Cameron Kelsall is a Philadelphia-based classical music and theater critic. He has written for The Philadelphia Inquirer, Opera News, Parterre Box, Broad Street Review, American Theatre, The Asbury Park Press and Phindie, among other publications. He holds an MA from Ohio University and has played the piano since the age of five. You can follow him on Twitter at @CameronPKelsall.
Stepping in at the last minute, conductor Thomas Søndergård offered a program that didn’t fully adhere to the orchestra’s planned exploration of Berlin in the Weimar era.
This musical setting of a poem by Frances Ellen Watkins Harper is the first of four digital commissions set to premiere this spring on the Opera Philadelphia Channel.
Yefim Bronfman brings old-school showmanship to the Third Piano Concerto, while Yannick Nézet-Séguin summons the intimacy of a chamber orchestra in the Coriolan overture.
American soprano Julia Bullock offered an impassioned, impeccably sung interpretation of Britten's Les Illuminations, bookended by elegant Ravel standards.
Yannick Nézet-Séguin leads the first US performance of Vivian Fung's Prayer, which he premiered with the CBC Orchestra over the summer, alongside works by Copland and Wagner.
Soloist Emanuel Ax likened the piano cadenzas in a Mozart concerto to the characters in a Mozart opera, an observation borne out in his detailed, expressive playing.
A world premiere from an exciting young composer and a finely detailed performance of Schubert outshone this program's main event, a visual installation inspired by Beethoven's Seventh Symphony.
