Hockey Night in…..Symphony Hall?

Looking out at the snow and ice on a twenty-degree day, a story from yesterday’s Toronto Globe & Mail to warm the cockles o’my ice-skating heart: news of a Hockey Symphony…Now, there have been a fair amount of baseball-themed symphonic pieces (including Robert Russell Bennett’s “Dodger Symphony,” with a cameo at the premiere by Red Barber himself), but this is the first I’ve heard of an ode to hockey in the concert hall. California native Nagano explained that it all came about as part of his ongoing effort to Get To Know His New Country:

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Concert Previews for Winter/Spring 2008

Some of the most fun I have is doing a number of Concert Preview conversations for the subscribers to the Washington Performing Arts Society and other performing-arts organizations in the D.C. area. Here’s what I’ve got on tap so far for the Winter/Spring of 2008:
Sunday, February 3, 3:00 pm Kennedy [...]

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Concert Previews: Fall 2007

Here’s a look at some of the Concert Previews (e.g., pre-concert lectures) I’ll be giving for subscribers to the concert season of the Washington Performing Arts Society:
Wednesday, October 10, 8:00 pm The Music Center at Strathmore
La Scala PhilharmonicRiccardo Chailly, conductorThe long-awaited D.C.-area debut of the La Scala Philharmonic, led by the charismatic Riccardo Chailly, [...]

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Fireworks on the Radio – A Capitol Fourth

One of my summertime rituals during my days at the downtown network was to produce the radio version of A Capitol Fourth, the annual music, dance, and fireworks extravaganza originating from the West Lawn of the Capitol building and broadcast around the world. And, in truth, it was an event I produced with [...]

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Critics and Clapping

Woke up this morning thinking about the old saw, attributed to Finnish composer Jean Sibelius to “Pay no attention to what the critics say; there has never been set up a statue in honor of a critic.” (Though actually Alex Ross went out and found three not long ago….)
Anyway. The Sibelius [...]

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Slava!

Can’t forget to note that today is also the 80th birthday of Russian cellist & conductor Mstislav Rostropovich. Performance Today is doing a series of tributes all this week – today featuring a brief interview with Emerson quartet cellist David Finckel, along with a classic Slava performance (from 1964) of the finale of [...]

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The Global Village of Music

And now for something completely different: Delighted by a trio of great stories emanting from my old network the past few days. Car horns and tire rims making beautiful music from Ghana, Arkansas high school choristers giving it all they’ve got at the National High School Choral Festival at [...]

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A Tale of Two Orchestras: the "other" NPR

Terrific review (more of a commentary, actually) by Bernard Holland in the New York Times the other day about the duelling Russian Orchestras currently touring the US – the Russian National Orchestra, (sometimes called the RNO), and the recently-constituted National Philharmonic of Russia, a/k/a the NPR. Common to both of them is violinist [...]

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Living Beethovens

The consistently interesting conductor Marin Alsop’s debut season as the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra’s new Music Director promises to be one of the most interesting seasons in Bawlmur in years. Tim Smith in today’s Baltimore Sun has all the details. Sample grab:
“With cheap seats, conversations with high-profile composers and programming that [...]

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