Maestro Honeck Accepting the Julio Kelenyi Medal of Honor from the Bruckner Society of America. Credit: Iris Holleran with all Photos. When I saw that the Pittsburgh Symphony was doing Anton Bruckner’s Symphony No. 8 in C Minor (1890 revised version) I made a special effort to make it to the concert. I had already heard Bruckner’s 3rd, 4th and 6th Symphonies and wanted to fill in my experiential gap with another of his works, one he felt, according to the program notes, to be his greatest composition. A second inducement to make the concert was the addition of a work on the program by Samy Moussa, a contemporary composer whose Elysium I very much enjoyed when the PSO included it in their program in a January 2025 concert. Samy Moussa with Maestor Manfred Honeck. Soussa’s Adgilis Deda, a Hymn for Orchestra commissioned by the PSO, referenced a Georgian deity revered as the protective spirit of the hearth, family, motherhood, healing and fertility, was included in the weekend’s con...
You’d think that a play in which two actors sit at desks, never make eye contact and read a series of letters to one another wouldn’t work dramatically. But then remember the continuing popularity of Waiting for Godot , Samuel Beckett’s two hander that became a cornerstone of absurdist theater. Or consider “My Dinner with Andre, a two-character cinematic comedy-drama where an interesting dialogue at a Manhattan restaurant fills the screen with pithy thoughts for 111minutes. I’ll have to admit I was skeptical about sitting through A R Gurney’s Love Letters. Would I be tortured by another lightweight sappy rom-com or something ready for adaption for the Hallmark Channel? Would I squirm in my seat for 90 minutes of mushy tedium? Turns out not in the least! Zach Wyatt and his real-to-life wife, Tammy portray Andrew Makepeace Ladd III and Melissa Gardner, two characters who meet in grade school. Their first written contact c...