By Pierre Ruhe | Feb 18, 2011
Jaap van Zweden’s reputation preceded him to Atlanta. A violinist of poetic sensibility and ferocious discipline, he has been concertmaster of Amsterdam’s Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, one of the world’s two or three best. (His CD of Leonard Bernstein’s violin concerto “Serenade,” from a 1988 performance with the Concertgebouw, is a go-to favorite.) Bernstein himself encouraged van Zweden’s ambition to become a conductor, and since the late 1990s he’s been on the fast-rising maestro circuit.
Now music director of the Dallas Symphony, he is credited with tightening up what had been a good but soggy orchestra. This season, van Zweden -- everyone ...
By Pierre Ruhe | Feb 16, 2011
Joyce DiDonato is everywhere just now; coming February 20, that will include Atlanta’s Spivey Hall.
The quintessential “down-to-earth American opera star” -- a model that was in place long before Beverly Sills -- DiDonato is known as one of the hardest-working singers on the stage today. Raised in Prairie Village, Kansas, a suburb of Kansas City, she blogs as Yankee Diva on her website, scrutinizes past performances like an elite athlete reviewing last weekend’s game and shrewdly cultivates her talent: a flexible, clear, opulent mezzo with a soprano tint to her voice.
At the moment, it’s hard to talk about DiDonato’s art, ...
By Pierre Ruhe | Feb 10, 2011
We're entering peak bloom of the spring concert season, and from now through May there are compelling events almost every weekend. Here are top picks for the coming days:
It’s a John Adams Saturday. His first opera, “Nixon in China,” from 1987, is credited with nothing less that shaking the risk-averse American opera scene out of its creative stupor. The Metropolitan Opera’s Live in HD series will broadcast it Saturday afternoon, February 12, at high-definition movie theaters around town. And in what might prove to be mere coincidence, at 8 p.m. that evening in Spivey Hall, the estimable St. Lawrence String ...
By Pierre Ruhe | Feb 4, 2011
The applause for David Coucheron’s Mozart concerto was enthusiastic, with the expected standing O that all soloists receive in Symphony Hall. He must have felt relief after a solid showing for his first solo concerto since becoming, in September, the Atlanta Symphony’s concertmaster. At 26, he's billed as the youngest major-orchestra concertmaster in America.
As Coucheron and Atlanta Symphony Orchestra Music Director Robert Spano returned for another bow, the violinist walked to front and center while the conductor headed to the chairs at the back of the stage, behind the horns. He wanted to listen, too.
Playing a 1753 Guadagnini violin, the ...
By Pierre Ruhe | Feb 2, 2011
The Atlanta Opera's 2011-12 season, its fifth at the Cobb Energy Performing Arts Centre, might be remembered as the year of "The Golden Ticket" -- the attention grabber both for opera fans and general audiences. The opera premiered in 2010 and is based on “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,” the fantabulous children’s book by Roald Dahl. The Oompa-Loompas, fat kid Augustus Gloop being swept away by the Chocolate River, the bratty rich girl Veruca Salt, Charlie and his impoverished grandparents sleeping in one bed -- the story and images (from the 1970s Gene Wilder movie) have become baby-boomer staples.
This is great ...
By Pierre Ruhe | Jan 30, 2011
This weekend’s Atlanta Symphony Orchestra program was originally designed as a send-off for Principal Guest Conductor Donald Runnicles, whose home base has migrated from the San Francisco Opera to the Deutsche Oper Berlin and whose career is increasingly based in Europe.
This year also marks a decade that Runnicles and Music Director Robert Spano have partnered, as tag-team maestros, in building the ASO into the increasingly splendid instrument we hear today. They’ve collaborated on stage just once before: at the start of their tenure in Mozart’s Concerto for Two Pianos.
Runnicles has since re-upped for just one more season in Atlanta. And ...
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