Month: October 2009
By Caldwell Titcomb Four youngish players, trained at the Juilliard School of Music, constituted themselves as the Chiara String Quartet. For several years they have held artist residency at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. They have received a number of awards and prizes, and this season they are the Blodgett Artists-in-Residence at Harvard University, where they…
Read MoreBy Helen Epstein 1) Nov 2: This Monday’s free concert at Jordan Hall celebrates Eastern European composers and players. The unusual musical line-up includes the Haydn Piano Trio in E minor, the Boston premiere of Kati Agócs’s “Awakening Galatea,” Bacewicz’s “Suite for Two Violins,” and Dvorak’s Piano Quintet in A Major, Opus 81. Performance starts…
Read MoreBy Caldwell Titcomb Nov 1: Dinosaur Annex celebrates the 80th birthday of composer Yehudi Wyner with two of his works, plus music by David Liptak, Stefan Hakenberg & others. Wyner will himself perform. Goethe-Institut Boston, 170 Beacon Street, Boston, at 7:30 p.m. (Talk with composers at 6:30 p.m.)
Read MoreBy Caldwell Titcomb You might not be aware of it, but the Harvard-Radcliffe Orchestra (HRO) is the oldest symphony orchestra in the country, having begun as the Pierian Sodality in 1808. For the past 45 years, the group was led by composer-conductor James Yannatos, who retired last June. So the HRO on October 24 gave…
Read MoreDead Man’s Cell Phone by Sarah Ruhl. Directed by Carmel O’Reilly. Produced by the the Lyric Stage Company at the YWCA Building on the corner of Clarendon Street and Stuart Street, Boston, MA, through November 14. Reviewed by Helen Epstein Improbable though it seems these days with multiple requests to turn off electronics before performances,…
Read Moreby Bill Marx The Boston Book Festival, which kicks off its existence this Saturday, is an inevitability that for some puzzling reason wasn’t a reality. Boston is a determinedly readerish town, yet it is the only one of America’s major cities that doesn’t have a book festival. Thankfully, BBF organizer Deborah Z. Porter remedies the…
Read MoreIt cannot be said that the average Omani was waiting for an exhibition of Rembrandt etchings. By Gary Schwartz “Frankincense from Oman and paintings by Rembrandt were both part of the good life in the 17th century.” That unlikely quotation is from the script of a film that I wrote and presented this summer to…
Read MoreWhen discussing Friedrich Engels’s lament for lobster salad, Tristram Hunt dubs him “the original champagne communist,” but his biography is far from a damning portrayal. Marx’s General: The Revolutionary Life of Friedrich Engels by Tristram Hunt. Henry Holt & Company, Metropolitan Books, 448 pages, $32. Reviewed by Harvey Blume Among the most memorable words Karl…
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Music Commentary: A Mystery Solved on the 50th Anniversary of the Release of “Queen II”