David Rohde

Violinist Ji Young Lim at the Phillips Collection

Somebody must have rung a bell and instructed judges at all international music competitions to start awarding prizes to young classical musicians who already demonstrate daring and panache, even at...

An Interview with Broadway Music Director Ted Sperling on ‘An Evening with the Music of Marvin Hamlisch’ at the Library of Congress on 10/19

What better place to celebrate the life and work of Marvin Hamlisch than right here in Washington? But the reasons for An Evening with the Music of Marvin Hamlisch on Monday, October 19, 2015 with...

Violinist Aleksey Semenenko at the Embassy of Ukraine in the Embassy Series

Hearing the rising Ukrainian violinist Aleksey Semenenko perform is like a visit to a musical laboratory. At age 25, the monstrously talented Mr. Semenenko is still exploring various approaches to...

The Russian Chamber Art Society Hosts Its 10th Anniversary Concert at the Austrian Embassy

Mainstream classical music commentary in Washington often complains about an over-reliance on the symphonies and concertos of Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninoff for the programming at the area’s major...

The National Philharmonic’s ‘Rienzi, A Concert Opera’ at Strathmore

Artistic risk-taking in Washington extends across many genres to numerous performing groups. The region’s vocal music scene certainly got a flavor of that on Saturday night in a one-time concert...

Pianist Olga Kern and the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra at Strathmore

Russian pianist Olga Kern is something of a cult figure because of her landmark victory in the 2001 Van Cliburn International Piano Competition in Fort Worth, captured in one of the greatest...

The Charlottesville Chamber Music Festival: A Gem in UVA Country

Summer music festivals in both the pop and classical music worlds can come with a lot of flash and dash. But not to be overlooked in our region is a more modest gem tacked onto the end of festival...

New CDs from Washington Area Cellist Amit Peled and Pianist Thomas Pandolfi

It must be time for dessert! Two new recordings by prominent local classical artists coincidentally use the metaphor of desserts-after-a-meal in their concepts. They both provide delightful summertime...

‘Candide’ with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra at Strathmore

The musical inventiveness and dramatic craziness of one of Leonard Bernstein’s most challenging pieces of all, his 1956 musical Candide, must flow right through Marin Alsop’s veins. The music director...

An Interview with Richard Glazier, Host of ‘From Broadway to Hollywood,’ This Weekend on WETA

If you want to call Richard Glazier a throwback, go right ahead. He loves it. For Glazier, there’s nothing better than sitting at a piano telling stories about George and Ira Gershwin and their...

Pianist Alon Goldstein at the Odeon Chamber Music Series

Franz Schubert’s Piano Sonata No. 19 in C minor is a sprawling, at times even rambling composition that takes a full half hour to spin out. Not even one of the world’s greatest living pianists, András...

Pianist Martin Kasik with the Embassy Series at the Czech Embassy

Czech pianist Martin Kasik has an important historic connection with Washington despite relatively infrequent visits here. He was a 1999 winner of the Young Concert Artists series, which launches...

Bach’s ‘St. John Passion’ with the National Philharmonic at Strathmore

Johann Sebastian Bach wasn’t just fulfilling a professional responsibility when he wrote religious music. A devout Lutheran, Bach meant what he wrote and sought musical texts and texture that would...

A Q&A with Mezzo-Soprano Magdalena Wór on Her Training in Washington and Return This Weekend to Strathmore

Mezzo-soprano Magdalena Wór pretty much creates an unforgettable impression everywhere she performs. Her strikingly rich voice – it’s been called “plush,” “chocolatey” and other adjectives redolent of...

The Philadelphia Orchestra with Washington Performing Arts at the Kennedy Center

Subtext abounded as the Philadelphia Orchestra arrived at The Kennedy Center Tuesday night. In Washington, rising politicians are “mentioned for president.” In classical music, rising conductors are...

‘Haydn and Ravel’ with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra at Strathmore

You can’t get a much pithier title of a composition than Maurice Ravel’s La Valse. You also can’t get a much more misleading one, either, even if the composer fully meant the irony of the title. Oh,...

Mahler’s Ninth with the National Symphony Orchestra at The Kennedy Center

If you choose to let it, Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 9 can scare you to death. Or you can let its vast scope and its ethereal beginning and ending that sandwiches raucous and even sarcastic episodes...

Pianist András Schiff at Washington Performing Arts at Strathmore

One of the most charming moments I’ve seen at a concert in years occurred yesterday at The Music Center at Strathmore. András Schiff, one of the world’s leading pianists, brought a program of the...

‘Mozart’s Great Mass’ with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra at Strathmore

If I told you that the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra may be the most dynamic classical music organization in our region, you’d probably expect me to prove it with a report on a daring program featuring...

Mahler’s Fifth Symphony with the University of Maryland Symphony Orchestra at The Clarice

Not just any conservatory or university school of music can mount a concert featuring Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 5. It may not have familiar tunes, but Mahler’s Fifth is a landmark composition from...

