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"Fireworks at Disneyworld," photo by Thomas Hawk, via Flickr/Creative Commons.

The Curtis Symphony Orchestra at the Kimmel Center (2nd review)

The grand passions of Penderecki and Tchaikovsky

The Curtis Symphony Orchestra ends its season with distinguished graduates and current students collaborating on a program that highlights intensely emotional music, old and new.

Tom Purdom

Apr 19, 2014 Articles 3 minute read

Fred Ho: One of America's unique artistic voices. (Photo © Michael A. Schwartz)

Fred Ho: Another worker's remembrance

Fred Ho did not win his battle. His huge legacy, however, endures.

Joseph Franklin

Apr 18, 2014 Articles 5 minute read

Penderecki's first priority was 'liberating sound.'

Curtis Symphony at the Kimmel (1st review)

What did Tchaikovsky mean? (and other unanswerable questions)

Can we not hear the Pathétique simply as a symphonic composition in four movements without extra-musical connotations of any kind? Does it matter whether Tchaikovsky had an agenda in mind? Would it matter if he had spelled it out?

Robert Zaller

Apr 18, 2014 Articles 4 minute read

The Takács Quartet: This international ensemble is among the best in the business. (Photo © Ellen Appel)

The Takács Quartet performs at Perelman

Dwelling with the angels

The Takács Quartet, a frequent guest of the Chamber Music Society, performed the rarely-heard Shostakovich Second Quartet and the Beethoven Fifteenth, with two brief works by Anton Webern that proved a connection as well as a contrast.

Robert Zaller

Apr 14, 2014 Articles 4 minute read

(Moore, Frank, ed. "Portrait Gallery of the War." New York: D. Van Nostrand, 1865. Courtesy of the General Libraries, the University of Texas at Austin. )

Listening to Lincoln: Dave Burrell's Civil War Concerts

An ear-opening musical evocation of a Civil War massacre

The feeling at this world premiere was akin to attending a musical salon in Paris and hearing a breakthrough work performed for a small elite audience: The room was small but filled with eager listeners. That is how great work often begins in the arts and sciences.

Victor L. Schermer

Apr 14, 2014 Articles 6 minute read

Visiting fairyland. ("Study for 'The Quarrel of Oberon and Titania,'" c. 1849, Joseph Noel Paton.)

The Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia plays Schumann, Britten, and Haydn

The glories of the useless

Ignat Solzhenitsyn leads the Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia through three examples of the useless, irrelevant, and un-metaphorical art extolled in two recent BSR essays.

Tom Purdom

Apr 10, 2014 Articles 3 minute read

Gertrude Stein, photographed by Carl Van Vechten, 1935

Lyric Fest presents 'Dear March - Come In!'

A medley of female voices, genus Americana

Lyric Fest presents a musical variety show based on the highly individual voices of American women poets.

Tom Purdom

Apr 03, 2014 Articles 3 minute read

The double bar

When is an ending not an ending?

Kile Smith

Apr 01, 2014 Articles 4 minute read

Philadelphia was one of four cities (along with Miami, Los Angeles, and San Francisco) that commissioned Tal Rosner to create the visuals that accompanied Four Sea Interludes.

The Philadelphia Orchestra plays Benjamin Britten

Britten and friends

Benjamin Britten hovers around the list of the greatest 20th-century composers without quite making the cut, but the somewhat belated centennial anniversary concert conducted by Donald Runnicles made a persuasive case for him.

Robert Zaller

Mar 31, 2014 Articles 3 minute read