 players, all at the top of their game, coming together to make the sweetest sounds. An early Haydn symphony, No. 6 (in D, Hob. I: 6), written in 1761 when the composer was 29 and newly hired by the Esterhazys, began the program. Subtitled Le … [Read more...]
Hot water bottles at the theater: How Britain coped in wartime
The current exhibition at the Norton Museum of Art, Keep Calm and Carry On: World War II and the British Home Front, is a paean to two kinds of British spirit: Fighting and forward thinking. Despite the many hardships of war, the political and cultural leadership of the country found ways to “muddle through’’ by setting up new ministries to cope and plan a vision for the … [Read more...]
At the opera: In Orlando, a hit-and-miss ‘Figaro’
The Orlando Philharmonic’s production Nov. 9 of Mozart’s Le Nozze di Figaro straddled a fine line that divides semi-staged from fully staged performances. These semi-staged productions of the Philharmonic either leave one feeling unsettled, as in this Figaro, or completely satisfied, as with last spring’s Rigoletto. It is a dilemma directors must wrestle with continually: Go … [Read more...]
Opera at Bard: ‘King’ plot preposterous, but Chabrier’s opera worth doing
ANNANDALE-ON-HUDSON, N.Y. -- “This is a royal mess,’’ sings one of the characters in Bard Summerscape’s performance of Emmanuel Chabrier’s comic opera Le Roi Malgré Lui (The King In Spite of Himself). This could well be a wry reflection on the quality of the singing or the production. It is not. Standards were very high. Rather, it goes to the root of why this opera is not … [Read more...]
At the Four Arts: Three music reviews
Editor’s note: Here are late reviews from three concerts at the Society of the Four Arts. Technical difficulties prevented them from being posted earlier. Nordwest Deutsche Philharmonic (March 14) Visiting orchestras often come to our balmy shores this time of year; 20-city tours exhaust the best of them, riding on buses around the Florida peninsula. It was not so with the … [Read more...]
PB Symphony’s music-in-the-round a great success
What could top an all-Bach program? I’ll tell you: The arrangement of the orchestra in the octagonal DeSantis Chapel at Palm Beach Atlantic University. Seating for the Feb. 27 concert was in a great circle with orchestra and soloists in the center. “Switch seats after the intermission, and look into the conductor’s eyes,’’ suggested the symphony’s new executive director, … [Read more...]