‘Parade in Concert’ at Avery Fisher Hall in New York

Jason Robert Brown’s Parade is a gut-punch of a musical about the 1913 murder trial of an Atlanta Jewish man, his unjust conviction, his subsequent semi-exoneration to “only” life in prison, and his...

Cellist Amit Peled Recreates 100-Year-Old Concert at the Peabody Institute

Picture this: A leading classical performer finds a program from a century ago played by a legend on his instrument, sets the date to recreate the concert for the exact 100th anniversary of the event,...

The National Philharmonic’s 10th Anniversary Concert at The Music Center at Strathmore

Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 may be based on the poem “Ode to Joy,” but that doesn’t mean the epic symphony holds a monopoly on joyous music. If anything, the pieces accompanying Beethoven’s Ninth at...

The State Symphony Orchestra of Mexico at the George Mason Center for the Arts

World orchestras are at their most interesting when they bring a blend of their native musical language with the European tradition that defines “classical music.” With the help of two soloists, one...

National Symphony Orchestra with Violinist Arabella Steinbacher at The Kennedy Center

It’s almost a cliché to sit smugly in a 21st century theater or concert hall enjoying a work that some original critic destroyed to his everlasting infamy. And audiences at this week’s National...

Beethoven’s Ninth with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra at Strathmore

For sheer drama in classical music this year, it will be hard to top the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra’s knife’s-edge performance of Ludwig van Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 on Saturday night at the...

Watch Out, Washington: Here Comes Beethoven’s Ninth

Everybody knows about Walter Cronkite and his impact on television news. Fewer people remember or know about Cronkite’s great rival on NBC during the 1960s, The Huntley-Brinkley Report. Pairing the...

Standout CDs of Three Rising Classical Artists: Einav Yarden, Yevgeny Kutik, and Danielle Talamantes

Debut recordings by emerging classical performers face enormous challenges. There’s the issue of finding unique material or a unique voice after so much music has been recorded so many times. And just...

The Washington Metropolitan Philharmonic at the Church of the Epiphany

The sheer number of mid-rank orchestras in the Washington area guarantees a wide variety of musical approaches to holiday concerts. But the prize for the most boundary-expanding holiday program has to...

Pianist Einav Yarden at The Phillips Collection

A packed house at the Phillips Collection could have been forgiven if they thought that pianist Einav Yarden had magically switched out Steinway grand pianos between numbers. The Israeli pianist,...

The Ariel Quartet at the Israeli Embassy

How much do you re-interpret music that was written 100 or 200 years ago? This eternal question has an unequivocal answer in the hands of a young ensemble like The Ariel Quartet: Just do it. The...

‘Bernstein and Beethoven’ with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra at Strathmore

Which pieces to put with which on an orchestra program is a subject of endless debate. Does it really matter if concerts have an overall theme? It does if they have as meaningful a connection as the...

DC Area Soprano Danielle Talamantes On Her CD Signing on Sunday in Vienna, VA, the Met, Concert Music, and the Opera Singer’s Life

Rising local soprano Danielle Talamantes talks about the Met, concert music, and the opera singer’s life Politicians and lobbyists running to catch the Acela at Union Station in D.C. or Penn Station...

Violinist Yevgeny Kutik at Peoples’ Symphony Concerts in NYC

Challenging or dissonant music can be a slog for both the classical music performer and the listener. If you’re at all fearful to see live concerts because of the reputation of 20th-century “serious”...

The Czech Philharmonic at George Mason University’s Center for the Arts

Sometimes there’s reason to doubt why a symphony orchestra needs all those violins. Many of the labor disputes that are running around the country’s major professional ensembles, including a recent...

Pianist Thomas Pandolfi’s ‘One Singular Night’ at the Todd Performing Arts Center

Standing alone on the stage of the Eastern Shore home of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, pianist Thomas Pandolfi joked that no orchestra was magically going to materialize before the audience’s...

The Ying Quartet at the Kreeger Museum

No type of ensemble works harder these days than string quartets to make classical music “cool” and relevant. From hip, funky websites to innovative performances in unusual spaces, string quartets –...

The Gewandhaus Orchestra of Leipzig at Washington Performing Arts

You have a right to be skeptical when a symphony orchestra claims to have a unique sound. Down through the centuries most composers of symphonic music have given specific directions about what...

National Philharmonic: ‘Mozart’s Requiem’ at The Music Center at Strathmore

Why do people willingly get dressed up and head out in the dark to hear funeral music when no one has died? Three words: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. There have been dozens or hundreds of other musical...

An Interview With Washington, DC Piano Sensation Thomas Pandolfi About Classical and Popular Music and the Artist’s Life

If Thomas Pandolfi hasn’t done all that a pianist can do to present an exceptionally broad range of music to an engaged public, he certainly seems determined to. The D.C. native, one of the area’s...

Dramatic Rachmaninoff Piano Concerto Opens the McLean Orchestra Concert Season

A number of orchestras and ensembles in the Washington suburbs are looking to graduate from pure local or community status to regional recognition. There’s nothing like using one of the biggest pieces...