Dallas-Fort Worth Entertainment Columnist Scott Cantrell | News for Dallas, Texas

03/07/2010

Classical music review: London Philharmonic earns bravos for program of Ravel, Shostakovich works
NEW YORK–Some of the greatest musical performances feel pushed to the edge of the possible, without quite going over. They feel spontaneous, but also fastidiously prepared and executed.

Opera review: 'La bohème,' Met's cash cow, evokes picture-postcard Paris

Cory Weaver/Metropolitan Opera

Piotr Beczala stars as Rodolfo and Anna Netrebko as Mimi in La bohème by Metropolitan Opera.

For better and for worse, the Metropolitan Opera has been in the headlines a lot since Peter Gelb became general manager four years ago. His initiatives have included live HD transmissions to movie theaters, new repertory and new productions. New directors and designers have been drawn from the worlds of film, architecture and fashion.
Link: Metropolitan Opera

03/06/2010

Opera review: Verdi's 'Attila' makes belated debut at New York's Metropolitan Opera
NEW YORK – In 130 years, you'd think the Metropolitan Opera had covered the significant repertory. But not until last month, 164 years after its Venice premiere, did Verdi's Attila reach the Met. And it came with some starry names.

Classical DVD Review: Achúcarro, Brahms Piano Concerto No. 2
Since the recent death of Alicia de Larrocha, Joaquín Achúcarro is probably the pre-eminent living Spanish pianist. He's also a significant presence in Dallas, with an endowed professorship at Southern Methodist University's Meadows School of the Arts. Among his protégés is Alessio Bax, who won the prestigious Leeds Competition in 2000 and also teaches part-time at SMU.

03/05/2010

Classical music review: Reality takes it on the chin in 'The Nose' at the Metropolitan Opera
NEW YORK – Before Stalin tightened his grip, the Russian avant-garde flourished in the 1920s. In a country that saw itself as the vanguard of a new world order, writers, painters, musicians and filmmakers felt free, indeed challenged, to find new expressive voices.

03/04/2010

New York Philharmonic explores Hindemith
NEW YORK – There's been a lot of turnover lately on the podiums of major American orchestras. Jaap van Zweden and Manfred Honeck, respectively, took over the Dallas and Pittsburgh symphony orchestras in fall 2008. Alan Gilbert and Gustavo Dudamel are in their first seasons as music directors of the New York and Los Angeles philharmonics. Riccardo Muti is to take over the Chicago Symphony next fall.

Opera review: Touring production of 'Porgy and Bess' solid, if not up to Gershwin's standards
FORT WORTH – The touring production of Porgy and Bess that opened Wednesday night at Bass Performance Hall certainly reminds us of the greatness of the work. Between stage director Charles Randolph-Wright and conductor Samuel Bill, the opening-night performance really crackled and sported turbocharged voices.

02/28/2010

Dallas Opera opts for old classics for 2010-11 season
Anew performing-arts facility is good for about a three-year uptick in attendance. People will buy tickets for just about anything to check out the new place.

02/27/2010

Classical music review: Chamber Music International delivers skillful surprises
Chamber Music International's Saturday-night concert was imaginatively programmed and played with great flair as well as skill.

02/26/2010

Classical music review: Fort Worth Symphony plays in big leagues with guest conductor Guerrero
On succeeding nights, both under guest conductors, the area's two top orchestras proved the folly of artistic expectations. On Thursday, the Dallas Symphony Orchestra often sounded crude and provincial under Itzhak Perlman, who should stick to playing the violin. On Friday, the Fort Worth Symphony played in the big leagues for Giancarlo Guerrero.

Classical music review: Legendary violinist's appearance couldn't mask problems at Dallas Symphony Orchestra performance
There was a standing ovation before a single note was sounded Thursday night at the Meyerson Symphony Center. It acknowledged the legend slowly making his way onstage: Itzhak Perlman, the most famous violinist of the last 40 years.

