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05/09/2008
Opera review: Cuts to 'John Brown' would make it gripping
KANSAS CITY – With the volatile mix of race, religion and politics stirred up in the presidential primaries, the new opera introduced Saturday by Lyric Opera of Kansas City is unexpectedly au courant.
05/06/2008
Organist David Briggs: Insouciantly brilliant to overly blatant
If I say "Huh?" a lot this week, it's because I lost a chunk of hearing Monday evening at Park Cities Presbyterian Church. In a town with several very loud organs, PCPC's new Schoenstein may be the loudest of all.
05/05/2008
Funky touches make Long performing arts center a good fit for Austin
AUSTIN – The "aha!" moment hit me in an elevator.
05/02/2008
Percussive fireworks spark Corigliano's 'Conjurer'
With a brand-new percussion concerto, a flashy sendup of fandangos and Elgar's Enigma Variations, the Dallas Symphony Orchestra can't be accused of boring programming this week.
05/01/2008
Composer John Corigliano gives in to the lure of percussion for latest concerto
John Corigliano admits he didn't want to write a percussion concerto.
04/30/2008
Meadows Symphony students prove to be experienced travelers
Every so often, a concert leaves you scratching your eyes – or ears – in disbelief. One of them was served up Tuesday evening by the Meadows Symphony Orchestra, at the Morton H. Meyerson Symphony Center.
04/28/2008
Magical notes in 'Bohème' from Houston's Grand Opera Orchestra
HOUSTON – The people – critics included – who go on and on about how the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra is the best in the world, how others are far inferior, should have been in Houston's Brown Theater on Saturday night. You'd have to catch the Met on an awfully good night to hear the nuance and finesse Patrick Summers consistently coaxed out of the Houston Grand Opera Orchestra in La bohème .
04/27/2008
Houston Grand Opera's 'Billy Budd' sails straight
HOUSTON – Even the people we think we know best move to forces we cannot know or understand. And ambiguities of motive and morality fascinated Benjamin Britten, never more so than in his 1951 opera Billy Budd . Alas, it's coarsened in the new Houston Grand Opera production that opened Friday at the Wortham Center.
04/26/2008
Glazunov, Tchaikovsky concertos: B+
Glazunov, Tchaikovsky
04/24/2008
An unsentimental finale for UNT's Anshel Brusilow
Conductor Anshel Brusilow, still vigorous at age 79, closed a nearly 30-year tenure at UNT with Tchaikovsky's Pathétique.
04/23/2008
Jaap van Zweden conducts this week as he prepares to take over DSO
Jaap van Zweden doesn't take over as the Dallas Symphony Orchestra's music director until September. But already he's in the thick of planning for a 2010 European tour with the orchestra, not to mention picking a new assistant conductor and expanding the orchestra's repertory.
04/21/2008
Pianist Alessio Bax and friends mix things up, brilliantly, at Caruth
It was called "Meadows Underground Project," and the two-day mix-up of classical music, jazz and something in between closed with quite a concert Sunday evening at Caruth Auditorium. The brainchild of pianist Alessio Bax, it was sponsored by Southern Methodist University's Meadows School of the Arts. And it was stimulating enough – and brilliantly performed – that one hopes for more in the future.
04/20/2008
Chamber Music International comes across loud and clear
Featuring ad hoc ensembles of musicians drawn from far and wide, Chamber Music International concerts often leave one wanting better-seasoned interpretations. But Saturday evening's program of three romantic masterpieces was tautly timed and tuned, and there was real depth to the music-making.
04/18/2008
Composer Philip Glass charms in Nasher Salon lecture
The hearty-looking 71-year-old composer was interviewed by WFAA-TV newsman John McCaa at Nasher Sculpture Center.
04/15/2008
String quartet plays with brilliance, bravado
The St. Lawrence String Quartet's Monday night concert was certainly stimulating, and played with astonishing brilliance and high-profile personality.
04/16/2008
Fliter brings clarity to the Kimbell's Steinway
FORT WORTH - Pianist Ingrid Fliter gave an eloquent performance in February of the Chopin F minor Piano Concerto, with the Dallas Symphony Orchestra. So interest was certainly piqued for her solo recital Tuesday evening at the Kimbell Art Museum, in the Cliburn Concerts series.
04/14/2008
Orpheus Chamber Singers delivers gorgeous singing at cathedral
You'll not hear choral singing more gorgeous– more fastidiously formed, balanced and buffed–than that produced Sunday evening by the Orpheus Chamber Singers. And it washed lusciously through the Cathedral Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe, the area's one setting with the reverberation of the European churches and cathedrals for which so much great choral music was conceived.
'Rhapsody in Blue,' 'I Got Rhythm' Variations: B-
04/12/2008
Pianist Chen plays well but is largely uninspiring
If you're a concertgoer, surely you've had the experience: hearing a performer of skill and taste make all the right moves without ever quite moving you.
