Four more pianists are scheduled to give free performances on Tuesday in McDavid Studio, 501 E. 5th St. in Fort Worth. The four were competitors in the current Van Cliburn International Piano Competition but failed to advance to the finals. They will play music they would have played had they advanced. The four are Andrea [...]

David A. Smith, a Baylor University senior lecturer in history, believes that our culture war has never really stopped. He views federal support of the arts as the trigger for an argument that has raged on and off practically since the origins of the republic, an argument about democratic as well as artistic principles.

Dr. Robert T. Anderson, who served for decades at SMU as Professor of Organ and Sacred Music, died Saturday in Honolulu, Hawaii after a long illness. Anderson, a longtime Dallasite, was a huge influence on hundreds of students over the years; a Google search reveals countless organists touring as performers or working in churches and [...]

THE DTC’S BIG SIX: On Tuesday night, the Dallas Theater Center will honor the six artistic directors who have led the organization during its 50 year history. Current A.D. Kevin Moriarty will be joined by two of his peers (Adrian Hall and Richard Hamburger) plus family members representing those who can’t be there or have [...]

Here are the six finalists in the 13th Van Cliburn International Piano Competition. The judges’ decision was announced shortly after midnight. Evgeni Bozhanov of Bulgaria Yeol Eum Son of South Korea Mariangela Vacatello of Italy Di Wu of China Haochen Zhang of China Nobuyuki Tsujii of Japan Finals performances will begin at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday [...]

The semifinals of the Van Cliburn Competition finished with a flourish Sunday night, with three notable artists giving vivid performances and then turning the competition over to the judges for the finals selection. Two of the last three semifinalists played the same work, Brahms’ Piano Quintet, with the Takács Quartet. Kyu Yeon Kim and Yeol [...]

The final afternoon session of the Van Cliburn Competition semifinals brought some extraordinary music-making on Sunday. Michail Lifits, who has been impressive throughout, gave an engrossing performance of Liszt’s B minor sonata (the fifth of the competition so far) and demonstrated that there is some real art to be found in the piece. Aside from [...]

For the audience, Monday and Tuesday are days off from the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition. But while the six finalists are busy rehearsing with conductor James Conlon and the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra, quite a bit more is actually going on. For one thing, some of the pianists who failed to make it into [...]

Two fine piano quintet performances started and ended Saturday night’s semifinal session at the Van Cliburn Competition. The more impressive was Franck’s Quintet in F minor, played by Evgeni Bozhanov (photo at left) and the Takács Quartet. After a series of Brahms, Schumann and Dvorak quintets, it was a pleasant change to hear the Franck, [...]

The level of Saturday afternoon’s playing at the Cliburn semifinals seemed to me to slip a little from Friday’s high standard. Mariangela Vacatello’s Schumann quintet, played with the Takács Quartet, of course, went very well. She and the quartet formed a fine team, with her prior chamber-music experience a factor. In the finale they were [...]