02/23/2010

Dallas Opera announces second season at Winspear

The Associated Press

Baritone Paulo Szot, who won a Tony Award for his performance as Emile de Becque in the Broadway show South Pacific, will portray Don Giovanni this fall for the Dallas Opera.

For its second season in the new Winspear Opera House, the Dallas Opera has scheduled a very conservative lineup of five operas. The newest work on the 2010-11 season was completed in 1873, when Ulysses S. Grant was president.
Link: The Dallas Opera Web site
Guide to the AT&T Performing Arts Center

02/21/2010

Classical music review: Voices of Change impresses with challenging program at Caruth Auditorium
After several seasons dominated by often lightweight postmodern fare, Voices of Change, Dallas' new-music ensemble is again offering more substantive programs. Indeed, the Fred Lerdahl chamber piece Time After Time , the culmination of Sunday evening's concert at Caruth Auditorium, was the series' most challenging piece, in a good sense, in not just recent memory.

02/20/2010

Classical music review: Pianist Ursula Oppens full of surprises in recital at Fort Worth's Modern Art Museum

Bob Haynes/Special Contributor to the Star-Telegram

Pianist Ursula Oppens performs at the Mordern Art Museum of Fort Worth as part of the Cliburn at the Modern Feb. 20, 2010.

Proof that life isn't fair was offered again Saturday afternoon at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth. In recital, presented in the Cliburn at the Modern concert series, was pianist Ursula Oppens, one of the foremost interpreters of contemporary classical music. But the small auditorium looked barely half full and, shockingly, none of the area's prominent piano professors was in attendance.

Blog: More on arts

02/19/2010

Opera review: Great singing isn't everything in Dallas Opera's 'Don Pasquale'

Jason Janik/Special Contributor

Nathan Gunn and Adriana Kucerova perform in the Dallas Opera production of Don Pasquale at the Winspear Opera House.

If bel canto opera is really all about the singing, the Dallas Opera has one heck of a Don Pasquale on its hands. Opening a run at the Winspear Opera House on Friday evening, the cast ranged from very good to dazzling.
Event details: 'Don Pasquale' at Winspear Opera House
Guide to the AT&T Performing Arts Center

Visual arts review: Dallas Museum of Art features impressionists with camera and brush

Carnegie Museum of Art

The Sea at Le Havre, 1868 oil on canvas by Claude Oscar Monet

Yes, it's yet another impressionism show. But "The Lens of Impressionism" isn't just another blockbuster of shimmering pastels.The show's subtitle both expands and narrows the focus: "Photography and Painting Along the Normandy Coast, 1850-1874." Indeed, only about half the 100 items are paintings, and only a few have real star quality.
Event details: 'The Lens of Impressionism' at Dallas Museum of Art
More: D-FW art exhibits

02/18/2010

Classical music review: With loving, focused detail, Dallas Symphony Orchestra delivers a serious program
If you haven't heard the Dallas Symphony Orchestra lately, you owe it to yourself to hear the wonders Jaap van Zweden has worked. Two weeks in a row, and only halfway into his second season as music director, the Dutch conductor has turned out performances of a focused intensity and musical finesse unimaginable a couple of seasons ago.

Pianist Ursula Oppens plans contemporary program for Cliburn Concerts appearance

Christian Steiner

Pianist Ursula Oppens

Ursula Oppens won't be doing her usual thing Saturday afternoon. The American pianist is celebrated as one of the foremost interpreters of contemporary music, someone who can make knotty scores by Elliott Carter and Charles Wuorinen as expressive and dramatically compelling as a Beethoven sonata. But her recitals usually mix new and old music; whereas, at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, she'll play nothing but modern American works.
Event details: Ursula Oppens at Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth

02/15/2010

Classical music review: Program and venue detract from Martin Welzel's organ recital at Caruth Auditorium
Martin Welzel's organ recital Monday evening was a frustrating affair.

02/13/2010

Classical music review: Dallas Symphony Orchestra shows that Rachmaninoff can be stunning
Right from the symphony's start, Jaap van Zweden displayed passionate involvement in the music's surge and sigh. But his generous rubato, the expressive push and pull of tempo, was of a piece with the music's own ebb and flow.

