| Date and venue | Title |
|---|---|
| 5-Apr-2013 Carnegie Hall: Stern Auditorium/Perelman Stage | Waves of Wagner: Gatti and DeYoung with the Boston Symphony Orchestra at Carnegie Hall |
 The Wagner bicentennial marches on, bringing grand sounds from practically every corner of the musical earth. What appear most frequently on concert programs are various extracts from the operas, such as the collection of preludes, overture, and vocal and orchestral excerpts offered by the Boston Symphony Orchestra and Daniele Gatti at Carnegie Hall. This kind of programming runs the risk of coming across as a tasty but haphazard smorgasbord; composer and musicologist Sir Donald Francis Tovey denounced these “bleeding chunks of butcher’s meat chopped from Wagner’s operas”.Read full review... | |
| 19-Mar-2013 Carnegie Hall, Zankel Hall | Interstellar birdsong at Carnegie Hall: Messiaen's Des canyons aux étoiles... with Ensemble ACJW |
 When Alice Tully, the great New York patron of the arts, commissioned a work from Olivier Messiaen to celebrate the American bicentennial, the French composer packed up his sketchbooks and headed West. He found inspiration in the unearthly beauty of Utah’s national parks, among the brilliantly colored landscapes of canyons, cliffs, rock pillars, and arches.Read full review... | |
| 24-Sep-2012 Lincoln Center: Alice Tully Hall | A mighty wind: Opening night at the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center |
 With so much of the chamber repertoire focused on strings and piano, it was a refreshing choice by the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center to open their season with some of the great works for winds. Many of the wind and brass performers on the program spend most of their professional lives as orchestral and solo musicians, and clearly relish the chance to make music with their colleagues without following the conductor’s baton. The unique collegiality of music on the small stage has a pull on some of the country’s best musicians.
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| 11-Sep-2012 Le Poisson Rouge | Different memorials: Steve Reich's complete string quartets reflect on September 11 and the Holocaust |
 A successful performance of Steve Reich’s music requires performers with stamina, a groove, and an audience willing to come along for the ride. The music itself is at its best when Reich layers gesture on top of gesture, creating a complex rhythmic tapestry that can put listeners into a trance and trigger unexpected emotions.
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| 19-Jul-2012 John Jay College: The Gerald W Lynch Theater | Forebodings: Elizabeth Futral embodies Saarihao's Émilie at Lincoln Center Festival |
 “I put into your hands manuscripts that I very much wish will remain after me,” wrote Émilie du Châtelet shortly before the birth of her fourth child in 1749. “I hope... that my lying-in, which I am expecting at any moment, will not be fatal, as I fear.” Her fears did prove fatal, and she died days after giving birth, at the age of 42.
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| 16-Jun-2012 Lincoln Center: Avery Fisher Hall | New York Philharmonic with Gilbert and Kavakos: Nielsen steals the show |
 A concert juxtaposing masters and lesser-knowns can have two effects: it can illustrate the genius of the master, or it can unveil an unjustly neglected gem. New York Philharmonic’s recent offering accomplished both. The combination of Beethoven, Korngold, and Nielsen spanned a huge swath of what is loosely called Romantic music, demonstrating the peaks and valleys possible in the style.
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| 12-May-2012 Metropolitan Museum of Art, Grace Rainey Rogers Auditorium | Metropolitan Museum Artists bring Adams and Dvořák to life |
 The loosely-affiliated Metropolitan Museum Artists in Concert, now in its ninth season at the museum, illustrates all that is good about music-making among friends – and even family members. Two sets of siblings and numerous old friends were on stage for a concert of music inspired by the completion of the museum’s new wing of American art.Read full review... | |
| 5-May-2012 Lincoln Center: Avery Fisher Hall | A Magnus Lindberg premiere from Yefim Bronfman, Alan Gilbert and the New York Phil |
 Magnus Lindberg’s music draws upon the idioms of the classical canon, even as it exploits the myriad innovations and stylistic resources available to contemporary composers. His Piano Concerto no. 2, given its world premiere by the New York Philharmonic on this program, flits between key signatures rather than staying rooted in strict atonality. Its challenge and its audacity come not from the harmonies but from the form; its constant stream of dense and intense writing has hardly any respite in its twisted journey through tonal thickets.
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| 27-Apr-2012 Carnegie Hall: Stern Auditorium/Perelman Stage | Fabulous As Ever: the Philadelphia Orchestra shines with Sir Simon Rattle at Carnegie Hall |
| The Philadelphia Orchestra may be in the news more often for its financial difficulties than for its music-making, but even a fleeting listen to one of their concerts demonstrates that the ensemble remains one of America’s gems. While the string section no longer has the plush, rich string sound cultivated under Stokowski and Ormandy, the Fabulous Philadelphians produced a striking variety of colors on a program of Brahms, Webern, and Schumann last Friday at Carnegie Hall.
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| 21-Apr-2012 Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Temple of Dendur | Smooth as Glass: Philip Glass and Tim Fain Dazzle at the Met Museum |
_Ovidio Aldegunde_Jofre Theater Ferrol.jpg) You have to hand it to Philip Glass: 75 years old and a career on fire. And even more remarkable are the simple musical elements that made that career: the oscillating thirds, the arpeggios, and the basic melodic motifs that have entranced a vast spectrum of listeners.
