A mostly Russian program featuring a stellar pianist and an important symphony made a strong impression on what appeared to be a growing and enthusiastic audience in Delray Beach last week for the South Florida Symphony. The Feb. 3 concert at the Delray Beach Center for the Arts’ Crest Theatre featured American pianist Christopher Taylor in the Third Piano Concerto (in C, Op. … [Read more...]
Right-wing moralizing warps ‘Gimme Shelter’
Ron Krauss’ Gimme Shelter is a social-problem film, the sort of earnest exploration of a tendentious topic that Stanley Kramer might have made — if Stanley Kramer were a 21st-century Tea Partier. Or maybe a 20th century John Bircher, because none of the film’s targets feel especially new. Either way, the drama’s dog-whistle conservatism is so pernicious that it eats away at … [Read more...]
Hahn, New World triumphant in Mozart, Prokofiev
Here’s something we can agree on for 2014: It might be time to stop worrying so much about the future of classical music, and of the symphony orchestra. Two superlative reasons why that is came together Saturday night when the great American violinist Hilary Hahn appeared for the first time with the New World Symphony, in the Knight Concert Hall at Miami’s Adrienne Arsht … [Read more...]
Flutist Anderson to perform iconic ‘Thick as a Brick’ at Kravis
Add to the list of Woodstock-era rockers who are still performing live in concert at Social Security age the name of Ian Anderson, who brought the flute to rock music through his high-concept former band, Jethro Tull. Forty years ago, he had an international hit with the progressive rock album Thick as a Brick, which he wrote with lyrics credited to a fictional 10-year-old … [Read more...]
Atlanta Symphony violinists do right by Prokofiev
Sergei Prokofiev didn’t write a great deal of chamber music, but his two string quartets, two violin sonatas (one originally for flute) and piano quintet are marvelous works, and worthy of the repertory status that only the violin sonatas currently appear to have. The same goes for the Sonata for Two Violins (in C, Op. 56), written in 1932 for a French chamber music series in … [Read more...]