Concert Review: Big Wheel Keep On Turnin'

The NJSO opens with Carmina Burana.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

The conductor Jacques Lacombe.
Photo by Daniel Cossette © 2014 Canadian Broadcasting Company

Newark, New Jersey became the focal point of high culture on Friday night when the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra opened its 2014 season at Prudential Hall, the gorgeous and unlikely concert venue that has been the ensemble's home since 1997. The occasion was a gala evening with former governors, politicos and a crowd of well-dressed donors, all gathered to hear Jacques Lacombe lead his troops through Carmina Burana, Carl Orff's 1937 song cycle based on medieval Bavarian texts.

Concert Review: Boom, Crash, Opera

The Belgrade Philharmonic comes to Carnegie Hall.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Baritone Željko Lučić and conductor Muhai Tang emote at Carnegie Hall.
Photo courtesy the Belgrade Philharmonic.

Belgrade, capital of Serbia and former capital of Yugoslavia, is a city rebuilding itself after a decade of warfare. On Thursday night, the Belgrade Philharmonic (Beogradska filharmonija) an orchestra that was banned from international performance for ten years played Carnegie Hall. The concert was the final stop on its current North American tour, which is part of an effort to build a modern concert hall in Belgrade. Under music director Muhai Tang, the orchestra has renewed itself, and offered New Yorkers an enthusiastic program of Tchaikovsky, Verdi and Sibelius.

Concert Review: Composer, Interrupted

The Berlin Philharmonic plays Schumann and Haas.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Sir Simon Rattle makes a mysterious gesture.
Photo © 2014 Berliner Philharmoniker

Although Robert Schumann lived and wrote 150 years ago, his symphonies are still fresh and revolutionary, especially when conductor and orchestra choose the original orchestrations over the composer's later revisions. On Monday night at Carnegie Hall, Sir Simon Rattle and the Berlin Philharmonic concluded their season-opening four-concert stand with Schumann's Third and Fourth Symphonies, bookending a new work by composer Georg Friedrich Haas.

Concert Review: A Mind Beside Itself

Sir Simon Rattle conducts Schumann.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Sir Simon Rattle.
Photo courtesy the Berlin Philharmonic © 2014 Berlin Philharmonic.

Under its two most recent music directors, the Berlin Philharmonic established itself as one of the most formidable and flexible orchestras in Europe. Yet a strong sense of tradition and devotion to German music remains. On Sunday night, the orchestra addressed that tradition with the first of two Carnegie Hall concerts surveying the four symphonies of composer and critic Robert Schumann.