Articles by Chanda VanderHart

After a 34 year hiatus from the Konzerthaus stage, the Toronto Symphony gave a knockout performance that had everything in spades

In 2010, the première of Reimann's Medea was welcomed with enthusiasm, leading the Staatsoper to relaunch it this season for a second run.

An Italian composer, Lonati composed, taught and was by all accounts brilliant on stage, where he made comedic singing and playing violin his unique calling card. 

To those unfamiliar with Victor Ullman’s Der Kaiser von Atlantis, oder Die Tod-Verweigerung, the story of the work’s inception is almost as gripping as the libretto itself. 

Bronfman attacked the concerto with alacrity and a capacity to draw sound from the piano which was breathtaking.

The Staatsoper's new Falstaff is a production that is attractive not only visually, but also in terms of the varied musical color.

In the first and last sections dance themes and virtuosic solo work bustle about, playing with percussive elements and darting  from thought to thought like a child whirling elatedly through a festival

One repressed, one who struggled, and one who got away: Jurowski, Andsnes and the Russian State Symphony delight with varied programme of Russian composers at the Konzerthaus.

Anno Schreier's successful new opera Hamlet is the first of a series of three Shakespeare-inspired offerings from Theater an der Wien this season. 

Are you visiting the land of waltzes and Glühwein? Unwind to reviewer Chanda VanderHart's cultural picks.

Steiner’s reading of the mildly disturbing but generally obsequiously presented story is decidedly edgy, especially considering the opera is staged inside the city church.

Jurowski is a wonderful conductor to watch. He carves shapes through his bearing and gesture cleanly, and his indications are crisp and defined - yet he retains poetic fluidity through his hands at all times.

In the ballad, a lovelorn maiden is finally reunited with her dead lover, who immediately tries to trick her into a midnight wedding at a graveyard after dragging her through muddy swamps filled with ghosts and howling animals. 

I can certainly attest that this was the closest I have ever felt to watching a 3-D thriller in Dolby Surround Sound whilst at the opera.

A very creative reading – both scenically and musically – of Engelbert Humperdinck’s fairy tale opera Hänsel und Gretel for Theater an der Wien's final production of the season at the Kammeroper.

The Ravel G-Major piano concerto is in fact a mind-bogglingly virtuosic pianistic endeavor requiring fingers of steel and trills of satin.

As part of the Konzerthaus’ Mittagsmusik (Midday Music) series, young soprano Anna Lucia Richter teamed up this week with one of the greatest living song accompanists, Gerold Huber, to present an extraordinarily varied matinée of songs in the Schubertsaal.

In a romantic, colourful jaunt which led from The Isle of the Dead to The Great Gate of Kiev, Gustavo Dudamel and the Vienna Philharmonic presented an easy to love programme focussed on late-romantic masters who found musical inspiration in artistic masterpieces.

Fingers and bows fluttered through dance-like figures and virtuosic passages packed with trills with astonishing clarity and brilliance.

The applause and screams at the premiere were raucously frenetic – and while the hysteria seemed a bit exaggerated, an energetically positive reception was completely justified.