Cameron Carpenter launched the new Kravis Center organ Wednesday night with American-style pomp and circumstance. The pomp was in the program he chose and the circumstance was the gala atmosphere surrounding what went on with the Jacksonville Symphony Orchestra playing alongside this lovable master of the new Opus 11 digital console organ, donated by generous philanthropist … [Read more...]
ACO blissfully good in Ravel, Respighi, Haydn
David Loebel, the second of four conductors vying for the post of music director, led the Atlantic Classical Orchestra in a familiar but adventurous program at the Eissey Theatre on Feb. 10. It was the first evening concert in the series and seats were filled. Was it because it was a light orchestral program of five music gems or that concertgoers prefer the nightlife that … [Read more...]
Hanslip electrifying, Falletta refined in Buffalo Phil concert
In a short three-city tour of West Palm Beach, Vero Beach and Fort Lauderdale, the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra showed Feb. 7 at the Kravis Center just how good they are under the baton of JoAnn Falletta, one of the fine women conductors who has made inroads into the once male-dominated maestro domain. Abandoning the usual warm-up piece of overture or tone poem, the … [Read more...]
PB Symphony takes its place with the majors in Benjamin Hall
Like a top-league soccer coach, Ramón Tebar has gotten his team to World Cup level. The Palm Beach Symphony, playing Jan. 27 at the new auditorium of Benjamin High School in Palm Beach Gardens, sounded like a major orchestra from Europe or the Americas. In my time covering this ensemble, Tebar has taken it from a refined chamber music ensemble of 35 players to a well-crafted … [Read more...]
Vega SQ brings rapturous sound to Flagler series
The Vega String Quartet: Yinzi Kong, Guang Wang, Domenic Salerni and Jessica Shuang Wu. Vega is the name of the brightest star in the constellation Lyra. And while the young Vega String Quartet, which played the Flagler Museum series Jan. 26, may be only on the road to that distinction, they do produce a rapturous, rounded sound, and that is perhaps their signature. Now in … [Read more...]
PB Opera’s ‘Carmen,’ second cast: A subdued heroine, brilliant Young Artists
Nora Sourouzian. Bizet’s collection of melodies in his opera Carmen continue to buzz around in the recesses of the brain long after the performance has ended. His music is immortal. The production I saw at Palm Beach Opera on Jan. 23 had all the elements of a successful evening with some minor flaws. But it’s the music that lives on. Also, on this occasion, is the memory of … [Read more...]
Conductor Amado, pianist Garritson lead fine ACO opener
David Amado, director of the Delaware Symphony and the first of four conductors to be considered by the Atlantic Classical Orchestra as a successor to Stewart Robertson, led a concert Jan. 13 with the ACO whose quality was unsurpassable. The concert at the Eissey Campus Theatre in Palm Beach Gardens opened with the overture to Carl Maria von Weber’s Oberon, an opera … [Read more...]
Exquisite Beethoven at Flagler from New Orford SQ
To open the 17th season of the Flagler Museum Music Series on Jan. 13 came the New Orford String Quartet of Canada. Made up of two principals of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, violinist Jonathan Crow and cellist Brian Manker, and two lead chairs from the Montreal Symphony, violinist Andrew Wan and violist Eric Nowlin — soon to take the first chair of the Detroit Symphony … [Read more...]
Powerful Prokofiev, Bernstein from Boston Brass, PB Symphony
The quintet known as Boston Brass — two trumpets, horn, trombone and tuba — joined the Palm Beach Symphony on Monday at the Flagler Museum for two memorable pieces dedicated to Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet: one by Prokoviev, the other by Bernstein. Devoid of its own brass section of 12 players, Palm Beach Symphony fielded strings and percussion only. What an irony: In the … [Read more...]
Anderson and Roe make marvelous return to Palm Beach
I’m lucky enough to have heard three sets of piano duos in person in my lifetime: Cyril Smith and Phyllis Sellick in England; Arthur Whittemore and Jack Warren Lowe at a private concert given in honor of Alistair Cooke; and David Bradshaw and Cosmo Buono, who took Europe by storm in the 1980s with a little advice from yours truly. The young duo of Elizabeth Joy Roe and Greg … [Read more...]