Piano

Although the cold months of January and February are a prime opera-viewing time of year in some cities, the stage of the Washington National Opera is generally dark. A few smaller companies do their best to fill the void, like the In Series at the Source . Its latest no-frills production is a double-bill of Samuel Barber's "A Hand of Bridge" and Francisco Barbieri's zarzuela "El Barberillo de Lavapiés," heard on Sunday afternoon. The Barber opera, which lasts about nine minutes, was more of an appetizer than...

Avant-garde cellist Maya Beiser has presided over some pretty out-there multimedia pieces in the past, a la Laurie Anderson, but Friday evening she presented a relatively staid, music-centered program at the Atlas Theater in collaboration with composer/pianist Michael Harrison. Much was made, in both the program notes and Beiser's spoken introductions, of Harrison's emphasis on "just" intonation, where the piano is tuned in strict mathematical proportions rather than the one-size-fits-all "tempered" tuning used...

Here are mini reviews of the Washington-area restaurants found on Tom Sietsema's list of recommendations. 1789 1226 36th St. NW, 202-965-1789 www.1789restaurant.com Tradition has always been part of a visit to 1789 in the shadow of Georgetown University, but jackets for gentlemen are no longer recommended. Each dining room has a distinct personality; each enjoys flickering table lamps, nooks for intimate gatherings and classical music that doesn't interfere with conversation.

One recent evening on the cusp of spring, the engines thrummed below decks, and the Sequoia , one of the most famous yachts in America, made a stately turn from her home at the Gangplank Marina in Southwest D.C. and into the Washington Channel. ★ Now in her dowager years, the 88-year-old boat was setting out on a private cruise, lights ablaze, as if turning back time, Gatsby-like, to that half-century when she was at the beck and call of U.S. presidents. ★ It's a lovely image, and the Sequoia, at 104...

PEREDELKINO, Russia -- The sound of the piano -- Franz Liszt's "Consolation" -- floated gently through the open window and settled among the tall pines just as it did when Boris Pasternak lay in the drawing room in an open coffin surrounded by heaped flowers -- tulips and lilac, cherry and apple blossoms. "Something in their hearts calls people," said Natalia Pasternaka, 71, the poet's daughter-in-law and custodian of his country home, which is now a museum. "We never advertise, but people always remember the date.

In 1886, a group of Washington ladies who loved music got together to present concerts and talks in their drawing rooms. One hundred twenty-five years later, the Friday Morning Music Club is still presenting regular concerts by amateur musicians, has its own orchestra, holds the annual Washington International Competitions and is preparing to start its anniversary season with a gala concert on Sept. 24. For a few weeks, however, the ladies of the FMMC — for the leadership is still nearly all women — thought they were...

How does one attempt to do justice to the songbook of Irving Berlin? Volume, volume, volume. Nearly 60 melodies by the star-spangled tunesmith are crammed into "Irving Berlin's I Love a Piano," the cheerfully undistinguished revue stopping until the middle of the month at Lincoln Theatre, under the auspices of Arena Stage. To give you a sense of the breadth of Berlin's productivity, this rollout of titles -- from "Blue Skies" to "Puttin' on the Ritz" to "There's No Business Like Show Business" -- encompasses less...

A piano whose melodies are said to have accompanied famous musicians in New York's acclaimed Cotton Club in the 1930s will again be making a statement — this time, in a Montgomery Village home. James Hunt said the piano, which he picked up Jan. 7 from Habitat for Humanity ReStore in Gaithersburg , will be his inspiration as he remodels his basement in 1930s and 1940s decor. He paid $100 for the piece. Sherman Harris of Potomac, the piano's previous owner, donated the piece to Habitat,...

On Sunday, award-winning pianist Alessio Bax took on a program of Brahms and Rachmaninoff in the elegant concert room of Georgetown's Dumbarton Oaks. Most of the evening featured perilous romantic cliffhangers, staples of keyboard greats of yesteryear. No one could doubt Bax's virtuosity. From his opening set of Brahms's Ballades, Op. 10, the pianist captured a full measure of their storytelling character, inherited from the earlier narrative ballads of romantic poets. Defining the...