04/14/2008
Stravinksy DVD 'The Rake's Progress': A
04/11/2008
Journeying Fourth
What's with Dallas Symphony Orchestra audiences? Whatever's on the second half of the program, the crowd noticeably thins at intermission.
04/10/2008
Podium pioneer JoAnn Falletta to conduct DSO
Marin Alsop has gotten a lot of press recently as the first woman to be music director of a major American orchestra, the Baltimore Symphony. But, depending on your definition of "major," JoAnn Falletta was there first, taking over the Buffalo (N.Y.) Philharmonic in 1998.
04/06/2008
Guitarist Parkening and Plano Symphony strings a bit off
PLANO – The Plano Symphony Orchestra ended its 25th season Saturday night at St. Andrew United Methodist Church. Apart from less-than-ideal projection of violin tone, it proved a good acoustical setting for orchestral music.
04/04/2008
AFI Dallas: Dallas Symphony will play accompaniment to 'Wizard of Oz'
The man behind the curtain won't be the only wizard when The Wizard of Oz plays the Morton H. Meyerson Symphony Center this weekend. Thanks to other behind-the-scenes wizardry, the Dallas Symphony Orchestra will play live accompaniments to big-screen presentations of the restored 1939 film.
Choir of King's College sings a moving tribute to Kennedy
The most poignant eight minutes of the whole concert season may have transpired Thursday evening. In the city where President John F. Kennedy was assassinated, the Cathedral Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe resonated to English composer Herbert Howells' exquisitely moving motet in Kennedy's memory.
04/03/2008
Strings rule at University of Texas performance
It wasn't much publicized, so there wasn't much of a crowd for the University of Texas Symphony Orchestra concert at the Meyerson.
Kings College Choir will perform sacred choral music Thursday
For four and a half centuries, a choir of men and boys has been singing beneath the glorious fan-vaulted ceiling of King's College Chapel at Cambridge University. Today, thanks to broadcasts, recordings and international tours, King's College Choir is one of the most famous in the world.
04/02/2008
Notre Dame's Lefebvre evinces perfectly balanced grandeur, drama
France has a rich five-century legacy of organs, organists and organ music. Philippe Lefebvre, one of three current organists of Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, sampled four-plus centuries' worth of repertory in a recital Tuesday evening at the Episcopal Church of the Incarnation.
04/01/2008
Lang Lang: Subtlety in absentia
FORT WORTH – Not since the late Liberace has a pianist been as much of a media phenomenon as Lang Lang. The mop-topped Chinese pianist, now 25, has been on television shows and sold truckloads of CDs. He has whipped concert audiences into frenzies.
03/31/2008
UNT breaks in new $1.5 million pipe organ
Pipe organs have been popping up around local churches, but this organ is the area's first academic installation in a while.
03/30/2008
Summer classical concerts scheduled in Dallas
The Dallas Symphony Orchestra has announced its Casual Classics and other summer concerts at the Meyerson Symphony Center.
03/29/2008
Rattle's Mahler a bit foggy; Zinman finds a Fourth passion
03/28/2008
Dallas Symphony's Emanuel Borok has a sweetly soaring night
The movie The Red Violin , about a long-lost violin, may have special resonance for Dallas Symphony Orchestra concertmaster Emanuel Borok. Mr. Borok's 1727 Stradivarius spent 21 years on the lam, after being stolen from his Dallas apartment, until it resurfaced two years ago.
03/27/2008
Throwback pianist Jonathan Biss to play with Dallas Symphony
Jonathan Biss is the ultimate non-Lang Lang.
03/22/2008
Andrew Rangell's new recording lends his quirky touch to Bach
03/20/2008
Houston museum shows latest Pompeii relics
Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, exhibits "Pompeii: Tales From an Eruption," the last stop in a five-year, multi-country tour.
City to hire sound expert for arts center dispute 
Dallas hopes to settle discord over the Annette Strauss Artist Square's placement next to the Meyerson Symphony Center.
03/19/2008
Dallas Wind Symphony concert has an Eastern European flair
The Dallas Wind Symphony did its part for relations with Eastern Europe Tuesday night. In addition to that American cosmopolite Leonard Bernstein, the Morton H. Meyerson Symphony Center concert included two composers of Czech origins and one from Poland.
03/16/2008
Met Opera's 'Peter Grimes' is gut-wrenching drama
Opera yielded nothing to wide-screen thrillers for gut-wrenching drama Saturday afternoon, and even in a movie theater.
03/15/2008
FWSO, violin soloist Kerr turn in virtuosic performances
03/14/2008
DSO tenders an electric 'Firebird' — again
Young French conductor Ludovic Morlot led the Dallas Symphony in a crackerjack performance of the 1919 Suite at the Meyerson.
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