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| 11-Apr-2012 92nd Street Y, Lexington Avenue at 92nd | Old is New: Quatuor Mosaïques Reimagine Haydn, Mendelssohn and Schubert |
 Enter the sound world of Quatuor Mosaïques and check your expectations at the door. They perform on what we call period instruments: gut strings (rather than steel), classical bows (shorter than their modern counterparts), and less tension in the instruments. The resulting sound may be familiar when it comes from a larger ensemble playing, say, Bach's Brandenburg Concertos, but in a quartet, playing later repertoire, the experience is a bit through-the-looking-glass.
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| 6-Apr-2012 HERE (formerly HERE Arts Center) | Floating Point Waves: Leimay at HERE, NYC |
 The collaborative duo Leimay promised Floating Point Waves to be “a performance experience of solo dance, real-time video, live electronic music, water and kinetic sculptures,” and they delivered. The two multi-disciplinary artists who comprise the duo – dancer Ximena Garnica and designer/director Shige Moriya – created an immersive world of captivating videos, simple set pieces that produced bizarre visual effects, and evocative music. Whether or not the experience “unveiled the relationship between the human body and natural elements” may be a matter of debate.Read full review... | |
| 27-Mar-2012 Carnegie Hall: Stern Auditorium/Perelman Stage | San Francisco Symphony: American Mavericks at Carnegie Hall |
 Bravo to Michael Tilson Thomas and the San Francisco Symphony for blowing the dust off of some of the boldest innovators America has produced. As part of a mini-festival at Carnegie Hall of 20th- and 21st-century composers who stretched musical and formal boundaries (to put it mildly), the program on Tuesday night was packed with rarely-played wonders. We are still learning to speak the language of this music, ninety years after some of it was written.
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| 10-Mar-2012 Carnegie Hall: Stern Auditorium/Perelman Stage | Saint Louis Symphony at Carnegie Hall: Saariaho and Stravinsky |
 If only every orchestral concert were as thoughtfully programmed as the Saint Louis Symphony’s last Saturday. David Robertson led his orchestra in Debussy’s Printemps, an ingratiating early work; the Carnegie Hall premiere of Quatre Instants by Kaija Saariaho with the irrepressible soprano Karita Mattila; and the full-length version of Stravinsky’s Firebird.Read full review... | |
| 4-Mar-2012 Le Poisson Rouge | Musical Modernism with Ursula Oppens and the JACK Quartet |
 Good news for skeptics: modernist music can be beautiful. If what keeps listeners away from the “difficult” music written in the past century is a fear of dissonance, they can rest assured. If such American mavericks as Conlon Nancarrow and Charles Wuorinen can produce so many moments of beauty, stillness, and humor, and if virtuosos like Ursula Oppens and the JACK Quartet can realize those moments as brilliantly as they did last Sunday, surely audiences will come around.
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| 2-Mar-2012 Carnegie Hall: Stern Auditorium/Perelman Stage | Maazel and the Vienna Philharmonic: Sibelius Symphonies |
 Throngs of the well-dressed faithful came for their periodic worship of the Vienna Philharmonic at Carnegie Hall on Friday night. Lorin Maazel led the players in a backwards tour of three Sibelius symphonies, beginning with the single-movement Seventh, moving on to the inimitable Fifth, and ending with the more traditional First. The delicious program and the distinguished orchestra promised an evening of musical transcendence. But the collaboration fell short of what it could have been.
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| 26-Feb-2012 Lincoln Center: Avery Fisher Hall | Manfred Honeck and the Pittsburgh Symphony at Avery Fisher Hall |
 To paraphrase Richard Strauss’ advice to young conductors: “If you think the brass are playing too soft, ask them to play softer.” Manfred Honeck, music director of the Pittsburgh Symphony, clearly thinks that the brass can never play loudly enough. On Sunday he brought to New York his boisterous interpretation of Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Symphony, on a program balanced with two examples of more refined musical expression.
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| 8-Feb-2012 Carnegie Hall: Weill Recital Hall | Sublime Discourses: Fretwork plays English consort music at Weill Recital Hall |
 To see Fretwork perform live is to understand the difference between virtuosos playing together for the first time, and virtuosos playing together who know how their colleagues take their coffee. The ensemble’s great achievement has been to reintroduce the world to the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century repertoire of polyphony for viols, and it is also known internationally for expanding the repertoire with new commissions. The viol has a transparent, subtle sound, which finds more expression in articulation than in volume, but Fretwork shows how dramatic this intimate repertoire can be.
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| 4-Feb-2012 Kaufman Center: Merkin Concert Hall | Ecstatic Music for the Indie-Rock Crowd at Merkin Concert Hall |
 Bluish lights mottled the stage at Merkin Concert Hall. The space was set for what appeared to be an orchestral concert, but for the table, drum set, and microphones. At the 7:30 start time the vintage-clad crowd was still in the lobby sipping wine, or ambling into the hall as if going to a rock concert.
