Arnold Schoenberg, Anton Webern, and Alban Berg – great composers but only occasional visitors to Kodak Hall at best — finally made it on the same Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra program last night.
Classical Review
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Classical review: RPO performs Brahms and a Higdon world premiere
In a polished, powerful showing, the RPO debuted a new work by Jennifer Higdon
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Classical review: Jon Nakamatsu with SCMR
The Society for Chamber Music in Rochester on Friday ended its season in satisfying style. The organization celebrated its 40th anniversary, and pianist Jon Nakamatsu celebrated the end of his season as SCMR’s first artist-in-residence. Friday’s concert itself began with something worth celebrating: the opening movement of Mendelssohn’s D Minor Trio, performed by the Hochstein […]
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Classical review: Pegasus’s “The Secret of the Muses”
The 17th century French lutenist and composer Jacques Gaultier was once praised for “the goodness of his hands — the most swift, the neatest, and most even that ever were.” That’s also an accurate paean for 21st century lutenist Paul O’Dette, who offered a blissful solo recital on Sunday afternoon as part of the Pegasus […]
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Classical review: The RPO’s American Music Festival
The Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra’s Festival of American Music this month looked good and paper, and in its two Kodak Hall concerts it sounded even better. This weekend’s final concert, in which Ward Stare leads a very entertaining recent concerto by Jennifer Higdon along with two terrific, not-quite-standard-repertoire scores by Barber and Copland, was a powerful […]
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Rochester Chamber Orchestra rediscovers Louise Farrenc
Women composers have hardly had their fair shakes. But I’d venture to say that in Rochester, at least, their situation is looking up just a bit this fall. Last month, a spectacular Pegasus Early Music concert featured remarkable vocal music by the 17th century composer Barbara Strozzi; in a couple of weeks the RPO will […]
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Classical review: “Barbara’s Venice”
The best concerts bring genuine discoveries as well as purely musical delights. This was the case with “Barbara’s Venice,” the opener to Pegasus Early Music’s 12th season. The Barbara referred to is Barbara Strozzi (1619-1677), a notable singer and an even more celebrated composer in a time and place that had more than its share […]
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Classical review: Olga Kern with the RPO
For his first-season finale as RPO music director,
Ward Stare begins and ends the program with two sumptuous French celebrations of
bad behavior.
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Kholodenko and the RPO
During his first full season of programing Rochester
Philharmonic Orchestra concerts, Ward Stare has included several examples of what used to be called “orchestral spectaculars.”
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Classical Review: RPO performs Sibelius
A couple of weeks ago, Ward Stare and the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra made a flashy, but satisfactory, season debut. That program showed a sure hand in staples of the repertoire; this weekend’s concert is a bit more adventurous, but even more satisfying. It began with “Four Scottish Dances” by Malcolm Arnold, the prolific British composer […]
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Classical Review: The RPO season opener
To open the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra’s 93rd season and his first full season as music director, Ward Stare selected four popular works that nevertheless seem as though they are not performed often enough. None of these compositions feature a soloist, but that did not prevent their success with the listeners at the RPO’s season opener […]
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Classical Review: RPO performs “Carmina Burana”
Choral groups have few blue-chip certainties in the 20th-century repertoire, but Carl Orff’s “Carmina Burana” is definitely one of them. With music that has been pilfered for movies, commercials, video games, rock albums, and sitcom episodes, Orff’s “scenic cantata” always draws a crowd — and the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra and the Oratorio Society surely counted […]
