ENTERTAINMENT

12/02/2008

Classical Music Review: Music of the Spheres Society has good intentions, but ...
Every so often there's a concert whose good intentions you applaud, and yet... .

11/30/2008

Classical Review: Orchestra of New Spain brings 'villancicos' tradition back to life
In 18th-century Spanish churches, villancicos were precursors of today's pop-idiom "praise music." To catchy, dancing tunes, these quasi-cantatas wove folksy contemporary tales into religious observances, often with what today would be thought politically incorrect humor.

11/23/2008

Choral Review: UNT faculty, students sing Saul oratorio at Dallas Museum of Art
Horchow Auditorium, at the Dallas Museum of Art, used to be a pleasant place to hear small-scale music. But Saturday afternoon's Fine Arts Chamber Players concert confirmed rumors that the acoustics have been ruined by a recent renovation.

Classical Review: Meadows Symphony fires up with a witty concert
Some Meadows Symphony Orchestra concerts this season are programmed around the four elements: earth, air, fire and water. Sunday afternoon's concert, at Southern Methodist University's Caruth Auditorium, celebrated fire, in quite a provocative musical mix of Haydn, Liszt, Wagner and Tan Dun. Led by music director Paul Phillips, SMU's student orchestra again gave professional and compelling performances.

11/21/2008

Dallas family's painting by Sebastiano Ricci fails to sell at auction
Expected to bring bids in excess of $1 million, a circa 1700 painting owned by a Dallas family failed to sell Thursday, possibly a victim of the economic downturn. The Vision of St. Bruno by Italian artist Sebastiano Ricci was part of a morning auction at Heritage Auction Galleries' Slocum Street annex.

Two more curators will leave Dallas Museum of Art

FILE

William Rudolph (right), Suzanne Weaver

Two more curators are exiting the Dallas Museum of Art for other jobs.

11/18/2008

Kimbell Art Museum plans expansion designed by Renzo Piano

FILE

Kimbell Art Museum

Fort Worth's Kimbell Art Museum will unveil preliminary plans today for a $70 million addition designed by Italian architect Renzo Piano. View the plans.

Architect Renzo Piano reveals a few details of his Kimbell Art Museum expansion
FORT WORTH – Plans for expansion of the Kimbell Art Museum were clarified a bit at a Tuesday morning news conference at the museum.

11/16/2008

Classical Review: Pianist Stephen Hough stops time in memorial concert
PLANO – We would all like to be so warmly remembered as to merit the memorial recital Stephen Hough played Sunday afternoon. Honoring the late David Grice, a beloved Plano piano teacher, Mr. Hough reminded us just how transcendent an experience music can be.

Classical music: Van Cliburn in Moscow DVD

Classical music: Dvorák

11/15/2008

Opera Review: 'Figaro' at Music Hall one of best Dallas Opera productions in memory
The decors and dress are 18th-century, but the Marriage of Figaro that opened Friday at Fair Park Music Hall is as lively, as au courant, as a first-class TV sitcom.

Pianist's Sunday recital to memorialize Plano piano instructor
It says a lot about David Grice that one of the world's most prominent pianists volunteered to play a recital in the late Plano piano teacher's memory.

11/14/2008

Concert Review: Dallas Symphony Orchestra makes magic with unexpected Elgar piece
What's the very last piece you'd expect to hear on a Dallas Symphony Orchestra concert? A pretty good guess would be Sir Edward Elgar's The Music Makers , a 40-minute piece for mezzo-soprano, chorus and orchestra set to poetry by Arthur O'Shaughnessy.

11/13/2008

Dallas Opera 'Figaro' is easy on the eyes, ears

Natalie Caudill/DMN

Lyubov Petrova (left) as Susanna, and Daniel Okulitch as Figaro

Opera has a reputation as an indulgence for the mature set.

11/12/2008

Dallas Symphony Orchestra changes 2009 lineup
The Dallas Symphony Orchestra has cancelled its May 2009 concert performances of Madame Butterfly . Instead music director Jaap van Zweden will conduct the Brahms Academic Festival Overture and Schicksalslied (with the Dallas Symphony Chorus), and the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto and 1812 Overture.

11/09/2008

Classical music review: Bartók, Divertimento

CD Review: Elliott Carter's Complete Piano Music

11/08/2008

Classical Music Review: Richardson Symphony Orchestra rounds up unfamiliar all-American works
RICHARDSON – Local orchestras have been venturing a little beyond the tried and hackneyed lately, and good for them. On Saturday night, the Richardson Symphony rounded up some unfamiliar suspects for its all-American concert at the Eisemann Center. Even Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue was presented in a newish edition with quite a few surprises.

Fort Worth Opera to premiere Martín work
Fort Worth Opera will present the world premiere of a new opera at its 2010 festival. Before Night Falls , by Cuban-American composer Jorge Martín, is based on an autobiography of the same title by Reinaldo Arenas, the late Cuban poet, novelist, playwright and outspoken critic of Fidel Castro.

Van Zweden can't work miracles every night with Dallas Symphony Orchestra
Jaap van Zweden has been working miracles. The Dallas Symphony Orchestra's new music director has tightened and polished the ensemble and stretched its pianissimos as well as its fortissimos.

11/02/2008

Dallas Arts Magnet design had to balance old and new, ambition with budget

Architecture review: Arts Magnet's functional design leaves out the fun
Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts posed a delicate balancing act.

11/01/2008

Classical Review: Pianist Jon Nakamatsu a pivotal player at Chamber Music concert
Chamber Music International presented its best concert in memory Saturday evening. It included two treasures from the 19th-century repertory and what's widely considered a 20th-century classic, all in very fine performances.

