ArtsCriticATL.com

At an extraordinarily competitive time for new young pianists, Dejan Lazic, born in Croatia, has managed to jump to the forefront by combining technical brilliance with introspection and playful, fresh interpretations. In the summer of 2008, during his first season performing with orchestras, Lazic played Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 5 in E-flat Major, universally known as [...]

Less than 24 hours after ringing in the new year, Atlanta’s newest contemporary music ensemble, Chamber Cartel, made its debut. According to percussionist Caleb Herron, who formed the group late last year, its bold agenda is to mount a performance of late 20th- and 21st-century music once a month. The concert, however, was almost scuttled [...]

Atlanta’s classical and contemporary music scene was marked in 2011 by a number of memorable events. If obliged to list a Top 5 among them, here’s what I’d choose. 1. The biggest game-changer of the year was not a performance. On February 16, the Atlanta Opera announced that it had received a staggering $9 million bequest from the late [...]

In December 1908, Hans Richter, the great Austro-Hungarian conductor who had led premieres of several of the great masterpieces of Wagner, Brahms, Bruckner and Tchaikovsky, began a rehearsal with the London Symphony Orchestra with these words: “Gentlemen, let us now rehearse the greatest symphony of modern times, and not only in this country.” The work [...]

A near-capacity crowd filled St. Bartholomew’s Episcopal Church on Sunday evening to hear New Trinity Baroque perform its annual “Baroque Candlelight Christmas” concert. The period-instrument ensemble presented an attractive mix of 17th- and 18th-century repertoire, avoiding the trite and gushy fare that so often marks holiday concerts. Artistic Director Predrag Gosta led the evening from [...]

Self-produced home labels represent an important piece of the new model that orchestras are evolving to keep classical music visible as well as vibrant in the 21st-century cultural scene. The drawn-out saga of EMI’s demise brings just the latest reminder that the old paradigms governing the marketplace for recorded music have long since become obsolete. [...]