David Patrick Stearns is a classical music critic and columnist for the Philadelphia Inquirer.
In the galloping evolution of Wagner Ring cycle stagings, the point has arrived where we count on being shocked as much as delighted. We don't enjoy new Ring productions so much as we enter and undergo them, to keep up with the vanguard and be challenged
The Kronos Quartet is now as much of a musical tour guide as a string quartet.
The standard four instruments of its basic ensemble have been increasingly augmented by prerecorded tape and amplification as the group extends its scope into world music and indie pop, and that's what dominated the group's concert Saturday, part of the Kimmel Center's Fresh Ink series. Musical and geographic borders were crossed into Iceland and Palestine - to name a few.
- Opera's Tito Capobianco, who shaped the artThe ultra-operatic opera director Tito Capobianco is back in Philadelphia - but does anybody recognize him without Joan Sutherland in tow? Or without his spirited wife, Gigi, telling him his work could be better? Or without his eloquent, oft-repeated Freudian slips? ("We'll burn that bridge when we come to it.")
-
Notes don't ring so much as they tend to be wrung from Dvorak's Cello Concerto: It's the grandest piece of its kind and solo cellists can't help loving it to their (and sometimes the audience's) distraction.
-
New-music concerts have been arriving in clumps with conflicting time slots, and maybe no feat of schedule coordination will remedy that.
-
BETHLEHEM, Pa. – "The noise of the world is far away." So went the introduction to British soprano Emma Kirkby, one of the most beloved, important singers in the early-music world, by the Bach Choir of Bethlehem's music director Greg Funfgeld.
- Lyric Fest offers 25 impressive works.The better informed the listeners were at Lyric Fest's concert on Friday, the more incredulous they were likely to be.
-
No pianist invites debate like Jeremy Denk. And in the genteel-to-a-fault classical music world, his playing is a much-needed stimulant to audiences who too often hear "me too" interpretations. But his path isn't easy for anybody.
-
For decades, the Juilliard Quartet represented New York City-style chamber-music-making: streamlined and pared down to essentials, with searing intelligence and no obligation to tradition.
-
Some conservative music circles would have you believe credible concert programs can't be built around Scandinavian or English music. Not true, but even if it were, Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia's Scandinavian Perspectives program represented chances worth taking.
-
The more that Bach's Brandenburg Concertos are rescued from big-orchestra performances, the more singular they seem. Their lack of standardized instrumentation, brilliant use of form, explosions of individual virtuosity and the unlikely alliances among instruments make them orchestral concertos with a never-before-and-never-again quality.
-
Though Leonidas Kavakos is as established as a concerto soloist can be in classical music terrains, he is so often identified as "the Greek violinist" that it might as well be part of his name. Greek classical musicians aren't encountered that frequently, for whatever reason. But at his Friday Kimmel Center recital, Kavakos showed what such a nationality can mean.
MORE STORIES
- Top Jobs
- Top Homes
- Top Cars
|
East Falls $190,000 4000 Gypsy Ln #723 |
Pottstown $275,000 861 Shenkel Rd |
- Books
- Movies
- Page Reprints
- Photo Licensing
- Photos
Buy Inquirer, Daily News & Philly merchandise here including:
Ticket Offers
- News | Sports | Business | What's Happening | Restaurants & Food | Entertainment | Living | Marketplace | Jobs
Site Services:
Classifieds:
- Jobs | Cars | Real Estate | Rentals | Marketplace | Celebrations
Partners: