This was less a concert of two halves than one of two tenors: able to dramatise the music of Puccini and Verdi far more effectively than his earlier Mozart, Flórez came alive.
With an uncertainly looming, the San Diego community rallied behind its beloved opera company to rescue, resuscitate and revamp while celebrating 50 years of commitment to the arts.
Sunday night is fiesta night, or so it seemed at the Barbican, where the London Symphony took us on a whirlwind tour from Seville in Andalucia to the Asturias.
Pinchas Zukerman shares a category in my mind with Stevie Wonder. I recall seeing their names on so many LPs in my youth that they had been filed as being of a certain vintage. Investigation revealed both protégés to be much nearer my own age than I could have believed. In this performance of Bruch’s 1886 Violin Concerto no.
As I made my way to the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, a mass of photographers and guests dressed in their evening best waited eagerly by the front doors. Alas, this reception was not for me, but rather for the Prince and Princess of Belgium, the evening’s guests and the very reason behind the concert.
The Shang Emperor of China had inscribed on his washbasin the admonition “Make it New”.Toronto Symphony Orchestra’s 2012/13 season made it new by including in its first-night program a work by a living composer, Harmonielehre by the American John Adams.
At first sight the choice of programme and musicians for this pre-Beethoven Festival concert was a bit odd. Music by Verdi, Richard Strauss and Dvořák played by La Scala's Filarmonica, under the direction of Oxford-born Daniel Harding.The title of the evening – "La Scala on the Rhine" – gave a hint. The Milanese orchestra was on a short tour – to Bonn on Saturday and Dresden on Sunday.
Widely acclaimed professional community orchestra New Philharmonic opened its 34th Season with an outstanding, family-friendly concert featuring both overture classics and everyone's favorite musical fairy tale, Prokofiev's "Peter and the Wolf.
Noseda is a persuasive champion of Dallapiccola's orchestral works. Two CDs [with the BBC PO] on Chandos, and talk of a third.So no surprise to find the early Partita programmed in this prom. It's a work of many colours, beginning with the dark low notes and steady rhythms of a solemn processional, which moves slowly into the sunny upland, guided by Yuri Torchinsky's limpid violin.
La Philharmonie acceuille l'Orchestre National de Lille et sa fidèle baguette Jean-Claude Casadesus et Boris Berezovsky, dans un programme autour de Verdi, Chopin, Dutilleux et Ravel.
La structure orchestrale apparut ici plus que jamais à l’œil nu, qui ne se concentrait plus sur l’ensemble mais sur les successives et concordantes lignes de fuites esquissées par les différents tenants de l’orchestre, pour mieux constater la rigueur et la valeur de l’ensemble.
Elīna Garanča a incarné une Leonora somptueuse, dommage que les morceaux choisis ne furent pas tous du niveau de ce Verdi là ! Demeurent la beauté de la voix et l'intelligence de l'interprétation de la cantatrice.
