I think it’s safe to say the Kravis Regional Arts Concert Series, now celebrating its 40th year, has more visiting orchestras than any other venue in the world. There are seven this season, starting with the Russian State Symphony Orchestra on Wednesday evening with two Russian pieces and a Mozart piano concerto. This 90-piece ensemble opened with Glinka’s overture to his … [Read more...]
SoFla SO, soloist do right by Russian masters
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...]
The View From Home 26: New releases and notable screenings, May 24-June 10
Andrei Tarkovsky, the Russian New Wave’s most glorified director of rarefied museum pieces, represents, more than any director of his generation, the division between true cinephiles and casual “movie buffs.” The latter enjoys Fellini, some Godard and even an Antonioni picture or two, but Tarkovsky’s art-house pedigree is so pure – so dismissive of the standard that films be … [Read more...]
Jazz singer Milman favors craft over image
The recording industry has always been more image- than music-driven, a fact that's been made worse by TV since the 1950s and MTV since the 1980s. The latest example is American Idol, on which youthful toothpaste models-turned-singers recruit text-messaged votes from teenaged fans to springboard toward celebrity. Vocalist Sophie Milman wants nothing to do with the … [Read more...]
Weekend arts picks: Feb. 19-21
Film: Fans of great acting have a new must-see movie opening this weekend in The Last Station, a diary-based fictional account of the final days of Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy. He is played with crafty charm by Christopher Plummer, but the film really revolves around his wife Sofya (Helen Mirren, giving the single best female performance of 2009). Tolstoy is a communist, in … [Read more...]
Prima Trio revelatory in Flagler concert
PALM BEACH --- Chamber music has its origins in pieces written for intimate spaces, and that can mean a sedate concertgoing experience even when the art form leaves home to mingle with a larger crowd. But take that same kind of music and give it to three young, supremely talented, enthusiastic people, and you have a recital that's anything but a sonic substitute for Ambien. … [Read more...]