Arts Desk

Six critically acclaimed seasons of the British television series about life on an English estate in the early 20th century captured the imaginations of audiences on both sides of the Atlantic. A new feature film picks up the story of Downton Abbey in 1927, where the TV series ended.

A concert piece for cello and orchestra uses sacred music from the center of Jewish tradition. Max Bruch's Kol Nidre is a work with wide appeal from an unlikely composer.
 

In 1921, Sergei Prokofiev himself described his 3rd Piano Concerto as 'devilishly difficult' as he prepared to play the premiere in Chicago. One hundred years later, it's among the most popular works in the genre, with ideas that are ever relevant. WRTI's Susan Lewis has more.

Ranked as the 4th greatest symphony of all time in a 2018 BBC Magazine poll of 151 conductors, Gustav Mahler's 9th Symphony, the last symphony the austrian composer completed before he died,  is explored by WRTI's Susan Lewis in a conversation with Philadelphia Orchestra Music Director Yannick Nézet-Séguin.

Klezmer music so beautifully expresses the joys and pains of life. WRTI's Debra Lew Harder takes us into its rich world and heritage with esteemed Klezmer scholar and musician Hankus Netsky, a Mount Airy native now living in Boston, who has collaborated with Itzhak Perlman, Theodore Bikel, and other big mahoffs, and who authored a facsinating book in 2017 about Klezmer music in 20th-century Jewish Philadelphia.

Sir Edward Elgar wrote his violin concerto for the great Austrian violinist Fritz Kreisler, who premiered it in 1910. Among those who champion it today is a violinist who feels a personal connection when performing it.

The Philadelphia Orchestra's semi-staged version of Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet from this past May featured much of the music from the ballet, with dancers from Brian Sanders' company JUNK often moving high above the orchestra. WRTI's Susan Lewis spoke with Yannick Nézet-Séguin about the experience.

Composer and jazz trumpeter Hannibal Lokumbe has written Healing Tones as a hymn to Philadelphia, an oratorio-like work that celebrates the healers among us, including midwives, doctors, artists and musicians.