Clare Adkins Cason to perform baroque sonatas with Dallas Bach Society
Clare Adkins Cason was born with music in her blood. Of eight children raised in Denton by Cecil and Alis Dickinson Adkins, both musicologists on the faculty of the University of North Texas, seven became musicians.

10/31/2008

Fort Worth Symphony's Iranian ballet scores evoke Stravinsky
FORT WORTH – The Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra served up quite a fresh and fun program Friday evening: three dance-based 20th-century works, all a little "exotic" to ears nurtured on Western European musical traditions.

10/28/2008

Though at times too much, pianist Richard Goode projected authority in Bass Hall Cliburn concert
FORT WORTH – With Alfred Brendel on what's billed as his final concert tour, Richard Goode is one of the last of a certain breed of pianists. His teachers including Rudolf Serkin and Claude Frank, Mr. Goode has been a solid, respected American medium for meat-and-potatoes Austro-German repertory from Bach through Brahms. It caused some amazement, in fact, when he started recording Chopin a few years ago.

10/27/2008

St. Martin in the Fields' eight strings show an impressive precision expected from the world-famous chamber orchestra
One of the world's most famous – and most recorded – chamber orchestras, the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields also fields smaller ensembles to play larger-scale chamber music. On Monday night, eight string players from the London-based outfit came to Southern Methodist University's Caruth Auditorium to perform octets by Mendelssohn and Joachim Raff and the Sextet from Strauss' opera Capriccio .

10/25/2008

Improv on the Meyerson's Fisk organ? Cameron Carpenter dared it and shined
People arriving Saturday afternoon at the Meyerson Symphony Center were greeted inside by a slender young man in a snug white T-shirt and jeans. "Hi, I'm Cameron," he said, smiling and shaking hands.

10/23/2008

Standing ovations all around for the Dallas Symphony Orchestra and Carlos Kalmar
Almost any concerto performance around here is guaranteed a standing ovation. And, sure enough, the Meyerson Symphony Center audience obliged Thursday night after Midori's performance of the Brahms Violin Concerto, with the Dallas Symphony Orchestra and guest conductor Carlos Kalmar.

10/21/2008

Dallas Wind Symphony dazzles with smart, stylish concert
Mid-20th-century American modernism formed the core of a particularly appealing Dallas Wind Symphony concert Tuesday night. This was modernism in the sense of those streamlined 1950s drive-ins, with zigzag roofs and lots of neon, and quite as much fun.

University of North Texas inaugurates new organ in Murchison Center for the Performing Arts
DENTON – International luminaries of the organ world are lined up this week to inaugurate the new organ at the University of North Texas. The instrument, in the Murchison Center for the Performing Arts, is the focus of a three-day conference and three public performances.

10/19/2008

The polished Orpheus Chamber Singers present harmonious love poems
BEDFORD – You can count on Dallas' Orpheus Chamber Singers to supply world-class performances. And artistic director Donald Krehbiel's 24 voices did so again Sunday night, in a venue farther afield than usual. Fortunately, St. Vincent's Episcopal Cathedral supplied a nice balance of warmth and clarity, and it drew a good crowd.

Fine-tuning awareness of classical organ music
Plenty of famous composers were also organists, at least early in their careers: Bach, Handel, Bruckner, Franck, Saint-Saëns, Fauré, Elgar and Vaughan Williams. But somewhere along the 20th century the organ seemed to recede from the musical mainstream.

10/17/2008

Guest conductor Nicolás Pasquet commands Meadows Symphony Orchestra
Memo to Dallas Symphony Orchestra: Add Nicolás Pasquet to your guest-conductor lineup.

10/13/2008

Voices of Change takes a trip back to 1960s with hypnotic 'Stimmung'
It was the 1960s again for an hour Sunday night.

10/11/2008

Voices of Change performs Karlheinz Stockhausen's 'Stimmung'
Even by the sometimes loony standards of the 1960s avant-garde, Karlheinz Stockhausen was out there.

10/10/2008

Fort Worth orchestra highlights lesser-known Latin American works
FORT WORTH – With the Latin American population exploding around here, it's almost shocking that area arts organizations have taken so little note of artistic ferment south of the Rio Grande. The once-a-year "Hispanic festival concert" is pretty blatant tokenism.

Working in Chicago, an 'incredible joy' for Jaap van Zweden
CHICAGO – Jaap van Zweden is too tactful to compare the Chicago and Dallas symphony orchestras – or, for that matter, their very different concert halls.

Chicago symphony fans up on their feet for Jaap van Zweden
CHICAGO – The Windy City gave Jaap van Zweden a standing ovation and bravos Thursday night, and after a long Anton Bruckner symphony that doesn't give up its secrets easily. Symphony Center was far from full, but the audience sat in rapt silence for the Fifth Symphony, which ran an hour and 20 minutes.

10/05/2008

Richardson Symphony gives German classics an airy flow
RICHARDSON – A refreshing program, refreshingly done, opened the Richardson Symphony Orchestra's 2008-2009 season Saturday night. And the most familiar piece of the Eisemann Center concert, the Brahms B-flat major Piano Concerto (No. 2), was the one most filled with surprises.

San Francisco Opera mounts rarely performed Die tote Stadt
SAN FRANCISCO – No opera has music more gorgeous – more brilliantly colored, more lusciously textured, more passionately yearning – than Die tote Stadt . So why is it so rarely performed?

RSS

SMS Alerts

Newsletters

SEARCH CLASSIFIEDS