PB Symphony satisfies with Rimsky, Zwilich, Grieg

The Palm Beach Symphony continued its 50th anniversary celebration Feb. 5 with a satisfying concert at the Kravis Center for the Performing Arts.

Under the music direction of the competent Gerald Schwarz, the local ensemble has bloomed into a serious musical organization and its increasingly audacious programming is proof of that.

On Monday, the main dish served was the orchestral showpiece Scheherazade, by Nicolai Rimsky-Korsakov.A masterful symphonic suite, the work represents the new direction music was taking at the end of the Romantic period. Increasingly, composers were freeing themselves of the restraints of motivic development, relying more and more on timbral effects and exotic extra-musical programs to generate their musical narratives.

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