By Paul E. Robinson on February 15, 2015
San Antonio, Texas | Even part-time Texans like myself (my wife and I have been living part of each year in Austin since 2005) tend to forget that San Antonio is the second largest city in Texas. Houston is No. 1 with about 2.1 million people, but San Antonio is not far behind at 1.3 million. In the latest census, Dallas came in at 1.2 million. Actually, the Dallas-Ft.Worth Metroplex is over 2 million. That said, San Antonio is still one of the largest cities in Texas and growing rapidly...
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By Michael Vincent on February 12, 2015
If art is the decoration of space, then music is the decoration of time. And in mid-February, time can seem as bland as the three-month-old piles of brown-coloured snow at the corner of the driveway, which makes a concert at this time of year particularly decorative...
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By Michael Vincent on February 9, 2015
Despite being billed as a concert by the National Arts Centre Orchestra, it really should have been named the Pinchas Zukerman, Amanda Forsyth and Yefim Bronfman show...
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By Robin Roger on February 2, 2015
Presumably, the theme for the Feb 1 Syrinx Chamber Music Concert, “Passion, Possibility, and Pleasure” was chosen to dispel some of the deep winter gloom with which music patrons struggle, including the inertia that makes coming to the concert hall a challenge in itself. Passion is warm, pleasure is consoling and both can make these dark days seem endurable, and the possibility of a better season believable. Gathering in the intimate space of Helicon Hall can further create the sense of a community of like-minded music lovers huddling together to warm their spirits by listening to beautiful expressions of anticipation of brighter and happier days...
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By Michael Vincent on January 23, 2015
Over the last quarter-century, the Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra has enjoyed the kind of PR that other arts organizations can only dream of. But to compare it with other orchestras is unfair, or is it?
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By Menon Dwarka on January 23, 2015
The Afiara Quartet has one of those reputations that immediately make them suspect. There’s an almost universal stamp of approval for what they do, from festival, schools, and various other cultural institutions, that one might suspect them of being little more than masters of political machinations...
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By Colin Eatock on January 21, 2015
Latvian violinist Gidon Kremer is more than four decades older than the young Russian pianist Daniil Trifonov – but they saw eye-to-eye in their Thursday evening recital at Koerner Hall. The varied program started well, and only got better when the duo was joined by cellist Giedre Dirvanauskaite...
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By Lev Bratishenko on December 7, 2014
How do you bring a 188-member orchestra and chorus, their equipment and a dozen soloists from Italy to North America? You buy a ship, crew it, and like the Ark, stock two of every musician. Half will be eaten on the journey. Though historical precedents suggest it may be unsustainable, such extravagance was worth it. To the families of the eaten: we salute you. William Tell was a triumph.
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By Michael Vincent on November 24, 2014
What do you get when you combine one of the world’s great violin virtuosos with a string orchestra of young green hopefuls? A masterclass for certain, but how on earth were they going to keep up?
Since 1997, Anne-Sophie Mutter has been dedicated to fostering the Mutter Virtuosi, a small string orchestra formed as a way to give real-world performance experience to young hand picked players from the Mutter Foundation. Guided by Ms. Mutter, the idea is to give them a taste of what it means to tour, and perform in some of the world’s finest concert halls.
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By Michael Vincent on November 14, 2014
A symphony concert featuring Beethoven and Mozart is as regular as regular gets. But when you combine it with the young piano dynamo Jan Lisiecki, visiting Danish conductor Thomas Dausgaard and clinch it with Carl Nielsen’s Fourth Symphony, you have something much more interesting.
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