As one of the Palm Beach Chamber Music Festival’s performers rightly said in her remarks from the stage, the name of Arnold Schoenberg is “box office poison” for a lot of people, but that really shouldn’t apply to his early string sextet, Verklärte Nacht. This important, beautiful work was one of the major events of the programs in the first weekend of concerts presented in … [Read more...]
Chamber festival’s closer features effective Dahl and premiere
In the years just before and after World War II, Southern California became an oasis of sun, refuge and economic opportunity for several of the era’s most important European composers, Igor Stravinsky and Arnold Schonberg chief among them. Ingolf Dahl was another one of those composers, and in the fourth and final program of the Palm Beach Chamber Music Festival, his lively … [Read more...]
French-accented chamber program brings vigor to Ibert trio
At its most important, the Palm Beach Chamber Music Festival is about discovery, in hearing something worthwhile that its musicians have brought out of the libraries or fresh off the stocks for its loyal audience of nearly two decades. In the first installment Friday of its third week of concerts, the musicians returned in a largely French program to the work of Jacques Ibert, … [Read more...]
Composer Zwilich’s Septet to get local premiere Sunday
In the life of every creative artist, there must one day come The Leap. It's that moment of mental alchemy when all the bits and pieces the artist is trying to fit together suddenly come together, often while the creator is sleeping, paying bills or doing something else entirely other than concentrate on the work. Ellen Taaffe Zwilich demonstrates by singing, in a sweet, … [Read more...]
New chamber music group shows heart, nerve in Boca debut
Starting a chamber music collective isn’t necessarily the easiest thing in the world to do, but in their debut concert Saturday at the Steinway Gallery in Boca Raton, the members of Vivre Musicale showed they have a good sense of what it will take for long-term success. Founded by tenor Jorge Toro and clarinetist Berginald Rash, this five-member iteration of the group offered … [Read more...]
Schmitt suite, Septet violinist stand out at chamber fest
Florent Schmitt (1870-1958). A standout instrumental performance and two intriguing rediscoveries took pride of place Friday night as the Palm Beach Chamber Music Festival opened its second series of concerts. The finest of the two rediscoveries, the Suite en Rocaille, Op. 84, of French composer Florent Schmitt, reanimated a beautiful and unjustly forgotten work for an … [Read more...]
Chamber fest opens with engaging voyage of discovery
WEST PALM BEACH -- The Palm Beach Chamber Music Festival, which has been sweetening the sweltering summers hereabouts with music since 1992, is notable above all for two things: Its showcasing of the individual instrumentalists whom local audiences normally hear only as part of the area's various symphonic and operatic ensembles, and second, its attitude of discovery. Year … [Read more...]