Conductor Michael Tilson Thomas’s creation, the New World Symphony, founded 29 years ago, is based in Miami Beach. It replaced Russia’s St. Petersburg Phiharmonic on Feb. 20 in the Kravis Center’s Regional Arts series. Four concertos were programmed with soloists from the New World’s academy, which prepares players for leadership roles in major American orchestras. I was … [Read more...]
Semi-staged ‘Bohème’ comes off well at Boca Fest
Giacomo Puccini’s La Bohème is one of the most popular operas in the world for a number of reasons, perhaps most importantly its abundance of mellifluous and beautiful Italian late-Romantic melody. But Puccini also was a man of the theater, and he knew how to craft a compelling theatrical package (after all, La Bohème has been staged regularly and frequently since February … [Read more...]
Violinist Waarts plays with beauty and taste at Rosarian recital
By Dennis D. Rooney Stephen Waarts is a recent graduate of the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, where he studied with Aaron Rosand, following earlier studies with Itzhak Perlman. He is currently at the Kronberg Academy studying with Mihaela Martin. He has been a prizewinner at several competitions; e.g. Queen Elisabeth, Montreal and Menuhin, among others. He … [Read more...]
Branford Marsalis, Symphonia get Boca fest off to rousing start
By Dale King The Festival of the Arts Boca opened the musical portion of its 2017 program Friday night on a high note – actually, a number of high, low, harmonious and heraldic tones. The Symphonia Boca Raton, under the able leadership of conductor Constantine Kitsopoulos, paid tribute to maestro John Williams with a full-on production of tunes from the Harry Potter films … [Read more...]
More mature Lang Lang does well by Liszt, less so by Granados
By Dennis D. Rooney Following his U.S. debut with the Chicago Symphony in 2000, Lang Lang came in for a hail of critical brickbats, some of which I lobbed myself, on account of his flashy shallowness, crassness and mannerisms. I once heard him in a Brahms First Concerto in Carnegie Hall with conductor James Levine, each of whom eagerly sought to be more mannered than the … [Read more...]
Symphonia’s French program a little over the top
It’s no secret that music education in the public schools is not what it was decades ago, when there was a middlebrow consensus that it was a good thing for an educated person to know the rudiments of music and major figures of the Western classical tradition. In our time, there are few concerts anymore that are not also educational, in which presenters and performers make … [Read more...]
Nielsen symphony makes best impression at South Florida Symphony
By Dennis D. Rooney It was 85 degrees on Feb. 19 when I arrived at the FAU campus and entered the Student Union that houses Kaye Auditorium, a detail meaningful only on account of the first work on the ambitious program of the South Florida Symphony that I was there to hear: A suite from Rimsky-Korsakov’s opera Snegourochka (The Snow Maiden). An odd juxtaposition in South … [Read more...]
Chen’s brilliant Mendelssohn recalls Menuhin
One hundred and five musicians make up the Bamberg Symphony Orchestra, or The Bavarian State Philharmonic. Calling itself a touring orchestra, it covers a wide swath of South Germany with concerts, and on Feb. 12 it stopped in at the Kravis Center in West Palm Beach. The Bamberg did not downsize for the opening Don Giovanni overture of Mozart and consequently instead of … [Read more...]
Berlioz’s epic take on ‘Romeo’ set for weekend at Lynn
Sitting at a table in a new Boca Raton diner, Guillermo Figueroa opens his cloth-bound, dark blue Bärenreiter edition of the music and points to a page, marked with various colored pencils. The score he’s pointing to, explaining the perils of this or that passage, is the playbook for this weekend, when the violinist and conductor will lead the Lynn Philharmonia, the Master … [Read more...]
Seraphic Fire returns with mastery to Bach’s six motets
Back in the early days of Seraphic Fire, the Miami concert choir took on the challenge of all six motets by J.S. Bach. The performance I saw 12 years ago was very fine, but effortful: The difficulty of the music took its toll on the singers, and it was noticeable by the end of the concert. The group has done one or another of the motets individually since then, but this … [Read more...]