By Robert Croan It’s a daunting and presumptuous task for any composer to complete Mozart’s magnificent Requiem, but that’s just what Gregory Spears has done, on commission from the equally audacious Seraphic Fire vocal ensemble, which performed the amalgamated version in several South Florida venues Feb. 12-14. It was a repeat for Seraphic Fire, who premiered the Requiem … [Read more...]
Mainly Mozart Festival launches 22nd season splendidly
It is a maxim of South Florida life that when it begins to rain, all residents are commanded to forget everything they ever knew about driving in it. And so Saturday afternoon as I made my way south to Gusman Hall at the University of Miami, a rainstorm in Broward County caused me to spend an hour making my way down a bumper-to-bumper interstate as hapless auto pilots around … [Read more...]
Brilliant Mozart, engaging Greenwood from Australian Chamber Orchestra
By Robert Croan Water, a new classical work by Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood, is the centerpiece of the Australian Chamber Orchestra’s current tour program, which reached Broward Center’s Au-Rene Theater on Wednesday for a rewarding, if sparsely attended, event. This versatile rock group guitarist has written classical music before this, as well as film scores and a … [Read more...]
Mainly Mozart’s chamber music-dance finale enchants large audience
The directors of Miami’s Mainly Mozart Festival made much June 22 of the crowd they’d lured to the Knight Concert Hall for their chamber music summer season closer, subtitled My Homeland. And indeed the mood in the big hall at the Arsht Center downtown was festive and celebratory, and they were rewarded with a concert that took the strong and innovative format from last year’s … [Read more...]
Amernet’s Dvořák, Mozart shine at Mainly Mozart
Although technically it takes place in the very last days of spring, the Mainly Mozart Festival shares with the best summer festivals the idea that a sweltering month is just as good as a frigid one for pursuing music of the utmost seriousness and high caliber. This past Sunday, at the Danielson Gallery on the grounds of the Biltmore Hotel in Coral Gables, the veteran Miami … [Read more...]
Manasse, Schwarz bring standout Mozart to Symphonia
It’s always a good day at a concert when you can hear something new in a pillar of the repertoire like Mozart. And so it was Sunday afternoon at the Roberts Theater for the season-closing concert by The Symphonia Boca Raton (though they’ll appear later this month as the orchestra for the Master Chorale of South Florida), which brought the eminent conductor Gerard Schwarz to … [Read more...]
Stepping in for Mozart, composer forges a fresh connection with the past
The first thing Gregory Spears wants you to know is that he’s not trying to complete the Mozart Requiem. Even though he has. The American composer sees his three new movements for the iconic work, which have their world premiere Friday, less as a solution to a Mozart puzzle then as a continuation of a dialogue with Mozart and with the continuum of Western sacred music. But … [Read more...]
Mozart quintet makes graceful memorial at chamber fest
A sweetly radiant reading of the Mozart Clarinet Quintet added a poignant touch to the closing half of the third concert in the Palm Beach Chamber Music Festival’s current summer season. The quintet (in A, K. 581) was dedicated to the memory of the Rev. Perry Fuller, father of festival co-founder Karen Dixon. Fuller died earlier this month of liver cancer, and Dixon has bowed … [Read more...]