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"Schubertiade." Nokuthula Ngwenyama. Arpeggione.
   The words may have needed some definition, but the musical message was clear at Sunday afternoon's Cincinnati Chamber Orchestra concert at Memorial Hall in Over-the-Rhine.   - [Read more]

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If I had been able to choose, I doubt I could have come up with a more fitting program for my last concert reviewing music director Paavo Järvi and the Cincinnati Symphony for the Cincinnati Post.  Järvi, paired Mozart's sunny Piano Concerto No. 23 in A Major with the neurotic, chronically unhappy Mahler's Symphony No. 7, which ends in a state of wild euphoria.
   
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Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra principal cellist Eric Kim did honor to
the greatest cellist of the 20th century (and probably any century)
Friday night at Music Hall. Kim was featured soloist in Dmitri Shostakovich's Cello Concerto No. 1, dedicated, as was the entire CSO concert, to the memory of Mstislav Rostropovich who died last spring.   - [Read more]

Every conductor wants to record Beethoven's symphonies at least once.
Paavo Järvi and the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen bring him into the 21st century with Nos. 3 and 8, first installment of their new Beethoven cycle for RCA.
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Igor Stravinsky lied.  Famously known for having declared that "music is by its very nature, essentially powerless to express anything at all," he used the mask of objectivity to craft his own powerful means of expression.  Paavo Jarvi, the Cincinnati May Festival Chorus and Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra packed an expressive punch in his Symphony of Psalms that may have been beyond words, but certainly not beyond his music.
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If you like Tchaikovsky -- and who doesn't? -- you might want to give these new recordings by the Cincinnati Symphony and Pops Orchestras a spin when they hit the stores Oct. 23.  Both are from Telarc.   - [Read more]

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The Boy Scout motto, "be prepared," must be Cincinnati Symphony music director Paavo Järvi's motto, too.  Though it wasn't the most stirring thing that happened at Thursday evening's CSO concert at Music Hall, it did cause a moment of concern
when Järvi's baton struck his music stand and flew into the cello section as guest artist Vadim Repin and the CSO neared the end of Beethoven's Violin Concerto.   - [Read more]

A smile can be worth a thousand words and the one Paavo Järvi cast over his shoulder during a Cincinnati Symphony concert at Lakota Freshman School in West Chester Oct. 9 was one of them.   - [Read more]

When the history of 20th-century music is written, it likely will confirm that some of its greatest scores were written for motion pictures.  Italian composer Nino Rota (1911-79), a favorite of director Federico Fellini, who also wrote for Franco Zeffirelli and Francis Ford Coppola, is one of them. Guest conductor William Eddins brought his Symphony No. 2, "Anni di pellegrinaggio -- Tarantina," to Friday night's Cincinnati Symphony audience at Music Hall.   - [Read more]

It may be a long way back to recapture audiences lost to classical music through the disappearance of music education from the schools, changing lifestyles and perceptions of elitism, but the way back may be through places like Middle-earth. The average age at Saturday night’s performance of Howard Shore’s “Lord of the Rings Symphony” by the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra at Music Hall
appeared much younger than the normal mid-50s demographic.   - [Read more]

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