Philadelphia Orchestra

In 1973, when the Philadelphia Orchestra made history in China, Inquirer music critic Daniel Webster was there. Now David Patrick Stearns reports on the 2013 visit, building on this long relationship. MACAU - Where else does your hotel serve cupcakes and ice cream for breakfast? And offer wake-up calls from Shrek? In Cantonese? This pleasure capital of Asia - one that is said to outstrip Las Vegas for superficial splendor - is only the latest unlikely host of the Philadelphia Orchestra on its 40th anniversary tour of China, but in two concerts that were sold out before Friday's video of the musicians playing Dvorak on their rain-delayed flight went viral (with 102,000 You Tube hits in 24 hours)

SHANGHAI - After 14 hours in the tiny seats of a trans-global flight, the Philadelphia Orchestra musicians might question the reasons for performing so far from home, so regularly, in what is becoming an annual springtime visit to China. It's tough. The 6-foot-4 cellist Richard Harlow seemed to spend as much time stretching his legs in the aisle as he did sitting. Another cellist, Robert Cafaro, could only tune out the packed-to-the-gills flight by sleeping in his sunglasses as the plane traveled past Greenland, over the northern ice cap and south, high above Russian cities most people hadn't heard of. But once on the ground in Shanghai, cameras flashed, TV crews came in for close-ups, and large bouquets of roses greeted the nine musicians who were part of the original 1973 debut, when the Philadelphia Orchestra was the first American ensemble to play in the People's Republic of China since the Maoist revolution.

When Ann and Bill Hozack bought it in 1996, Homewoods, their storied Chestnut Hill estate, was in a state of neglect, the gardens terribly overgrown. That they saw beyond the vines is evident in the refurbished grand Norman-style home whose serene backyard is now a frequent site for garden-party benefits. Two have been held there this spring, and tomorrow the Hozacks will host well over 150 guests for the Philadelphia Orchestra's tony "Toys for Big Boys" event. "It's a fabulous house.

In 1973, when the Philadelphia Orchestra made history in China, Inquirer music critic Daniel Webster was there. Now David Patrick Stearns reports on the 2013 visit, building on this long relationship. TIANJIN, China - "Wasn't that a mud field last year?" It was an idle observation made as the Philadelphia Orchestra's buses cruised along the scenic route to the Tianjin Performing Arts Center for a Wednesday evening concert, passing meticulously landscaped parks filled with beds of plump crimson tulips.

In 1973, when the Philadelphia Orchestra made history in China, Inquirer music critic Daniel Webster was there. Now David Patrick Stearns reports on the 2013 visit, building on this long relationship. MACAU - As it prepares to leave China for home, has the Philadelphia Orchestra ever been so widely refracted? Across the Cotai Strip of posh gambling palaces where close to 180,000 people come and go every day, the orchestra is seen on outdoor video screens that announce the final concert of its 40th-anniversary tour of China on Sunday.

This was no running with the bulls in Pamplona, but for dozens of cello lovers, the chance to mingle - and play - with professional musicians from the Philadelphia Orchestra on Saturday was a thrill all its own. The "cello play-in" filled the typically spare lobby of the Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts with musicians of all ages and skill levels. Also on hand, of course, were their parents, grandparents and teachers, indeed anyone who loves the sound of a cello in classical, pop and holiday music.

In 1973, when the Philadelphia Orchestra made history in China, Inquirer music critic Daniel Webster was there. Now David Patrick Stearns reports on the 2013 visit, building on this long relationship. BEIJING - The two concertmasters bowed together Thursday, the Philadelphia Orchestra's David Kim ceding the first-desk seat to the China National Symphony's Yunzhi Liu. Though the collaboration at the National Center for the Performing Arts (known as the Egg, a reference to its glass and titanium dome)

JOSEPH C. LANZA, a Philadelphia Orchestra violinist since 1958, died of pneumonia early Saturday morning. He was 73. "His life was the orchestra," Roslyn, his wife of 53 years said. "He was totally committed and dedicated to music. " On Saturday evening, before the orchestra's final concert of the season, Bach's "Air on a G String" was performed in his honor, and his chair was left empty. Lanza held the title of assistant principal second violinist, and could prominently be seen playing with youthful excitement.

In the months to come, the Delaware Valley's museums, cultural institutions and performing arts groups will be keying many of their activities to the 200th anniversary of the convention that met in this city in the hot summer of 1787 and produced what George Washington later called "that precious depository of American happiness, the Constitution of the United States. " Starting this month and continuing through 1987, there'll be exhibits and historical presentations, plays and parades, conferences and symposiums, lectures and ceremonies, culminating - but not ending - Sept.

Yefim Bronfman was the soloist in Prokofiev's brashly entertaining Third Piano Concerto, whose energies enlivened the Philadelphia Orchestra program, under Charles Dutoit, last night at the Academy of Music. Bronfman, 34, and a frequent visitor to this orchestra, possesses that brilliance of tone and overall alacrity to make the most of its glittering timbres and escalations, while his command of the work's sonorities is impressively virile. There was much to admire in the keyboard's climbing, spiraling passagework - its perpetual fevers that can exhaust a player's busy wrist.

