Concert Review: "And it was bye-bye New Jersey..."

Jacques Lacombe ends his tenure with the NJSO.

by Paul J. Pelkonen

It can be argued that the six year tenure of conductor Jacques Lacombe has been a general success for the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra. On Sunday afternoon at NJPAC, Mr. Lacombe ended his term as music director with a stylish concert that played to his passions and strengths: new music, Romantic repertory and French music the early 20th century, here represented by a pair of pieces by Maurice Ravel.

Concert Review: The Beautiful South

Spanish Nights at the New York Philharmonic.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

El Sombrero de Tres Picos by Salvador Dalí.  Image © 1945 Fundació Gala-Salvador Dalí

In writing classical music reviews, the general practice is to see the first performance of a particular concert program in order to hear the works on offer and thus inform readership of the quality (or lack therein) of the performance. However, due to health issues this weekend, I wound up attending Tuesday night's performance of the New York Philharmonic's Spanish Nights program, an engaging evening of music inspired by the Iberian peninsula under the baton of Bramwell Tovey.