Opera review: 'Così fan tutte' shows why Dallas Opera needs the Winspear

Courtesy

Cast members Michael Todd Simpson, Jennifer Holloway, Elza van den Heever and Brian Anderson in The Dallas Opera's presentation of Così fan tutte.

If you've questioned whether the Dallas Opera really needed the new Winspear Opera House, check out the current production of Così fan tutte. In Mozart's opera, so much about nuances of singing and playing, you'll hear delicacies and details that wouldn't have gotten past the first three rows of the vast Music Hall.
Event details: 'Così fan tutte' at Winspear Opera House
Story: Sir Thomas Allen joins Dallas Opera for Winspear's Mozart debut
Guide to the AT&T Performing Arts Center

Gustavo Dudamel's talent still raw in inaugural concert DVD
So just how good is the LA Phil's new music director?

02/11/2010

Sir Thomas Allen joins Dallas Opera for Winspear's Mozart debut

Kye R. Lee/Staff Photographer

Sir Thomas Allen

"Almost every appearance seemed to be stamped by his conjoining of striking appearance, magnetic command of the stage, and warm, naturally produced, vibrant lyric baritone of easy emission and wide range." So writes Max Loppert, in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, of the British baritone Sir Thomas Allen. Add an amazingly wide range of operatic roles – from Monteverdi to Wagner, Debussy to Britten – and it's no wonder that Allen, still going strong at 65, is a veritable legend among singers.
Event details: 'Così fan tutte' at Winspear Opera House
Guide to the AT&T Performing Arts Center

02/09/2010

'Vocal Colors' puts artwork to music at the Dallas Museum of Art

Courtesy

Pieces of artwork currently on displayed in the Dallas Museum of Art's All the World's a Stage exhibit.

Art about performance – from Orpheus taming the wild beasts to a modern opera about the atomic bomb – is the fare for two concurrent exhibitions at the Dallas Museum of Art: "All the World's a Stage" and "Performance/Art." Tonight, at the DMA's Horchow Auditorium, four singers and a pianist will offer musical responses to that art.
Event details: 'Vocal Colors' at Dallas Museum of Art
More: D-FW art exhibits

02/08/2010

Classical music review: Dallas Chamber ventures out of comfort zone with Claremont Trio at Latino Cultural Center
Not known for daring programming, Dallas Chamber Music on Monday night ventured out of its comfort zone. With the superb young Claremont Trio onstage at the Latino Cultural Center (pianist Donna Kwong, violinist Emily Bruskin and cellist Julia Bruskin – yes, sisters), the all-American program ventured nothing composed before 1986. And all five pieces were well worth hearing.

Frazin piano work debuts
The work: World premiere of Some Thoughts on Good and Evil , for piano trio, by Howard Frazin

02/05/2010

Niceties missing from Fort Worth Symphony concert
Niceties were largely missing in Friday evening's Fort Worth Symphony concert at Bass Performance Hall, marking both composers' bicentenaries.

02/02/2010

Classical music review: Pianist Marc-Andre Hamelin performs with eye-popping virtuosity at Bass Performance Hall
FORT WORTH–Marc-Andre Hamelin will be hard to displace as the area's piano recitalist of the year.

Dallas Symphony Orchestra announces 2010-11 classical season

COURTNEY PERRY/Staff Photographer

Oscar, Grammy, Tony, and Pulitzer Prize winner Marvin Hamlisch has been signed as the principal pops conductor for a two-year contract.

