Editor’s note: This article was initially published in The Daily Gazette, Swarthmore’s online, daily newspaper founded in Fall 1996. As of Fall 2018, the DG has merged with The Phoenix. See the about page to read more about the DG.
OK, you need to get out this weekend, and this time we mean it. Next week and the week after you’ll be hopelessly buried in papers and projects and tests, so make this weekend count. Right? Right!
We haven’t recommended a Philadelphia Orchestra concert in a few weeks, so why not this weekend? It’s quite a catch: the obscure and rarely performed (because it’s ghastly difficult) Hungarian Concerto of Joseph Joachim, and Brahms’ always wonderful Symphony No. 1. The violin soloist is the formidable Christian Tetzlaff, a thoughtful player who seems an unlikely choice for the showy Joachim, but certainly will bring poetry along with the fireworks. Rossen Milanov (who is Bulgarian, not Hungarian) conducts. The concert is this afternoon at 2:00 and Saturday night at 8:00.
This weekend is also the opening of the Philadelphia Film Festival, which goes until April 11. Opening night was actually last night, but this weekend you can catch an enormous variety of films from the US and abroad (particularly from Latin America), both short and full length, documentary and feature. We would like to mention “Shadowboxer” as an intriguing choice, if only because of the first sentence of the blurb: “Helen Mirren and Cuba Gooding, Jr. star as two professional killers who get caught in a web of deception when they fail to make a hit on a pregnant woman.” It plays at 7:30 on Saturday night at the Prince Music Theater, near Suburban Station. Check http://www.phillyfests.com for full information and tickets.