June 10-16, 2004

cover story

Mann on Fire

Itzhak Perlman Photo By: Akira Kinoshita

The lowdown on classical music's hot spot this summer.

by Peter Burwasser

Want to hear live classical music this summer in Philadelphia? Start taking violin lessons, bub. Or, go to the Mann to hear the Philadelphia Orchestra play. Or take a nice bike ride, already. You don't get enough fresh air.

June 24. Carl Orff's "Carmina Burana" is a perennial crowd pleaser, despite the odious Nazi origins of this vulgar, pagan scream-fest. Oh well, people also buy plenty of Volkswagens, and there is no denying the sheer fun factor of Orff's massive score. Conductor Rossen Milanov will open the program with the Mussorgsky-Ravel showpiece "Pictures at an Exhibition."

July 6. Bugs Bunny on Broadway, a specialty of conductor George Daugherty, has become an annual event at the Mann. Because of the vintage of the classic Warner Brothers toons, it is not hard to get mom and dad out with the family for an evening of nostalgia, as the Philadelphians play along to projected clips featuring Bugs, Elmer, Sylvester, Tweetie Bird and the rest of the gang.

July 7. The charming young French pianist Héléne Grimaud is the soloist for the most elegant of the Beethoven piano concertos, the Fourth. Conductor Gerard Schwarz will augment the all-Beethoven program with a Leonore overture and the Fifth Symphony.

July 8. All Gershwin, featuring "Rhapsody in Blue," with the exciting Philadelphia-trained Stewart Goodyear as soloist. Maestro Milanov gets the hips a swingin' for the Cuban Overture.

July 13. For those so inclined (you know who you are), film composer Howard Shore directs The Lord of the Rings Symphony: Six Movements for Orchestra and Chorus. Projected images from the films, too.

July 14. The soaring Brahms Violin Concerto, a force of nature itself, is ideal summer music fare. Joshua Bell will be the soloist. Roberto Minczuk wraps things up with another 19th-century potboiler, Rimsky-Korsakov's "Sheherazade."

July 19. The Canadian Brass, in all it's brassy brassiness.

July 21. Marvin Hamlisch, schlockmeister of the Broadway scene, holds court. An evening of Lerner and Loewe, my fair lady, with singers a singing.

July 22. Itzhak Perlman pretty much has a lock on the peaches-and-cream violin sound. Diabetics beware; he will pour it on with music of Dvorak and Kreisler. Miguel Harth-Bedoya, at the podium, also presents Tchaikovsky and Glinka.

July 27. This is the fireworks evening, following the "1812" Overture. Yahoo. The rest of the program is more Tchaikovsky, to better pierce the evening air with music. Jon Kimura Parker will smash his way through the Piano Concerto No. 1.

July 28. Lang Lang? Never heard of the guy. Just kidding. Philly's own superstar ivory plunker gets down with the Rachmaninoff Second. Luis Biava will be waving a stick at the orchestra in order to get them to play music of Verdi, Bloch and Strauss.

July 29. Bobby McFerrin is conducting nowadays, and still doing that weird stuff with his voice. Music of Bernstein, Ravel and Prokofiev.

Philadelphia Orchestra, all concerts start at 8 p.m. and cost $10 to $68, Mann Center for the Performing Arts, 52nd St. and Parkside Ave., 215-893-1999.