By Robert Croan Among the entire chamber music repertoire, the Andante movement from Franz Schubert’s String Quartet No. 14 in D minor, known as the “Death and the Maiden” Quartet, is one of the most sublime moments. A highlight of Western classical music in its emotional impact and veracity, this series of variations on an earlier Schubert song that gives the work its … [Read more...]
The blues haunts Zwilich’s fine new cello concerto
By Dennis D. Rooney Two world premieres opened the third program of the South Florida Symphony Orchestra’s 22nd season. Zuill Bailey was soloist in the Concerto for Cello and Orchestra by Ellen Taafe Zwilich, one of two premieres on the program, both dedicated to founding Music Director Sebrina María Alfonso. Zwilich (b. 1939), a native Floridian, is a distinguished … [Read more...]
Superb singing, direction make South Florida SO’s ‘Porgy’ a triumph
By Robert Croan It’s an admirable and ambitious undertaking for a regional orchestra to put on a staged production of Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess. It’s also expensive ($350,000 budget in this case) and risky. South Florida Symphony took those risks, went all the way and offered Porgy and Bess as its featured production this season, with performances – led by music director … [Read more...]
Soloist Xu’s Beethoven stands out at SoFla Symphony opener
By Dennis D. Rooney Beethoven’s Violin Concerto, centerpiece of the opening program in the South Florida Symphony’s 21st season, was by far the most interesting performance of the evening Saturday at the Spanish River Worship Center in Boca Raton. The soloist, 28-year-old Angelo Xiang Wu, a native of Inner Mongolia, was educated at the Shanghai Conservatory and won a … [Read more...]
Pianist sparkles at South Florida Symphony, ‘Fantastique’ doesn’t
With several chamber orchestras filling the symphonic gap in this part of the state, the South Florida Symphony offers a full-size group, which gives it the opportunity to present the largest works of the repertoire. And so it was on Sunday night at the Spanish River Worship Center in Boca Raton that a huge orchestra sat on the stage for a performance of the Symphonie … [Read more...]
Arts Preview 2017-18: The season in classical music
It’s always a source of wonder to look over the classical season each year. Few other parts of the country have such an abundant menu of stellar performers, risk-taking groups and leading international orchestras, all of them stuffed into a relatively short season. And if you don’t have three or four options you’re trying to choose from every weekend in January, February and … [Read more...]
Pianist Biegel clowns, shines in P.D.Q. Bach at SoFla Symphony
The American composer Peter Schickele has had a remarkable career in which he has managed to have his own compositional triumphs and an entirely separate career in musical parody, in which his compositional triumphs have been much more dubious. But that’s the sort of thing you’d expect me to say when we’re talking about Schickele’s creation, P.D.Q. Bach, whose scattered … [Read more...]
Nielsen symphony makes best impression at South Florida Symphony
By Dennis D. Rooney It was 85 degrees on Feb. 19 when I arrived at the FAU campus and entered the Student Union that houses Kaye Auditorium, a detail meaningful only on account of the first work on the ambitious program of the South Florida Symphony that I was there to hear: A suite from Rimsky-Korsakov’s opera Snegourochka (The Snow Maiden). An odd juxtaposition in South … [Read more...]
Violinist Lark shines in Korngold at SoFla Symphony
The South Florida Symphony is a musical organization that likes to think big. In the first classical concerts of the season (a pops concert took place in November), the Fort Lauderdale-based ensemble took on an echt-Romantic violin concerto, a world premiere score, and one of Richard Strauss’s enormous tone poems. Credit the group and its maestra, Sebrina María Alfonso, with … [Read more...]