Peter Oundjian leads Baltimore Symphony, Choral Arts in Beethoven, Bruckner
Beethoven's Ninth, never too far from earshot in Baltimore, is back this week, but with a most welcome companion piece -- Bruckner's "Te Deum."
And the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra has a most welcome companion to conduct this pairing -- Peter Oundjian, who made a memorable appearance with the ensemble in 2009 and is generating telling results again.
Last night's concert at the Meyerhoff produced the most consistently satisfying account of the Ninth I've heard the BSO give. If the Bruckner performance wasn't as solid, it stirred nonetheless.
Oundjian, music director of the excellent Toronto Symphony Orchestra, managed to breathe a great deal of fresh life into the venerable Beethoven work. He did so not by applying any wildly unconventional touches (I wouldn't have minded those a bit, of course), but simply by ...
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First, there was an odd film in 1947 called "Down to Earth," watchable only for the divine Rita Hayworth as the Greek muse Terpsichore who falls in love with a mortal while helping him put on a show.
In the thick of the Great Depression, a new Broadway play took an energetic swing at everything that seemed wrong with the world -- government, big business, social conformity -- and left the audience in stitches. 
Vanessa Perez, a young Venezuelan making waves in an ever-crowded sea of talented pianists, visited Baltimore Saturday afternoon to promote her new, all-Chopin Telarc recording.
Baltimore Concert Opera wrapped up its season with the three vivid one-acters that make up Puccini's "Il Trittico." I caught two of them Friday night at the Engineers Club.
While we await the long-predicted — heck, long-declared — death of the classical recording industry, new releases continue to emerge, day after day.
“I’m going to change Africa,” Fela Kuti says in the ambitious, highly-charged musical about his life and work. “I’m going to change the world.”
Maybe it is not better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.
After 35 years, the Greater Baltimore Youth Orchestras, an educational enterprise involving multiple ensembles, will officially dissolve on Aug. 31, to reemerge on Sept. 1 as the Baltimore Symphony Youth Orchestras.
May is turning out to be a great month for the Baltimore Symphony.
Long before the projectile vomiting, and long after, suppressed feelings and uneasy thoughts are spewed all over the set in Signature Theatre's searing production of Yasmina Reza's "God of Carnage."
I started off at the Maryland Hall Friday night with a program marking the Annapolis Symphony Orchestra's 50th anniversary; continued Saturday night at the Lyric for the finale to the Concert Artists of Baltimore's 25th anniversary season; and concluded Sunday afternoon at Kraushaar Auditorium, where the Baltimore Choral Arts Society wrapped up the 30th anniversary of its music director Tom Hall.
With “Nabucco,” his third opera, Verdi’s career truly began. He would go on to do much finer work, but his talent and potential are unmistakable here.
Meyerhoff Hall was the place to be Thursday night.
I'm not sure what is more intriguing about "Las Meninas," the 2002 Lynn Nottage play on the boards of Rep Stage -- the strange plot itself, or the fact that it might all be grounded in fact.