Music
1944 results
Page 104
Philadelphia Orchestra's season finale (1st review)
Sawallisch in heaven, and merriment on Earth
Given its financial troubles, the Philadelphia Orchestra's morale is a legitimate concern for music lovers everywhere. To judge from Friday's evidence, the future looks sanguine.
Articles
3 minute read
Rattle and Hannigan with the Philadelphia Orchestra (3rd review)
Kicking the Fantasia habit
The big news about last weekend's Philadelphia Orchestra concerts wasn't the shock music that occupied the first three-quarters of the program. It was Simon Rattle's rebuttal to the Disneyfied Beethoven Sixth that has prevailed in the public mind since Fantasia in 1940.
Articles
4 minute read
Dolce Suono's Debussy farewell
Debussy and his putative successors
Dolce Suono ended its season-long tribute to Debussy by combining a Debussy retrospective with a new music event.
Articles
4 minute read
Philadelphia Orchestra plays Ligeti (2nd review)
Is Ligeti the Orchestra's savior?
When was the last time you heard a Philadelphia Orchestra concert that included the crumpling of newspaper as a part of the score? Not to mention the audience laughing out loud throughout the performance?
Articles
3 minute read
Verdi's "Macbeth' in Wilmington
Verdi's not so hidden agenda
With Macbeth, Verdi wasn't merely adapting a great work of literature; he was nudging history forward in real time.
Articles
4 minute read
Rattle and Hannigan with the Philadelphia Orchestra (1st review)
From the sublime to the macabre
Simon Rattle, conducting the Philadelphia Orchestra's penultimate concert of the season, reminded us that it's easier for a visiting conductor to choose the road less traveled than for the helmsman of the Orchestra, for whom the risk of empty seats is not to be taken lightly.
Articles
7 minute read
Tempesta di Mare: Four Baroque entertainments
Music, entertainment— or both?
Baroque music languished in the 19th Century because it seemed tame next to Beethoven or Brahms. It was merely entertainment— albeit for musically sophisticated audiences, as Tempesta di Mare reminded us.
Articles
2 minute read
Yannick conducts Mahler and Hilary Hahn (2nd review)
Mahler's message: Who needs transitions?
Yannick Nézet-Séguin probed beyond the obvious in Mahler's First Symphony, but I wish he'd pushed Hilary Hahn to play a less predictable work.
Articles
4 minute read
Rattle and Lang Lang with the Orchestra
Lang Lang grows up
A varied program by Sir Simon Rattle included a most peculiar linking of the Sibelius Sixth and Seventh Symphonies. The histrionic Lang Lang, conversely, is beginning to appreciate that the music is more important than the musician.
Articles
5 minute read
Musicians from Marlboro at the Perelman
A feast before the famine
In a concert of highly contrasting works by Stravinsky, Britten and the young Johannes Brahms, the young Musicians from Marlboro played as if they'd been together for years. A happy audience dispersed to face, alas, Philadelphia's annual summer chamber music drought.
Articles
6 minute read