In 1973, when the Philadelphia Orchestra made history in China, Inquirer music critic Daniel Webster was there. Now David Patrick Stearns reports on the 2013 visit, building on this long relationship. MACAU - Where else does your hotel serve cupcakes and ice cream for breakfast? And offer wake-up calls from Shrek? In Cantonese? This pleasure capital of Asia - one that is said to outstrip Las Vegas for superficial splendor - is only the latest unlikely host of the Philadelphia Orchestra on its 40th anniversary tour of China, but in two concerts that were sold out before Friday's video of the musicians playing Dvorak on their rain-delayed flight went viral (with 102,000 You Tube hits in 24 hours)

In 1973, when the Philadelphia Orchestra made history in China, Inquirer music critic Daniel Webster was there. Now David Patrick Stearns reports on the 2013 visit, building on this long relationship. MACAU - As it prepares to leave China for home, has the Philadelphia Orchestra ever been so widely refracted? Across the Cotai Strip of posh gambling palaces where close to 180,000 people come and go every day, the orchestra is seen on outdoor video screens that announce the final concert of its 40th-anniversary tour of China on Sunday.

BEIJING - The Philadelphia Orchestra was divided but not conquered. The orchestra's 40th anniversary tour of China was moving on to Macau on Friday - its last and glitziest tour stop - when a handful of musicians and orchestra executives on the early-bird flight from Beijing were stuck on the tarmac due to heavy rain. The takeoff was delayed six hours. Nonetheless -. "Our musicians would like to offer you a musical surprise," announced orchestra president Allison Vulgamore to the marooned, disgruntled passengers.

Read David Patrick Stearns' accounts of the Philadelphia Orchestra's 40th anniversary tour and residency in China at www.inquirer.com/ entertainment : Wednesday Music for the quake-shaken Tuesday A violinist brings the music to ailing kids Sunday Kid-centric on National Children's Day Saturday Orchestra reaches out to welcoming Hangzhou Thursday China's orchestra evolution...

In 1973, when the Philadelphia Orchestra made history in China, Inquirer music critic Daniel Webster was there. Now David Patrick Stearns reports on the 2013 visit, building on this long relationship. TIANJIN, China - "Wasn't that a mud field last year?" It was an idle observation made as the Philadelphia Orchestra's buses cruised along the scenic route to the Tianjin Performing Arts Center for a Wednesday evening concert, passing meticulously landscaped parks filled with beds of plump crimson tulips.

In 1973, when the Philadelphia Orchestra made history in China, Inquirer music critic Daniel Webster was there. Now David Patrick Stearns reports on the 2013 visit, building on this long relationship. BEIJING - The two concertmasters bowed together Thursday, the Philadelphia Orchestra's David Kim ceding the first-desk seat to the China National Symphony's Yunzhi Liu. Though the collaboration at the National Center for the Performing Arts (known as the Egg, a reference to its glass and titanium dome)

In 1973, when the Philadelphia Orchestra made history in China, Inquirer music critic Daniel Webster was there. Now David Patrick Stearns reports on the 2013 visit, building on this long relationship. SHANGHAI - Not all of this city's young music lovers were physically able to get to the weekend's Philadelphia Orchestra concerts. Some couldn't even get out of bed. Others were tethered to oxygen tubes and IV drips. So Philadelphia Orchestra violinist Phil Kates went to them, at the Shanghai Children's Medical Center, where children from all over this vast country are sent for treatment of cancer, mostly leukemia.

In 1973, when the Philadelphia Orchestra made history in China, Inquirer music critic Daniel Webster was there. Now David Patrick Stearns reports on the 2013 visit, building on this long relationship. SHANGHAI, China - Saturday was National Children's Day in China, and the Philadelphia Orchestra ended the first week of its 40th anniversary tour and residency on a kid-centric note. In the afternoon, two orchestra members faced perhaps one of the least predictable audiences of their careers at the "Angel Salon," the nickname of a weekly music class at which Beethoven is taught to autistic children.

In 1973, when the Philadelphia Orchestra made history in China, Inquirer music critic Daniel Webster was there. Now David Patrick Stearns reports on the current 2013 visit, building on this long relationship. HANGZHOU, China - Maybe they just needed a tune - a big, boisterous one - to show them what the Philadelphia Orchestra is. In the first concert of the 40th Anniversary Tour of China on Friday, the orchestra showed no signs of jet lag during the robust Richard Strauss tone poem Don Juan . But not until the program moved on to Tchaikovsky's less-compact, more broadly etched Capriccio Italien did the sold-out house at the 1,500-seat Hangzhou Grand Theatre respond with something more than muted enthusiasm.

SHANGHAI - After 14 hours in the tiny seats of a trans-global flight, the Philadelphia Orchestra musicians might question the reasons for performing so far from home, so regularly, in what is becoming an annual springtime visit to China. It's tough. The 6-foot-4 cellist Richard Harlow seemed to spend as much time stretching his legs in the aisle as he did sitting. Another cellist, Robert Cafaro, could only tune out the packed-to-the-gills flight by sleeping in his sunglasses as the plane traveled past Greenland, over the northern ice cap and south, high above Russian cities most people hadn't heard of. But once on the ground in Shanghai, cameras flashed, TV crews came in for close-ups, and large bouquets of roses greeted the nine musicians who were part of the original 1973 debut, when the Philadelphia Orchestra was the first American ensemble to play in the People's Republic of China since the Maoist revolution.