So you couldn't make it to Paris for the Olympics? That's OK. You're better off visiting when Paris is more like Paris than a city-sized athletic facility. Go when you can enjoy the embarrassment of cultural riches.
The art, the food, the music But if you were at Minneapolis' Orchestra Hall Friday night, you got a sense of the city's place in musical history, specifically what was created or premiered there in the 1920s. Two of the four works were from the pens of French composers, while another was premiered in Paris. The marquee work among them was Maurice Ravel's Piano Concerto in G, with the host and principal soloist for "Summer at Orchestra Hall," Jon Kimura Parker, commanding the keys.
And command he did, delivering a refreshingly straightforward interpretation of one of the 20th century's great piano concertos, one that held opportunities for showiness, but was as much a showcase for Ravel's status as a master orchestrator as it was his abilities as a writer for the piano. Parker did wonderful things with his part, but the concerto proved the peak of a program that ably demonstrated the versatile virtuosity of the Minnesota Orchestra. Making her local debut on the podium was the prodigious, London-born Stephanie Childress, who, at age 25, is surely one of the youngest conductors to ever lead the Minnesota Orchestra in its 121-year history.
While most conductors her age are still in grad school and apprenticeships, Childress is already principal guest conductor of the .