David Patrick Stearns

Philadelphia

Music Critic and Contributor at Freelance

Articles

For Jerusalem Quartet, Shostakovich Cycle Is Dive Into Elusive Layers

1 week ago | classicalvoiceamerica.org | David Patrick Stearns

PERSPECTIVE — Playing all 15 of Dmitri Shostakovich’s string quartets over five concerts is the Jerusalem Quartet’s trademark. This season, the highlight of the ensemble’s national tour is a complete Shostakovich cycle played in chronological order, presented at the Cleveland Museum of Art by the Cleveland Chamber Music Society April 21-30 to conclude its 75th anniversary season. But this will not be the early-middle-late journey typical of Beethoven.
Curtis Opera ‘Candide’ is generally good with some exceptional sparks

1 week ago | mahoningmatters.com | David Patrick Stearns

Great ideas gone astray immediately tipped off the Friday opening night audience for Curtis Opera Theatre's Candide to expect a showbiz romp with some twists, rather than satirical social commentary that could give the show renewed bite. That's a dichotomy that encapsulates the show's history - it has more versions than Boris Godunov - since it first rose from the repressive chill of 1950s McCarthyism.
Curtis Opera ‘Candide’ is generally good with some exceptional sparks

1 week ago | inquirer.com | David Patrick Stearns

Great ideas gone astray immediately tipped off the Friday opening night audience for Curtis Opera Theatre’s Candide to expect a showbiz romp with some twists, rather than satirical social commentary that could give the show renewed bite. That’s a dichotomy that encapsulates the show’s history — it has more versions than Boris Godunov — since it first rose from the repressive chill of 1950s McCarthyism.
The Philadelphia Orchestra performs Mahler’s ‘loud’ ‘Symphony No. 6′ at the top of its considerable form

1 week ago | inquirer.com | David Patrick Stearns

Tragedy isn’t always autobiographical. Proof of that is Mahler’s Symphony No. 6, which temperamentally lives up to its subtitle “Tragic,” but was written during a rather happy period in the composer’s life. And at the Friday Philadelphia Orchestra performance in Marian Anderson Hall, the symphony’s four boulder-like movements had tragedy co-excoexisting every other extreme emotion, cheek by jowl, sometimes simultaneously, under music director Yannick Nézet-Séguin.
Weill-Lerner ‘Love Life’ Dusted Off, Buffed Up, Made Fascinating Again

3 weeks ago | classicalvoiceamerica.org | David Patrick Stearns

NEW YORK — Recklessly ambitious, bewilderingly epic, the Kurt Weill/Alan Jay Lerner musical Love Life has been forgotten, lost, and periodically resurrected as visionary theater. But is it good? Sometimes. In the midst of rehearsal in March 2020 when the pandemic hit and canceled it, the New York City Center Encores! production of Love Life finally opened March 26 (for seven performances through March 30) to a packed house that was ready to forgive the show’s weaknesses.
Schiff On His Boycott: ‘If I Were A U.S. Citizen, I Would Move To Canada’

3 weeks ago | classicalvoiceamerica.org | David Patrick Stearns

PERSPECTIVE — Pianist András Schiff began the velvet revolution in Bach pianism in the early 1980s, establishing an emotionally generous alternative to the analytical Glenn Gould, earning the admiration of Daniel Barneboim, and giving a place at the table for like-minded pianists such as Angela Hewitt. His repertoire has expanded toward Bartók, his choice of instruments now includes clavichord, and his concerts often have him conducting from the keyboard.
Amid Blast And Balm, String Troupe Maps Out A Walk On The Wild Side

4 weeks ago | classicalvoiceamerica.org | David Patrick Stearns

NEW YORK — Courage and fortitude aren’t typical listening requirements spelled out in pre-performance talks, but at the Darkness Sounding festival March 21 and 22 at the 92NY, the Wild Up ensemble warranted a fair warning. East Coast modern-music groups hold no edge on Christopher Rountree’s musician collective, founded in 2010 in Los Angeles, and returning after its Julius Eastman festival here burned a hole in the brains of those who heard it two years ago.
Lang Lang's Philadelphia Orchestra "Spotlight Series" concert at Kimmel

1 month ago | inquirer.com | David Patrick Stearns

Eternally youthful but maturing in many of the best ways, Lang Lang, now 42, has emerged into artistic adulthood: Having zigzagged his way from his Curtis Institute student years, he has reached classical credibility after sidetracks (his Disney album) and sidelines (an extended injury-related hiatus).
Three rare pipe organs, Rosalinde, Hildy, and Veronica, are among Philadelphia’s newest residents

1 month ago | inquirer.com | David Patrick Stearns

Centuries often collide in Philadelphia, but rarely like this. Three fragile, rare European pipe organs, which have somehow survived multiple centuries, have arrived and are being heard at First Presbyterian Church off Rittenhouse Square. Meticulously designed and decorated instruments with German, Dutch, and Italian roots, the pipe organs are older than Philadelphia, even older than the United States, and are making sounds heard a half millennium ago.
A reframed Moby-Dick surfaces at the Metropolitan Opera — review

1 month ago | ft.com | David Patrick Stearns

The Great White Whale has been waiting in the wings of the Metropolitan Opera for years, and is still only glimpsed. No matter.