One recent evening on the cusp of spring, the engines thrummed below decks, and the Sequoia , one of the most famous yachts in America, made a stately turn from her home at the Gangplank Marina in Southwest D.C. and into the Washington Channel. ★ Now in her dowager years, the 88-year-old boat was setting out on a private cruise, lights ablaze, as if turning back time, Gatsby-like, to that half-century when she was at the beck and call of U.S. presidents. ★ It's a lovely image, and...

When classical pianist Simone Dinnerstein decided to tour with singer-songwriter Tift Merritt, as a kind of exchange program seeking musical connections, she suggested they come onstage and bow first, as they do in the highbrow world. Merritt said she thought that was odd ("We hadn't done anything yet"). But it was probably strange, too, for Dinnerstein to be performing in a place where her well-placed notes had to sometimes compete with a fork clanking on a plate. The Hamilton on...

On Monday afternoon, 15-year-old Sophia Townley sits at the piano in the well-lighted basement of her Fairfax home. Tethered via headset to a little, black Panasonic phone positioned next to her sheet music, she sits up straight, composed and concentrating. Mark Miller, her piano teacher, calls her for her weekly lesson. She goes through her chord drills and recites them over the phone as she goes: "E major, E augmented, A major, A augmented . . . D-flat major," she begins.

The Great Noise Ensemble — as you've no doubt picked up from the name — is one of the more playful and uninhibited classical groups in town. Specializing in music from cutting-edge young composers, the group has been putting on concerts at the Atlas Performing Arts Center this year on themes such as "irreverence" and "revolution," and on Friday night, the performance was titled — simply but with tantalizing promise — "Revelation. " There are plenty of ways to interpret that word, and the young...

Cellist Amit Peled, based in Baltimore and a regular presence in this area, is hovering just below the upper tier of his profession. Now in his mid-30s, and with an active international schedule, he has yet to play with a major U.S. orchestra other than the Baltimore Symphony. At his recital Sunday afternoon at the Kennedy Center's Terrace Theater, Peled paid homage to Neale Perl, the outgoing president of the Washington Performing Arts Society, who has given him several legs up...

It was midnight in our New York apartment. My father was in the next room, dying of cancer, when suddenly I heard the magical sounds of Rachmaninoff's Third Piano Concerto coming from the living room. That's where I found the great Van Cliburn , playing our rental piano in the dark, wearing a plaid shirt and jeans. This wasn't his first visit. He had come by the night before in white tie and tails, just so he could serenade my father. My parents, who were serious...

There's a kind of quiet at the heart of the Kris Davis Quintet. Even in the band's wildest, most avant-garde moments — and there were a few at Bohemian Caverns on Sunday — it was easy to detect a peaceful center to the maelstrom. And as loud and seemingly chaotic as its members could get, especially tenor saxophonist Ingrid Laubock and drummer Tom Rainey, they consistently found their way back to that centering influence — Davis herself. The young pianist has a...

One of the perks of winning the New York International Piano Competition is a recital at the Phillips Collection, and on Sunday afternoon, the prodigiously gifted Anna Han — who walked off with this year's prize at the tender age of 16— put on a display of imagination, taste and pianistic firepower that was far beyond her years. It may have been Han's naturalism and grace at the piano, though, that impressed the most. In a little-of-everything program that ranged from baroque to...

There are a few things in life that just beg to be converted to digital. Piano players: Isn't there something appealing about ditching that fire-hazard piano bench full of music for one, sleek tablet? That, at least, is the argument behind the Yamaha NoteStar app , which offers digital versions of classic and popular songs that users can display on the iPad. Eliminating pesky page turns, the app makes playing through a piece simple, although noting trouble passages and...

Letitia B. Gwynn, 93, who gave piano lessons from her home in Clinton in the 1950s and '60s and who did volunteer work for a variety of causes, died Jan. 11 at the Ginger Cove retirement community in Annapolis. She had heart ailments, her daughter Loleta Gwynn said. Charlotte Letitia Bogan was a District native. She graduated in 1936 from Roosevelt High School and received a bachelor's degree in music in 1940 from what is now McDaniel College in Westminster, Md. As a young woman, she performed in musical recitals in the...

For years, Marian McPartland was defined by an offhand comment that critic Leonard Feather made in the jazz magazine Down Beat in 1951. McPartland, wrote the British-born Feather, had "three hopeless strikes against her": She was British, white and female. She often made a joke of her "handicaps" in the male-dominated world of an American music born of the black experience, but this new biography by Seattle jazz writer Paul de Barros shows the difficulty of...