Wednesday, May 13, 2015
Franz Schubert’s Piano Sonata No. 19 in C minor is a sprawling, at times even rambling composition that takes a full half hour to spin out. Not even one of the world’s greatest living pi…
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 05:25PMSaturday, April 18, 2015
Czech pianist Martin Kasik has an important historic connection with Washington despite relatively infrequent visits here. He was a 1999 winner of the Young Concert Artists series, which lau…
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 01:21AMSunday, April 12, 2015
Johann Sebastian Bach wasn’t just fulfilling a professional responsibility when he wrote religious music. A devout Lutheran, Bach meant what he wrote and sought musical texts and texture t…
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 09:52PMThursday, April 9, 2015
Mezzo-soprano Magdalena Wór pretty much creates an unforgettable impression everywhere she performs. Her strikingly rich voice – it’s been called “plush,” “chocolatey” and other…
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 08:16PMWednesday, April 8, 2015
Subtext abounded as the Philadelphia Orchestra arrived at The Kennedy Center Tuesday night. In Washington, rising politicians are “mentioned for president.” In classical music, rising co…
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 11:47AMTuesday, March 24, 2015
You can’t get a much pithier title of a composition than Maurice Ravel’s La Valse. You also can’t get a much more misleading one, either, even if the composer fully meant the irony of …
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 01:32AMFriday, March 20, 2015
If you choose to let it, Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 9 can scare you to death. Or you can let its vast scope and its ethereal beginning and ending that sandwiches raucous and even sarcast…
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 02:35PMMonday, March 16, 2015
One of the most charming moments I’ve seen at a concert in years occurred yesterday at The Music Center at Strathmore. András Schiff, one of the world’s leading pianists, brought a prog…
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 02:10PMSaturday, March 14, 2015
If I told you that the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra may be the most dynamic classical music organization in our region, you’d probably expect me to prove it with a report on a daring progr…
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 02:27AMMonday, March 2, 2015
Not just any conservatory or university school of music can mount a concert featuring Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 5. It may not have familiar tunes, but Mahler’s Fifth is a landmark com…
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 10:31AMTuesday, February 17, 2015
Jason Robert Brown’s Parade is a gut-punch of a musical about the 1913 murder trial of an Atlanta Jewish man, his unjust conviction, his subsequent semi-exoneration to “only” life in p…
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 01:39PMSaturday, February 14, 2015
Picture this: A leading classical performer finds a program from a century ago played by a legend on his instrument, sets the date to recreate the concert for the exact 100th anniversary of …
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 01:46PMTuesday, February 10, 2015
Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 may be based on the poem “Ode to Joy,” but that doesn’t mean the epic symphony holds a monopoly on joyous music. If anything, the pieces accompanying Beeth…
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 05:22PMTuesday, February 3, 2015
World orchestras are at their most interesting when they bring a blend of their native musical language with the European tradition that defines “classical music.” With the help of two s…
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 01:26PMFriday, January 30, 2015
It’s almost a cliché to sit smugly in a 21st century theater or concert hall enjoying a work that some original critic destroyed to his everlasting infamy. And audiences at this week’s…
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 02:09PMSunday, January 4, 2015
For sheer drama in classical music this year, it will be hard to top the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra’s knife’s-edge performance of Ludwig van Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 on Saturday ni…
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 07:50PMWednesday, December 31, 2014
Everybody knows about Walter Cronkite and his impact on television news. Fewer people remember or know about Cronkite’s great rival on NBC during the 1960s, The Huntley-Brinkley Report. Pa…
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 02:23PMTuesday, December 23, 2014
Debut recordings by emerging classical performers face enormous challenges. There’s the issue of finding unique material or a unique voice after so much music has been recorded so many tim…
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 04:05PMMonday, December 15, 2014
The sheer number of mid-rank orchestras in the Washington area guarantees a wide variety of musical approaches to holiday concerts. But the prize for the most boundary-expanding holiday prog…
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 12:43PMTuesday, December 9, 2014
A packed house at the Phillips Collection could have been forgiven if they thought that pianist Einav Yarden had magically switched out Steinway grand pianos between numbers. The Israeli pia…
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 02:42AMMonday, November 24, 2014
How much do you re-interpret music that was written 100 or 200 years ago? This eternal question has an unequivocal answer in the hands of a young ensemble like The Ariel Quartet: Just do it.…
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 03:54PMWhich pieces to put with which on an orchestra program is a subject of endless debate. Does it really matter if concerts have an overall theme? It does if they have as meaningful a connectio…
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 01:17PMFriday, November 21, 2014
Rising local soprano Danielle Talamantes talks about the Met, concert music, and the opera singer’s life Politicians and lobbyists running to catch the Acela at Union Station in D.C. or Pe…
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 05:46PMMonday, November 17, 2014
Challenging or dissonant music can be a slog for both the classical music performer and the listener. If you’re at all fearful to see live concerts because of the reputation of 20th-centur…
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 05:41PMSunday, November 16, 2014
Sometimes there’s reason to doubt why a symphony orchestra needs all those violins. Many of the labor disputes that are running around the country’s major professional ensembles, includi…
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 10:28AMMonday, November 10, 2014
Standing alone on the stage of the Eastern Shore home of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, pianist Thomas Pandolfi joked that no orchestra was magically going to materialize before the audie…
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 09:26PMNo type of ensemble works harder these days than string quartets to make classical music “cool” and relevant. From hip, funky websites to innovative performances in unusual spaces, strin…
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 08:24PMThursday, November 6, 2014
You have a right to be skeptical when a symphony orchestra claims to have a unique sound. Down through the centuries most composers of symphonic music have given specific directions about wh…
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 03:37PMSunday, November 2, 2014
Why do people willingly get dressed up and head out in the dark to hear funeral music when no one has died? Three words: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. There have been dozens or hundreds of other …
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 03:01PMThursday, October 30, 2014
If Thomas Pandolfi hasn’t done all that a pianist can do to present an exceptionally broad range of music to an engaged public, he certainly seems determined to. The D.C. native, one of th…
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 03:47AM 
