The classical season looks mostly normal this year, with COVID protocols in place and venues opening back up. There are a host of major artists and groups coming to the county this year, from established veterans to exciting new talents. Although some usual season players are missing as of this writing (the Flagler Museum has not yet said whether its chamber music series … [Read more...]
PB Symphony’s opening Beethoven concert a mixed bag
By Dennis D. Rooney The year 2020 is the 250th anniversary of the birth of Ludwig van Beethoven, so we’re going to hear lots of his music this season. The Palm Beach Symphony and Music Director Gerard Schwarz chose to inaugurate its 46th season with an all-Beethoven program Dec. 8 at the Kravis Center. Horacio Gutiérrez was soloist in the opening Piano Concerto No. 4 … [Read more...]
Schwarz named director of Palm Beach Symphony; Spady Museum gets NEA grant
PALM BEACH — Gerard Schwarz, who led the Seattle Symphony to national prominence in his 26 years with the orchestra, has been named artistic and music director of the Palm Beach Symphony. Schwarz takes over from Spanish conductor Ramón Tebar, who has led the orchestra since 2009. This is the second South Florida appointment for Schwarz, who earlier this year was appointed to … [Read more...]
A fine night of clarinet quintets at CityPlace
The two canonical clarinet quintets, and there are really only two, attain that status at least in part because listening to them, one wonders why such a beautiful combination isn’t regularly attempted by composers everywhere. For now, no one’s done it better than Mozart in 1789 and Brahms in 1891, and it was their respective clarinet quintets that occupied a program of the … [Read more...]
Violinist’s excellence obscured by poky tempi at Palm Beach Symphony
The arrival on the musical scene of a fresh young soloist talent is always worth noting, and in the case of the South Korean violinist SooBeen Lee, she’s been getting a lot of major attention. Lee, who turned 18 in September, is currently studying with the great pedagogue Miriam Fried at the New England Conservatory, the Boston school where she won the concerto competition … [Read more...]
Palm Beach Symphony launches season with rich menu of “pops”
By Dennis D. Rooney The term “Pops Concert” suggests to some a program in some way inferior to the program of a symphony orchestra, which unfortunately sometimes has been true when an orchestra is asked to play arrangements of music not originally for orchestra. But the term also particularly applies to orchestral music of a lighter character that is not often programmed … [Read more...]
Palm Beach Symphony struggles in season finale
By Dennis D. Rooney The Palm Beach Symphony closed its 44th season April 17 at the Kravis Center with a most ambitious program. Too ambitious, as it happened. American cellist Zuill Bailey was the soloist in Edward Elgar’s 1919 Cello Concerto (in E minor, Op. 85), taking the place of the previously announced Romanian cellist, Răzvan Suma. Playing the “ex-Schneider” … [Read more...]
PB Symphony inaugurates chamber music series with program of overlooked American master
Even if you’re a devotee of classical music, you might never have heard of William Grant Still. It was different in Still’s own day. Music historians have long called Still (1895-1978) the dean of African-American classical composers, and that came out of his prominence, which began in the 1920s when he made his initial name as an arranger for leading bands in the new … [Read more...]
Palm Beach Symphony’s opener underwhelms
By Kevin Wilt The Palm Beach Symphony orchestra squeezed on to the stage at the Society of the Four Arts for their “Seven Wonders” concert Dec. 6, along with guest conductor Albert-George Schram. The show opened with Gioachino Rossini’s overture to his opera La scala di seta (The Silken Ladder). There were a few intonation issues early on, especially between the winds and … [Read more...]
Palm Beach Symphony’s Russian finale shows Tebar’s mastery
Ramón Tebar conducts his orchestra like a man fine-tuning a grand piano. Responding to his every command, even the slightest hand gesture, the refined playing of the Palm Beach Symphony in its last concert of the season Thursday night at the Kravis Center was superb. Tebar is proving to be more than a fine orchestra builder. His conducting and orchestral control is … [Read more...]