Category: Seattle
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By Philippa Kiraly Some years ago, the Early Music Guild advertised a part time position for Marketing and Development, and ended up hiring a young woman named Kris Kwapis. Not coincidentally, she also happens to be one of the continent’s best performers on Baroque trumpet and in demand for concerts, as well as being a…
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By Philippa Kiraly It’s always enlightening to go to hear Seattle Symphony musicians playing chamber music, as they now do regularly at Nordstrom Recital Hall. The chance to hear players not merged in a group, with often unusual offerings, were again what drew audience to Friday night’s concert. The unusual was the string quartet, his…
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By R.M. Campbell If ever there were a symphony program designed to please, it was Thursday night at Benaroya Hall with the Seattle Symphony Orchestra playing Gershwin and Tchaikovsky. Predictably audiences will love it. A third work was performed, in its Seattle premiere — Cindy McTee’s “Double Play.” Born in Tacoma and educated at Pacific…
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By R.M. Campbell Yevgeny Sudin made his Seattle debut at Meany Hall two years ago. I wasn’t there but by all accounts the concert was a huge success. The Russian pianist returned Wednesday night, offering Haydn, Shostakovich, Chopin, Liszt and Ravel. It was a glorious way to end the 2010-2011 President’s Piano Series. Although he…
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By Philippa Kiraly For the past year, Pacific Northwest Ballet’s artistic director, Peter Boal, dance historian Marian Smith, and Boal’s assistant and choreographic decipherer Doug Fullington, have been working on a restaging of the romantic ballet “Giselle” which goes back to the original score of composer Adolph Adam, original and extensive 1842 rehearsal notes, a…
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By Philippa Kiraly When Early Music Guild, Seattle Theatre Group, and Spectrum Dance Theater collaborate on a production, you know it’s going to bring in a lot of expertise in various fields and strong characters who will need to work together. When you add in Stephen Stubbs of Pacific Musicworks, Arne Zaslove, doyen of Commedia…
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By Philippa Kiraly The concert title sounded beguiling, and the performance lived up to it. The third concert in Mostly Nordic’s annual series at the Nordic Heritage Museum featured an Icelandic flutist with music by a half dozen Icelandic composers (plus some Prokofiev, the “Mostly” part of the series name), but it also included some…
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Orchestra Seattle will mount one of the classical music highlights of the spring – Bach’s epic St. Matthew Passion – this Sunday at First Free Methodist Church. As has been the case all season, a guest conductor will helm the orchestra. This week it is noted Bach specialist Hans-Jurgen Schnoor. Earlier in the week, I…
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By R.M. Campbell George Balanchine’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” is one of the most enduring, and magical, ballets in Pacific Northwest Ballet’s repertory. It never wears out its welcome. And so it was revived this weekend at McCaw Hall. The ballet had its local premiere in 1985 and over the next decade was frequently performed.…
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Reading through the reviews of Thursday’s performance of the Mother Goose Suite I am struck by how varied the reviews are. Sumi Hahn, in the Seattle Times said: “Ravel’s “Mother Goose” Suite was a fairy princess, draped in gossamer and haloed in radiance. The Seattle Symphony players were exquisite on this series of miniatures, playing…