By Paul E. Robinson

When the Knowlton Festival folded two years ago, the Orchestre symphonique de Montreal (OSM) and its chief conductor, Kent Nagano, needed to find an alternative venue for some of their summer music-making. An inspired choice was the Orford Festival. While last season’s appearances were uneven, this summer everything came together [...]

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by Paul E. Robinson

Every summer Marita and I drive from Austin, Texas back to our native Canada, varying our route each year according to events of particular interest on the road and the availability of friends we enjoy visiting.
This year we decided to make a stop in Charlottesville, Virginia, a favourite place we hadn’t visited [...]

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by Paul E. Robinson

The Beethoven Ninth Symphony is one of the most overplayed pieces in orchestral literature, but it sells tickets by the bushel and managers seldom go wrong, even when programming it season after season. To call it “overplayed” is not to say that it isn’t a great work or that it doesn’t bring [...]

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