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| 3-Feb-2012 Metropolitan Museum of Art, Grace Rainey Rogers Auditorium | TENET: Portraits in Song, Renaissance Italy from Ciconia to Petrucci |
 Joanne Bouknight.jpg) To accompany the exhibition “The Renaissance Portrait from Donatello to Bellini,” the early music ensemble TENET held court at the Metropolitan Museum of Art for a lovely concert of musical portraits from the late fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Quite literally, the performance was held beneath the marble arches of the Vélez Blanco Patio, a sixteenth-century Spanish courtyard rebuilt in the museum. While the setting could not have been more evocative, the high ceilings and hard surfaces created an acoustic that blended the sound a bit more than was desirable.
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| 31-Jan-2012 Lincoln Center: Alice Tully Hall | The Romance of the Clarinet: Trios at the Lincoln Center |
 It’s difficult to find criticism for a concert like this. Three venerable musicians who are familiar colleagues meet over three gorgeous pieces of music – what’s not to love? And a program of three clarinet trios is like a three-course meal of desserts. True, the execution may have sacrificed spontaneity for the smooth, glossy sound one expects from recordings, but a pitch-perfect performance is still an enjoyable one.
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| 23-Jan-2012 Le Poisson Rouge | Danielle de Niese launches "Beauty of the Baroque" |
 Danielle de Niese, the much-marketed new star of the opera world, has been performing at the Met in The Enchanted Island this week, and came downtown on a night off this Monday to promote her new album of Baroque arias. A packed house filled (Le) Poisson Rouge, a club popular for both classical and mainstream artists, despite its unsuited acoustic. But sound quality was not on anyone’s minds listening to de Niese, whose megawatt smile, made-for-couture body, and Bambi eyes outshine any flaws.
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| 10-Dec-2011 Metropolitan Museum of Art, Grace Rainey Rogers Auditorium | Beethoven in good hands with the Pacifica Quartet at the Metropolitan Museum |
 The Pacifica Quartet, now in its third year of residency at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, has the formidable task of taking up the role occupied by the Guarnieri Quartet, which played there for 43 of its 45 years. The Pacifica is relatively young, a year or so shy of its tenth birthday, but holds the promise of a venerable ensemble in the making, with chops and class to prove it.
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| 8-Dec-2011 Carnegie Hall: Stern Auditorium/Perelman Stage | Romantics flawed and fabled: Beethoven and Tchaikovsky with the London Philharmonic Orchestra |
 Thursday night’s concert with the London Philharmonic Orchestra paired well-loved Beethoven with lesser-known Tchaikovsky, for an interesting contrast of two great Romantics. For the second program of this season’s visit to Carnegie Hall, Vladimir Jurowski and the London Philharmonic opened with Beethoven’s “Emperor” Concerto, the last of his five concertos for piano. This is the one that listeners know even if they think they’ve never heard it before. Catchy tunes, imposing moments, piano curlicues to spare.
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| 3-Dec-2011 Lincoln Center: Avery Fisher Hall | A luminous night of Mahler with Daniel Harding and the New York Philharmonic |
 The story behind Mahler's Tenth Symphony, the composer's last work, suggests that the piece would be as vehement as Shostakovich or as sorrowful as late Brahms. Mahler died before he finished it, and midway through composing, he was heartbroken to learn of his wife’s infidelities.Read full review... | |
| 12-Nov-2011 John Jay College: The Gerald W Lynch Theater | Nico Muhly's Dark Sisters make strange company at Gotham Chamber Opera |
 The barely legal lives of women in polygamous marriages may seem like fertile ground for an opera. Dark Sisters, composed by Nico Muhly with a libretto by Stephen Karam, has many attractive moments in music and story, yet demonstrates the difficulties of drawing art from life.
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| 21-Oct-2011 Lincoln Center: Avery Fisher Hall | An expansive, if underwhelming evening with Strauss and Loren Maazel |
| Lorin Maazel, a former director of the New York Philharmonic, brought his exacting music-making back to the podium for a nine-day guest appearance. A wizard of baton technique – even the back of his head communicates what he wants the orchestra to do – his performances leave little room for spontaneity and generally contain odd interpretive choices. Today was no exception.
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| 20-Oct-2011 Carnegie Hall, Zankel Hall | One Charming Night with Andreas Scholl and The English Concert |
 17th Century Europe witnessed the rise of Italian opera and French ballet. These forms, and the distinct musical language of their composers, were highly influential on the music of England and Germany. The cosmopolitan music of Henry Purcell made up the bulk of The English Concert’s program, along with two instrumental works by his German contemporaries Heinrich Biber and Georg Muffat.
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| 19-Oct-2011 Lincoln Center: Avery Fisher Hall | Masterful Sibelius from Sir Colin, Znaider, and the LSO at Avery Fisher |
 Sibelius – whose unique voice straddles Romanticism, folk music, and the inklings of Modernism – can be a tricky composer to perform. His lush, expansive sonorities can sound simply loud and louder, plowing over the singable melodies and tiny gestures later transformed into full-blown themes.
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