In Sunday’s (1/9) St. Petersburg Times (Florida), John Fleming writes, “On Saturday, the Florida Orchestra plays a program celebrating the new museum at the adjacent Mahaffey Theater in St. Petersburg. … The Florida Orchestra has dreamed up something suitably surreal for its program in tribute to the new Dalí Museum, which is right across the lawn from the orchestra’s concert home in St. Petersburg, Mahaffey Theater. HK Gruber, an Austrian composer, will be the soloist—the chansonnier (a performer of satirical songs, monologues and skits)—in his Frankenstein!!, which is described as a ‘neo-Gothic pan-demonium.’ ‘Ah, now I understand why they chose Frankie’—Gruber’s nickname for his work—’in Florida for these concerts,’ the composer said in a phone interview from Vienna in December. ‘Salvador Dalí is, in a way, a similar artist. You could also say Picasso. My work is like theirs in that I try to combine simplicity with complexity.’ ” Music Director Stefan Sanderling will conduct the program, “which also includes Beethoven’s overture Consecration of the House, often performed for the dedication of buildings, plus Milhaud’s Le Boeuf sur le Toit (The Ox on the Roof), Satie’s Gymnopedie Nos. 1 and 3 and Falla’s Three-Cornered Hat suite.”
Posted January 11, 2011
