NEWS
May 21, 2012 | By Walter F. Naedele, INQUIRER STAFF WRITER
Tyrone Breuninger, a trombonist with the Philadelphia Orchestra from 1967 to 1999, sure kept in touch with his roots. In the 1940s, his father's father decided that he didn't want to perform anymore after decades with the Red Hill Band, named for the northern Montgomery County borough where he lived. So he handed his horn to the 7-year-old Tyrone. By the time he was 12, the youngster was a soloist with the band. Fast-forward to 1995 and, in an interview, the Philadelphia Orchestra stalwart said he was still playing occasional small-town summer concerts with his grandfather's old small-town band.
NEWS
May 15, 2012 | By David Patrick Stearns, INQUIRER STAFF WRITER
PRINCETON — Conductor Rossen Milanov has been making the Philadelphia version of the Grand Tour: Last week was Symphony in C in Camden, Friday was the Curtis (his alma mater) Symphony Orchestra at the Mann Center, and Sunday — most notably — was his end-of-season Princeton Symphony Orchestra concert at Richardson Auditorium here. In a program featuring Brahms' Symphony No. 4 and a new work by Princeton composer Sarah Kirkland Snider, Milanov stepped out from behind his image as dependable, congenial Rossen to become a conductor who wields demonic power.
NEWS
May 14, 2012 | By David Patrick Stearns, Inquirer Music Critic
Like several previous Philadelphia Orchestra conductors, Charles Dutoit appears to be leaving a bit wounded. After visiting for more than 30 years — as guest conductor, director of the orchestra's two summer seasons, and finally as chief conductor of the regular subscription concerts — Dutoit, who is 75, this week concludes a four-year appointment that encompassed the most troubled period of the institution's history. He'll no doubt return as a guest, though not for awhile, as he maintains a respectful distance while Yannick Nézet-Séguin launches his own music-director tenure in the fall.
NEWS
May 12, 2012 | By Peter Dobrin, INQUIRER MUSIC CRITIC
In a way, it's a shame that opera has been consigned to the opera house for so much of its four centuries. The two sides of the form, visual and musical, were of course conceived as a synergistic whole beneath the proscenium. But almost as rebuttal to the Metropolitan Opera's $16 million Ring cycle and its 45-ton set, the Philadelphia Orchestra put on an Elektra on Thursday night in Verizon Hall that, by omitting costumes and sets, burned a deep hole in the theory that the eye has any legitimate claim on the genre.
NEWS
April 28, 2012 | By David Patrick Stearns, INQUIRER MUSIC CRITIC
Sir Simon Rattle, the conductor who got away, returned Thursday for one of his periodic guest dates, and his relationship with the Philadelphia Orchestra, which courted him breathlessly for its music directorship prior to his 1999 Berlin Philharmonic appointment, was all it has ever been (which is a lot). No particularly sexy programming this time, just Germanic masterpieces with the orchestra playing at something close to its peak and Rattle with his characteristic combination of strategy, intellectualism, and heat.
NEWS
April 25, 2012 | By David Patrick Stearns, Inquirer Music Critic
Forget the usual overseas concert tours, when the Philadelphia Orchestra arrives like some grand ocean liner with all routes planned years in advance. The orchestra's May 28-June 6 residency and tour of China, details of which were to be announced Wednesday in Beijing and Philadelphia, was hatched in a matter of months — five full orchestral concerts in four cities, master classes, chamber concerts, many other ancillary events, plus plans stretching five years into the future. "Announcing in the fall and going in May — that's quick time," said orchestra president Allison Vulgamore.
NEWS
April 24, 2012 | By Peter Dobrin, INQUIRER CULTURE WRITER
Resolving the most quarrelsome aspect of its bankruptcy, the Philadelphia Orchestra Association has settled with the national musicians' pension fund that had threatened expensive and time-consuming litigation over the orchestra's withdrawal from the fund. The American Federation of Musicians and Employers' Pension Fund (AFM-EPF), which had filed a $35 million claim in the case, will drop all its legal challenges in exchange for $1.75 million from the orchestra. The development allows the orchestra to approach bankruptcy Judge Eric L. Frank with an uncontested reorganization plan, which means - if the orchestra can wrap up talks with the Kimmel Center over a new lease - that it could be out of bankruptcy within 90 days.
NEWS
April 23, 2012
Can't play without the best It's already apparent that the Phillies without Chase Utley and Ryan Howard are comparable to my wonderful Philadelphia Orchestra attempting to play the masterful "Ninth Symphony" without the services of concertmaster David Kim and the first violin section. It's just not going to happen, either at Citizens Bank Park or Verizon Hall. Jules Slatko, Holland Save the United States Joe Henwood aptly describes the concept, design, and construction of the SS United States as exemplifying the "can do" attitude of our country in his call to action to save that iconic symbol of the American spirit from being reduced to a scrap heap, quite likely in a foreign scrap yard ("Time to rescue another great ship," April 15)
NEWS
April 22, 2012 | By Peter Dobrin, INQUIRER MUSIC CRITIC
Mild-mannered he is not. If Jaap van Zweden were a dinner-party guest, he might dominate table chatter, slide headlong into controversy, and hold forth in a self-important if good-humored tone. As it was, leading the Philadelphia Orchestra in Friday night's all-Russian program, the 51-year-old Dutchman was one of those guests trailing disagreement in his wake while still managing to leave you feeling more stimulated than riled. His most questionable piece of judgment on the podium in Verizon Hall was the sprint through the last movement of Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 4. The pace was simply ridiculous.
NEWS
April 17, 2012 | By David Patrick Stearns, INQUIRER MUSIC CRITIC
By turning toward conducting, Joshua Bell appears to have become a born-again violinist. His arrival as music director of the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields on Monday at the Kimmel Center might have suggested that he's moving away from the repertoire and art on which he made his name — as so many have before him. Paradoxically, however, the opposite has happened. Though Bell has long been one of the most consistent of A-list violinists, recent Philadelphia Orchestra concerto appearances suggested that he had grown a bit comfortable, his playing lacking immediacy aside from his self-authored cadenzas.