Afterthoughts: Spellbound by pianist Joyce Yang in Rachmaninoff 3
If you had a front-row seat for Joyce Yang’s performance of Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 3 last Sunday at the Straz Center, you witnessed a bit of magic. Or, more…
Pianist Joyce Yang: Rachmaninoff is like ‘preparing for an ultra-marathon’
Joyce Yang hasn’t climbed Mount Everest, but she’ll need plenty of stamina to reach an equally demanding summit over the next two weeks. Yang will be scaling a musical mountain…
Warm thoughts on Florida, flying with cellos, Elgar concerto
Maximilian Hornung, the 37-year-old German cellist, makes his living going from one city to another with his instrument, enjoying invitations from many of the world’s top orchestras and chamber groups.…
TFO violinist Nancy Chang tunes up for inner challenges of playing Mozart
Nancy Chang might have the toughest job in town this week. As TFO’s associate concertmaster, she’s more than busy studying scores, rehearsing and performing with her colleagues. But for the…
A blazing, unforgettable performance of world-premiere concerto and more
Visceral is an apt one-word description of The Florida Orchestra’s Masterworks performance last weekend, which included a world premiere by a Tampa Bay composer and a blazing rendition of Tchaikovsky’s…
Tampa native delves into the creative process for TFO’s new Violin Concerto
The Florida Orchestra gives a birth of sorts during its upcoming Masterworks program, a musical child who enters the world on stage right before your ears. The father is Michael…
Pianist Alexandra Dariescu champions women composers, their legacy
For centuries, classical music has been akin to a private men’s club. Yes, many gifted performers and composers in the past were women, but the male monopoly and misogyny into…
Swan Lake meets Dracula: Top 10 classical masterpieces in movies
Growing up in Los Angeles as a kid, I was hooked on all the Hollywood monster movies that my liberal parents allowed me to watch on late-night television. My traditional…
Carmina Burana Afterthoughts: A rousing start to the season
If you attended the Tampa Bay Bucs game and a TFO concert over the weekend, you got a supercharged dose of the same music. Both football and orchestra fans felt…
Amadeus Live: The genius of Mozart comes alive with TFO
Not everyone got to know Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart by listening to his masterpieces through concerts and recordings. Millions met him in Miloš Forman’s 1984 film Amadeus, a fictionalized vision of…