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3 weeks ago | 
classical-scene.com | Lee Eiseman
Next weekend, April 3-5, BSO subscribers will be hearing guest conductor Dima Slobodeniouk lead Adolphus Hailstork’s Lachrymosa: 1919, Stravinsky’s Symphony in Three Movements, and the Elgar Violin Concerto with violinist Frank Peter Zimmermann. We had a pleasant conversation with Hailstork, a composer well represented at the BSO and Pops. Next weekend should be busy and exciting for you.
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3 weeks ago | 
classical-scene.com | Lee Eiseman
The Handel and Haydn Society’s masterfully played, vividly sung, and artfully conducted traversal of Beethoven’s Mass in C Major, came to Friday night’s enthusiastic Symphony Hall crowd freighted with meaning and plenteously endowed with purpose. And yet, for this listener, it disappointingly broke from the mood of sparkling jollity the lively forces had earlier found for the Spring section of Haydn’s The Seasons.
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1 month ago | 
classical-scene.com | Lee Eiseman
On the basis of what I heard last night, the Du Bois Orchestra has, in ten short years, fulfilled its mission to become Cambridge’s premier professional orchestra. The approximately 75 paid players with a few auditioned-volunteers filled our ears with bold, well-burnished, and utterly dependable sonorities within the resonant confines of First Church, Cambridge for a program that both excited and consoled.
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1 month ago | 
classical-scene.com | Lee Eiseman
Touring organist extraordinaire and genial tour guide Ken Cowan led a grateful Groton Hill crowd of organ-concert newbies and cognoscenti through five quite different instruments spanning centuries and continents via the Hauptwerk Organ of 15 Organs. Through the voices of 40 speakers blasting and whispering with 49,600 watts, the brilliantly engineered compendium of the sampled sounds opened our ears to historic and decidedly varied instruments in Holland, England, France, and Buffalo.
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2 months ago | 
classical-scene.com | Lee Eiseman
Ever since I introduced the Dover (String) Quartet to a (private) Boston audience in 2015, I have been following the exemplary foursome’s welcome rise, and have witnessed its local performances in 2018, 2021, and 2022 with great pleasure.
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2 months ago | 
classical-scene.com | Lee Eiseman
MIT’s much-anticipated Edward and Joyce Linde Music Building officially opens its doors to the public in a gala free-for-all* Sonic Jubilance running from 1:00 to 7:30 pm on February 15th. Meanwhile we got to preview the new facility Saturday in the context of pianist Mi-Eun Kim’s spectacular Saturday afternoon faculty recital (reviewed HERE). The BSO Chamber players will celebrate the space on March 2nd as part of a collaborative Artfinity Gala.
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2 months ago | 
classical-scene.com | Lee Eiseman
Korean-American pianist Mi-Eun Kim, Director of Keyboard Studies at MIT inaugurated the Institute’s much-anticipated Building W18 (the Edward and Joyce Linde Music Building) and its very promising New York Steinway D (with Spirio R) for the public on Saturday afternoon. [click HERE for more about the space].
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Jan 22, 2025 | 
classical-scene.com | Lee Eiseman
Gabriel Chodos died on Saturday at the age of 85 after a long decline. He had chaired the NEC piano department for 25 years. Renowned as a teacher*, concert artist, and recording artist, Chodos also spent many summers as a mainstay of the Aspen Music Festival faculty. With Aube Tzerko—a Schnabel student—as his principal teacher, and with Schoenberg-assistant Leonard Stein as his theory teacher, Chodos stood in a direct line from two 20th-century masters of the European classical tradition.
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Jan 13, 2025 | 
classical-scene.com | Lee Eiseman
New England Conservatory’s new shiny black (watch out stagehands, it’s already showing your fingerprints) American Steinway Model D made its debut last night in the hands of Taiwanese American pianist Evan Wong. His monumental partnership with Queen Elisabeth International Violin Competition laureate William Wei resulted in an important and memorable concert for the Foundation for Chinese Performing Arts on Saturday night at Jordan Hall.
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Nov 26, 2024 | 
classical-scene.com | Lee Eiseman
Chameleon Arts Ensemble’s “Origins” spanned (with one exception) a narrow range of eight years…not in dates of composition, but rather in the spread among 15-, 19-, and 23-year-old composers. The fourth may have been 45 years old, but his first composition after a “self-imposed hiatus,” also felt like a re-nascence as it reflected on his childhood.
