Thursday, October 28, 2010

LATimesBlogs: 'Music Review: a Pasadena Symphony restart'

[Violin soloist Anne Akiko Meyers and Maestro James DePreist with the the Pasadena Symphony.]

John Malveaux of http://www.MusicUNTOLD.com sends AfriClassical this word of the Oct. 23 concert of the Pasadena Symphony: “I attended Pasadena Symphony season opener after attending special community chat with Maestro DePriest. Please see http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/culturemonster/2010/10/pasadena-symphony-.html

LATimesBlogs
Culture Monster
October 24, 2010
“The conductor was James DePreist. Former long-time music director of the Portland Symphony, he is director of conducting studies at Juilliard, a post Mester once held. DePreist was born in 1936; Mester 1935. DePreist, who -- like Mester -- has a reputation as an orchestra builder, now serves as artistic advisor of the Pasadenans, but he will not return for the rest of its short season.


“DePreist, who contracted polio in 1962 and conducts from a wheelchair, showed great caution. His tempos were very slow.” “Anne Akiko Meyers was the soloist in Samuel Barber’s romantic, 1939 Violin Concerto. She played her 'Molitor' Stradivarius, which was believed to once have been owned by Napoleon and which she had purchased the previous week in auction for a record $3.6 million.”

“Meyers played aggressively, but might have been more rhapsodic had she not been carefully constrained by DePreist. Her encore, Gershwin’s 'Summertime,' was supple, jazzy and alluring.”
[AfriClassical.com profiles James DePreist (b. 1936). Maestro De Preist has published two volumes of poetry and has his own website, http://www.JamesDePreist.com.]

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