Curtis Institute

Most artists use Philadelphia to warm up before a New York recital. Such is the caliber of Curtis Institute alumni such as Benita Valente or Richard Goode, a New York stage can serve as preparation for an appearance at Curtis Hall. Goode returned "home" last night to reprise a piano recital of Schumann, Beethoven and Schubert, given two days ago in Manhattan. As Valente did recently, the pianist donated his services to benefit the school's Alumni Society. With only 230 seats to the intimate space and the $13 admission, the benefit may be seen as a minor fund-raiser.

School's been in session just weeks, so a few eyebrows arched at the appearance of Ein Heldenleben on the Curtis Institute of Music's first orchestra concert of the season. The score, treacherous and sophisticated, should come with skull and crossbones and the words nicht fur Kinder on the cover. When Carlos Miguel Prieto led the ensemble in the Strauss workout Monday night in Verizon Hall, eyebrows were raised - not in doubt, but with awe. The work features intermittent but extended violin solos, played here by concertmaster Nigel Armstrong.

Say you're a college student and you're moving. It's a headache, but moving always is. So you grit your teeth and get through it. You sort, pack, clean and fret - about roommates, dorm space, and the $20 you have to stretch before your student loan comes through. But say you're a student at the Curtis Institute of Music, and you're moving. You don't just get a headache. You may get a temple-throbbing, mind-numbing migraine. In the four dignified mansions that make up the institute on Rittenhouse Square, there is no dormitory space.

Nolan Miller, 73, of Haddonfield, whose ultrarefined sound led the legendarily blended French horn section of the Philadelphia Orchestra for several decades, died Sunday, April 7, at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania. He had been battling leukemia and died of a stroke, said his wife, Marjorie. Mr. Miller joined the orchestra as coprincipal horn upon graduation from the Curtis Institute of Music in 1965 and assumed the principal horn spot in the 1978-79 season. He retired from the orchestra after four decades, in 2005.

Curtis Institute of Music vice president and dean John R. Mangan has resigned, school officials said. Mangan, 47, who held the post for 31/2 years, declined to speak about his reasons for leaving the conservatory, referring a reporter to Curtis' press office. "John resigned on Jan. 4 indicating that, as Curtis prepares for the next strategic phase of its future, he made the decision to step down," said a spokeswoman. "He plans to explore other opportunities in his field. " At Curtis, the dean oversees musical and liberal-arts curriculum and the library, and works closely with president/CEO Roberto Díaz and others on student and faculty matters.

It's no fun playing to an empty room, especially when you can share your music with the world. So Lisamarie Vana, a student at the Curtis Institute of Music, decided yesterday to play to the pedestrians in Rittenhouse Square from an open window in the institute building, near 18th and Locust streets. Vana is a second-year student from Nebraska.

The Curtis Institute of Music has built a roomy new stage, and it is accessible to nearly anyone who can type www.curtis.edu/CurtisPerforms . Performances by Curtis students, faculty, and alumni are being loaded onto the site, making available - free - videos of ebullient Mendelssohn string quintets, contemplative Piazzolla guitar works, popular Rossini arias, and other pieces. Eventually, the site will offer dozens of recorded performances taking place at the school and in Verizon Hall, as well as selected live streaming.

Most schools might prefer that graduating students show up to collect their diplomas. But at Saturday's ceremonies launching 36 graduates into uncertain futures, the Curtis Institute of Music noted a no-show with some pride: Canadian violinist Nikki Chooi sent his regrets, as he was busy being a finalist in Belgium's prestigious Queen Elisabeth Competition. Several names on the roster of graduates were able to don caps and gowns only through luck of the calendar. Almost any member of this year's class — busy pianist Haochen Zhang, rising violinist Benjamin Beilman, soprano Allison Sanders, who was tapped for the Philadelphia Orchestra's recent Elektra — could have been otherwise engaged in a career taking him or her around the globe.

Florence Frantz Vennett Snyder, 85, an accomplished pianist and alumna of the Curtis Institute of Music, died Monday at Sinai Hospital in Baltimore. A resident of Baltimore, Mrs. Snyder had lived and worked in Philadelphia. After graduating from the Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore in 1926, Mrs. Snyder won a scholarship to study piano and accompanying at the Curtis Institute. She was a student of the renowned piano instructor Madame Isabelle Venegerova from 1927 until graduation in 1934.

However strenuously Schoenberg's Pierrot Lunaire portrays madness, the listener's reaction is often bewilderment and disorientation, mainly because this song cycle about a comedia dell'arte character becoming drunk on moonlight completely bypasses typical theatrical portrayals of madness. It's insanity from the inside out. So on Tuesday at the Barnes Foundation, when art lovers hoped to catch up with the 101-year-old Schoenberg masterpiece alongside more readily apprehensible paintings of the same era, you wished them the best of luck, knowing that you can listen to Pierrot for decades and never feel on top of it. The occasion was the Curtis Institute's debut at the Barnes, in what may be the first of many concerts there and one that played well off the foundation's art collection.

