It’s one thing to come and do a concert during the South Florida season, but it rises to another level when you’re able to bring your friends. This month at the Society of the Four Arts in Palm Beach, the proprietors of New York’s Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, the husband-and-wife team of cellist David Finckel and pianist Wu Han, will settle in for a week of … [Read more...]
New York Polyphony’s excellence muted by dry acoustic
If the Christmas season revives a rich body of American song for the holiday, it also is a door into the vast, centuries-old library of sacred choral music that amplifies the observance. Following by three days a concert by Miami’s Seraphic Fire that also explored ancient classical repertoire, the vocal quartet New York Polyphony made its first stop in Florida in seven years … [Read more...]
Season Preview 2018-19: Classical music
It shouldn’t be surprising at this point, given South Florida’s deep connection to the Northeast, and New York City in particular, but this area can boast a season of classical music as rich as most other cities in the country, particularly in the first months of the year, when everyone likes to come to Florida to escape winter. Here’s a monthly look at what you can look … [Read more...]
Season Preview 2018-19: Palm Beach art
By Sandra Schulman After an unusually hot summer, the cooler temps and invigorating new art season are more than welcome. The art offerings are heavy on photographs and Florida history with glamour shots in the spotlight at the Flagler Museum, and Sunshine State history at the Boca Raton Museum. Former President Bush makes a Florida art show bow with portraits of the … [Read more...]
Quatuor Ébène’s jazz not as strong as its Haydn, Fauré
By Dennis D. Rooney Appearing March 11 under the auspices of the Society of the Four Arts , the four French players known as Quatuor Ébène presented a bifurcated program. The first half was wholly traditional: Franz Joseph Haydn’s Quartet in D minor (Op. 72, No. 2) and Gabriel Fauré’s late Quartet (in E minor, Op. 121). The second half was devoted to eight jazz pieces. … [Read more...]
Paper dresses at Four Arts, but not like you’ve seen before
By Georgio Valentino The Esther B. O’Keeffe Gallery of Palm Beach’s Society of the Four Arts is currently showing some of history’s most sumptuous costumes, from the gilded luxury of the Medici court to the embroidered splendor of the Silk Road to the whimsy of the Belle Epoque ballet stage. Except these aren’t dusty old originals. Fashioning Art from Paper is a … [Read more...]
St. Lawrence SQ’s Haydn, Beethoven persuasive at Four Arts
It’s not a bad idea to try to educate an audience about the music they’re going to listen to, and certainly in this year of the Leonard Bernstein centennial, that’s something many classical music groups are surely considering. An audience at the Four Arts on Sunday got a substantial helping of good-for-you information about Franz Joseph Haydn from the first violinist of the … [Read more...]
Boston string orchestra A Far Cry joins with pianist Dinnerstein for new Glass concerto
A concert Feb. 14 at the Society for the Four Arts in Palm Beach has multiple drawing points: A visit by one of the top young classical ensembles in the country, one of the nation’s finest pianists, and a new concerto by its most prominent modernist composer. Philip Glass’s Piano Concerto No. 3, which is composed for piano and string orchestra, got its world premiere in … [Read more...]
Sister pianists dazzle in Four Arts concert
The piano has as one of its many benefits the ability to be orchestral, if not in color, at least in contrapuntal density and mass. Small wonder that in the days before recordings made actual orchestral performances available to people far from the concert hall, enthusiasts heard the symphonic works of their day by playing them at home in four-hand arrangements at one piano. … [Read more...]
Calidore Quartet outstanding in Shostakovich, Beethoven at Four Arts
By Dennis D. Rooney Founded in 2010 at Los Angeles’s Colburn Conservatory of Music, the Calidore String Quartet’s name is a pastiche of “Cali(fornia)” and “doré,” French for “golden.” Now based in New York, it has garnered a brace of prestigious awards and recently completed a residency with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center II. The group’s concert Sunday at … [Read more...]