Two world premieres and a raft of new conductors and soloists are billed for the Dallas Symphony Orchestra's 2010-11 classical season. And star composer/pianist Marvin Hamlisch takes over as principal pops conductor, heading a series including appearances by Liza Minnelli, Jim Brickman, Chris Botti and Frankie Valli.
Upcoming DSO events
Story: DSO doesn't look down on nonclassical music, Hamlisch says

01/31/2010

Opera review: Houston Grand Opera's 'Tosca' lacks charisma but not orchestral oomph
I can't think I've ever heard the orchestral score of Tosca so magnificently played – or so compellingly argued as truly great music – as in Houston Grand Opera's performance Saturday evening. Credit belongs to HGO music director Patrick Summers and the HGO Orchestra, which from delicate shimmers and flutings to brazen climaxes ravished the ear. Sometimes, in fact, the orchestra got exalted at the singers' expense. But this isn't the most charismatic cast, and John Caird's staging manages to mix unconvincing innovations with hoary traditions worth discarding.

01/30/2010

Opera review: Houston Grand Opera's 'Turn of the Screw' is a tour de force
HOUSTON – Benjamin Britten was fascinated by evil – how it worms its way in, how it corrupts and steals innocence. Indeed, the British composer's operas are variations on the theme of lost innocence. he theme is spookily, even creepily, explored in the chamber opera The Turn of the Screw, which opened Friday evening in a Houston Grand Opera production imported from Opera Australia.

01/28/2010

Classical music review: DSO, guest conductor make a persuasive case for little-known 'Má vlast'
I admit it: I wasn't sure how Bedrich Smetana's Má vlast (My Fatherland) would work as a whole orchestral concert. Plenty of others must have had their doubts – and/or been deterred by the chilly rain – judging from great swaths of empty seats Thursday night at the Meyerson Symphony Center.

01/27/2010

Dallas Symphony Orchestra to perform work by Czech composer Bedrich Smetana
The work: Má vlast (My Fatherland), by Bedrich Smetana

Panel talks to precede premiere of opera 'Moby-Dick'

Courtesy

Cover art from Herman Melville's Moby-Dick

The Dallas Opera's world premiere of the Gene Scheer-Jake Heggie opera Moby-Dick will be previewed in three panel discussions on March 27 and 28. Titled "From Page to Stage: The Operatic Journey of Moby-Dick," the symposium will include both librettist Scheer and composer Heggie as well as authorities on Herman Melville, whose seafaring novel is the basis of the new opera.
Event details: 'Moby-Dick' at Winspear Opera House
Guide to the AT&T Performing Arts Center

01/24/2010

Classical music review: Lone Star Wind Orchestra brings youthful vitality to Meyerson performance
Dallas has become a veritable hotbed of symphonic wind ensembles. The much-recorded Dallas Wind Symphony, now 25 years old, has become one of the most famous in the world, but the Lone Star Wind Orchestra, founded six years ago, is providing competition.

Founding director of the Center for Translation Studies at the UT-Dallas has a way with words
Even among well-educated Americans, non-English literature largely remains a closed book.

01/23/2010

Classical music review: Chamber Music International concert's lineup is world-class, with a few rough spots
Chamber Music International lives up to its name with this week's lineup of players: a violinist (Nai-Yuan Hu) and violist (Scott Lee) born in Taiwan, a cellist from South Korea (Jungshin Lim Lewis), a pianist from Italy (Alessio Bax) and a native-born American, CMI artistic director and violinist Philip Lewis.

01/21/2010

James Gaffigan sparkles in Dallas Symphony Orchestra conducting debut
The Dallas Symphony Orchestra had another notable conducting debut Thursday night. James Gaffigan, an American barely into his 30s, was certainly a demonstrative conductor, but what mattered was clear, precise and expressive.

01/14/2010

Money problems cause Richardson Symphony to postpone performance
The Richardson Symphony Orchestra won't be playing the concert scheduled Saturday night at the Eisemann Center. Because of money problems, the concert, featuring first-chair soloists, has been postponed until June 18, also at the Eisemann.

01/10/2010

Voices of Change performs Brouwer chamber works

Ben Torres/Special Contributor

Violinist Maria Schleuning (cq), left, pianist Steven Harlos (cq), center, and clarinetist Paul Garner (cq), right

Voices of Change, Dallas' modern-music ensemble, has a commendable history of coordinating its programs with Dallas Symphony Orchestra performances of new music.
More: Voices of Change at LHPC
Blog: Playlist