WINE & DINE
Dinner with The Rake
Join us tonight for a Dinner Party at Via's Cafe. Meet Ann Bauer and Jeremy Iggers, as well as other Rake staff and readers, and enjoy a wonderful meal of warm cheese, apricot chutney, roasted garlic, braised baby artichoke salad, organic garden greens, smoked coffee-rubbed Kobe beef brisket, fingerling potatoes, roasted baby vegetables, chocolate pot de creme, and sour cherry biscotti.
6 p.m., Via Cafe & Bar, 6740 France Ave. S., Edina; 952-928-9500; $60.
FILM
Spotlight on Naomi Kawase
Naomi Kawase was only 27 years old when she won the Camera d’Or award for Moe no Suzaku, a film she both wrote and directed. Now, eleven years later, we have a rare opportunity to see two of her more recent films, Birth/Mother (Tarachime) — a documentary about the traditional Japanese birth of her son — and The Mourning Forest (Mogari No Mori) — another award-winning film about an unlikely friendship between an old man with dementia and his young nurse. The best part, of course, is that in great Walker tradition, Kawase will be on hand to introduce her film.
5:30 and 7:30 p.m., Walker Art Center, 1750 Hennepin Ave., Minneapolis; 612-375-7600; the first film, Birth/Mother, is free, the second is $8 (members $6).
MUSIC
Dvorak and Rachmaninoff
Dvorak’s Cello Concerto is a romantic work of unabashed
grandeur, with a lush and lyrical first movement, a pensive and
ethereal middle, and a swelling, pile-driving, rondo-form finale that
briefly pauses to dredge up elements of the first two movements before
coalescing into a passionate crescendo. Sommerfest artistic director
Andrew Litton will conduct Scandinavian cellist Truls Mork, who
recorded the work with the Oslo Philharmonic for Virgin two years ago.
Rachmaninoff’s Symphonic Dances is the perfect
after-intermission refresher, a neat mixture of romance, rhythm, and
modernism. Like the Cello Concerto, it benefits from being one of the
later works of its composer. Walton’s fun, quirky and deceptively
difficult Scapino Overture leads the program. —Britt Robson
7:30 p.m., Orchestra Hall,
1111 Nicollet Mall, Minneapolis; 612-371-5656; $25-$72.
Bach, Vivaldi, Sierra, and Telemann — Oh, My!
Guest conductor Paul Goodwin will lead the The Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra tonight — and for the next three nights — for a performance featuring Bach's Brandenburg No. 1 in F, with SPCO concertmaster Steven Copes on violin. But the clincher is guest guitarist Manuel Barrueco — probably one of the world's greatest living guitarists — performing on Vivaldi’s Concerto in D for Guitar and Orchestra and Sierra’s Folias for Guitar and Orchestra. Also on the program is Telemann’s Ouverture in C.
Tonight at 8 p.m., Trinity Lutheran Church, Stillwater; Friday at 8 p.m., Wooddale Church, Eden Prairie; Saturday at 8 p.m., Saint Paul’s United Church of Christ, Saint Paul; Sunday at 2 p.m., Benson Great Hall, Bethel University, Arden Hills; 651-291-1144; $10 and $25, kids $5.