The Curtis Institute of Music has built a roomy new stage, and it is accessible to nearly anyone who can type www.curtis.edu/CurtisPerforms . Performances by Curtis students, faculty, and alumni are being loaded onto the site, making available - free - videos of ebullient Mendelssohn string quintets, contemplative Piazzolla guitar works, popular Rossini arias, and other pieces. Eventually, the site will offer dozens of recorded performances taking place at the school and in Verizon Hall, as well as selected live streaming.

However strenuously Schoenberg's Pierrot Lunaire portrays madness, the listener's reaction is often bewilderment and disorientation, mainly because this song cycle about a comedia dell'arte character becoming drunk on moonlight completely bypasses typical theatrical portrayals of madness. It's insanity from the inside out. So on Tuesday at the Barnes Foundation, when art lovers hoped to catch up with the 101-year-old Schoenberg masterpiece alongside more readily apprehensible paintings of the same era, you wished them the best of luck, knowing that you can listen to Pierrot for decades and never feel on top of it. The occasion was the Curtis Institute's debut at the Barnes, in what may be the first of many concerts there and one that played well off the foundation's art collection.

Nolan Miller, 73, of Haddonfield, whose ultrarefined sound led the legendarily blended French horn section of the Philadelphia Orchestra for several decades, died Sunday, April 7, at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania. He had been battling leukemia and died of a stroke, said his wife, Marjorie. Mr. Miller joined the orchestra as coprincipal horn upon graduation from the Curtis Institute of Music in 1965 and assumed the principal horn spot in the 1978-79 season. He retired from the orchestra after four decades, in 2005.

Catching the entrepreneurial social-media wave, the Curtis Institute of Music says it will offer two free online courses through Coursera - one on Beethoven piano sonatas, the other a broad survey of Western music - that will open the school beyond its narrow specialization to the general music-appreciation student. Curtis is one of 29 schools announced Thursday as new affiliates of Silicon Valley-based Coursera, the massive open online course (MOOC) platform that, despite having debuted less than a year ago, now claims about 1.45 million course enrollments per month.

Curtis Institute of Music vice president and dean John R. Mangan has resigned, school officials said. Mangan, 47, who held the post for 31/2 years, declined to speak about his reasons for leaving the conservatory, referring a reporter to Curtis' press office. "John resigned on Jan. 4 indicating that, as Curtis prepares for the next strategic phase of its future, he made the decision to step down," said a spokeswoman. "He plans to explore other opportunities in his field. " At Curtis, the dean oversees musical and liberal-arts curriculum and the library, and works closely with president/CEO Roberto Díaz and others on student and faculty matters.

School's been in session just weeks, so a few eyebrows arched at the appearance of Ein Heldenleben on the Curtis Institute of Music's first orchestra concert of the season. The score, treacherous and sophisticated, should come with skull and crossbones and the words nicht fur Kinder on the cover. When Carlos Miguel Prieto led the ensemble in the Strauss workout Monday night in Verizon Hall, eyebrows were raised - not in doubt, but with awe. The work features intermittent but extended violin solos, played here by concertmaster Nigel Armstrong.

PRINCETON JUNCTION - The brass band couldn't make it. The banners outside the studio were for an athletic event at Mercer County Community College. Thus, in its own unglamorous way, did WWFM-FM debut its significant new show on Aug. 4 that takes the Curtis Institute of Music out of its Field Concert Hall headquarters and onto the airwaves every Saturday at noon. You'd think this radio milestone would have been promoted with the best-known piece ever written at Curtis, Samuel Barber's Adagio for Strings . "Nah!

Most schools might prefer that graduating students show up to collect their diplomas. But at Saturday's ceremonies launching 36 graduates into uncertain futures, the Curtis Institute of Music noted a no-show with some pride: Canadian violinist Nikki Chooi sent his regrets, as he was busy being a finalist in Belgium's prestigious Queen Elisabeth Competition. Several names on the roster of graduates were able to don caps and gowns only through luck of the calendar. Almost any member of this year's class — busy pianist Haochen Zhang, rising violinist Benjamin Beilman, soprano Allison Sanders, who was tapped for the Philadelphia Orchestra's recent Elektra — could have been otherwise engaged in a career taking him or her around the globe.

With a romantic title like Elegy for Young Lovers , the Hans Werner Henze opera that had a hugely significant Philadelphia premiere on Wednesday leaves you wanting to warn your friends: Don't expect soaring love duets like La Boheme . Or music with any typical sense of heat. Yet that would do a disservice to the kind of alternative dramaturgy that's part of what makes Henze's 1961 modernist-era opera a singular experience whose best aspects do much the opposite of what opera is expected to do. The beauty of this joint effort by Curtis Opera Theatre, Opera Company of Philadelphia and The Kimmel Center (whose Perelman Theater is the venue)

You'd think this town would finally be ready for Debussy's Pelléas et Mélisande. That infamous Philadelphia Orchestra concert version of the opera - it started with a well-populated Academy of Music and ended nearly empty - was long ago in 1986. But with far fewer tickets to sell, the Academy of Vocal Arts opened a five-performance run on Saturday with something seldom seen in its tiny Helen Corning Warden Theater - empty seats. Not a lot, but some. And this production is close to the real thing, not the shortened Impressions of Pelleas seen occasionally at the Curtis Institute.