Mozart Dances is a great piece of work and when paired with Garrick Ohlsson and the Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra, it’s a terrific night at the theater.
A vigorous performance of Barber's Piano Concerto by Garrick Ohlsson and the BBC Philharmonic under Juanjo Mena, two more American rarities and Pictures at an Exhibition in the latest American Adventures concert.
Both composers whose music was performed in Garrick Ohlsson’s Sydney solo concert were motivated by other artists, namely painters, thus an originally visual experience became audial in the resulting compositions.
One hundred years to the day since the death of Russian composer Alexander Scriabin, American pianist Garrick Ohlsson concluded his two-concert “Skryabin Focus” at London’s Wigmore Hall with a recital of works which spanned the final two decades of Scriabin’s life.
Garrick Ohlsson’s ‘Skryabin Focus’ at Wigmore Hall opened with a concert on the composer's birthday which revealed the complex and myriad aspects of Scriabin's creative impulse and his deep affinity for the piano
Sixty years after his debut with the Swedish Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, 87 year old Herbert Blomstedt conducted the orchestra in the very same programme in a sold out Stockholm Concert Hall.
Thomas Dausgaard conducts with his body. A shift in his posture, without engaging hands or arms, is enough indication for his Swedish Chamber Orchestra to execute subtly graduated dynamic shifts.
You might not think that a conductor nearing his 80th birthday and leading an orchestra from a swivel chair would be as effective as a conductor in full health, but you would be wrong.
The Sydney Symphony concluded their mini Russian series with an all-Tchaikovsky concert featuring one of his lesser-known concertos and a most beloved symphony.The first half was devoted to his Piano Concert no. 2 in G major, less recognisable than his first with its opening crashing chords, but every bit as endearing and lyrical.
The Dallas Symphony Orchestra have had a couple of high-profile guest performers in town for their most recent series of concerts. They presented works by Rachmaninov and Tchaikovsky, a piano concerto and a symphony respectively, in a program that, although disastrously designed, was redeemed by some stellar playing.
The central character in Benjamin Britten’s opera Peter Grimes is a fisherman outcast contending with the wrath of his community. The score for the Four Sea Interludes, extracted from it, weaves often threadbare orchestral parts into a menacing mosaic of moods in the story and conditions which the characters have to battle.
As I settled into my seat in the Kaufman Theater at the 92nd Street Y, the man next to me turned to his wife to say: “This concert is going to be quite the journey.” Snickering to myself, I dismissed the man’s comment as trite. But by the end of the all-Liszt program, I felt bulldozed by Garrick Ohlsson’s performance.
Continuing their season-long Beethoven cycle, the Hallé programmed the Fifth Symphony with a neo-romantic piano concerto by Samuel Barber and Wagner’s Siegfried Idyll, forming an eclectic mix of works to which orchestra and conductor responded very well.
Con una dirección clara y estructurada, Juanjo Mena nos ofreció, al mando de la Orquesta Nacional de España, dos obras monumentales en una tarde que resultó memorable. El Concierto para piano núm. 2 de Brahms con Garrick Ohlsson y Cuadros de una exposición de Mussorgsky.
