| Date and venue | Title | Submitted by |
|---|---|---|
| 19-May-2013 Carnegie Hall: Stern Auditorium/Perelman Stage | The return of the maestro: James Levine and the MET Orchestra | David Allen, unpredictableinevitability.com |
 With a gleaming, glistening chord of purest A major, the man New Yorkers love to call “the Maestro” returned to the concert stage. His last public performance was a Die Walküre in May 2011, one that took its searing emotional power by maintaining the constant impression that it was about to disintegrate musically, just as Wotan’s worlds fell apart on stage and the conductor’s body buckled. It was apt that it was Wagner with which the Maestro returned, in a shining evocation of the sacred land of the Holy Grail. With the prelude to Lohengrin, James Levine was back.
Read full review... | ||
| 17-May-2013 Patricia and Arthur Modell Performing Arts Center at the Lyric | Traditional Rigoletto in Baltimore: A tribute to Verdi | Raisa Massuda, mandolinvision.blogspot.com |
| In the opera world, where loyalty to the libretto is oftentimes taken for poor taste and the use of period sets and costumes is attributed to the lack of a directorial concept, seeing a traditional production becomes a rare (and very comforting) treat. While certain enjoyment may be found in minimalistic sets and street clothes replacing costumes, a traditional production staged with respect for the libretto and the classical staging canons will never be out of style.
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| 17-May-2013 Carnegie Hall, Zankel Hall | Crash Ensemble plays a spread of text settings and folkloric magics at Carnegie Hall | Joseph Pfender |
 On Friday night, the Irish new music group Crash Ensemble produced some sonic pyrotechnics to match the Scriabinian lights display at Carnegie Hall’s recently renovated Zankel Hall. Besides moving your reviewer to adjectives of dubious origin, Zankel managed to entertain and soothe the audience with soft reds and cool blue-greens during breaks and intermissions without distracting any attention from the music or musicians. Despite a range of works by the popular and vigorous composers Osvaldo Golijov and Donnacha Dennehy, the 6pm crowd only filled about two-thirds of the hall’s seats.
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| 16-May-2013 Carnegie Hall: Stern Auditorium/Perelman Stage | Rhythm in heels: Yuja Wang at Carnegie Hall | David Allen, unpredictableinevitability.com |
 Yuja Wang is all about rhythm. It would be easy to write about how her playing doesn’t have the profundity or architectural sense of more mature artists, but that would be to miss her considerable achievements – and with a young artist, it’s what’s achieved that should count. Jaw-dropping technical skill is unexceptional among pianists of Wang’s age, especially others in the first rank like Benjamin Grosvenor, Daniil Trifonov, and Khatia Buniatishvili.Read full review... | ||
| 16-May-2013 Joyce Theater | Nuanced interpretations from Hubbard Street Dance Chicago at the Joyce | Rachel Rizzuto |
 Hubbard Street Dance Chicago, performing at the Joyce last Thursday, is comprised of clearly talented dancers, with nary a technical misstep, but there was a certain abandonment missing from the night’s program – and the program itself suffered from a noticeably stronger first half.
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| 16-May-2013 Boston Opera House | Boston Ballet's Coppélia delights, but gives few chances for stars to shine | Kathryn Maus |
 Beautifully imagined, Boston Ballet’s Coppélia delights with its charming sets, colorful costumes and charismatic leads. A storybook come to life, this ballet tells the fanciful tale of young love gone awry amidst a set of peculiar circumstances true to fairytale form. Coppélia, one of the great comedic ballets of the 19th century, requires suspense of realism on the part of the viewer (as most story ballets do), but once ensnared by its spell, this ballet had me grinning with amusement through to the final curtain.
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| 15-May-2013 Chicago Symphony Center | Yo-Yo Ma and company entertain at Chicago Symphony Center | Dan Wang |
 Yo-Yo Ma, currently the Judson and Joyce Green Creative Consultant for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, along with members from the same orchestra and the Civic Orchestra of Chicago, took the stage at Symphony Center for a single night last Wednesday.Read full review... | ||
| 15-May-2013 New York Live Arts | Familiar steps into otherworldly dance: Pam Tanowitz's The Spectators at New York Live Arts | Rachel Rizzuto |
 What a treat it was this past Wednesday to see dancers fully clothed, free of shock-value tricks and costumes that are eventually removed. What a luxury it was to take in the beautifully arched feet and luscious lines of the dancers at my own leisure. Pam Tanowitz’s newest piece, The Spectators, is a triumph of form, space and aesthetics – all without resorting to tired, dull or unimaginative choreographic devices.
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| 12-May-2013 New England Conservatory, Jordan Hall | A truly great Gatsby: John Harbison's opera gets a thrilling performance in Boston | Roger Mortimer-Smith |
 Between Baz Luhrmann’s recent film The Great Gatsby, Northern Ballet’s The Great Gatsby currently at Sadler’s Wells, and Elevator Repair Service’s circulation-testing, eight-hour Gatz at the Noël Coward Theatre last year, Londoners such as myself could be forgiven for feeling all Gatsbied out (in truth, Gatz could probably have achieved that by itself).Read full review... | ||
| 11-May-2013 92nd Street Y, Lexington Avenue at 92nd | The Tokyo String Quartet in musical farewells of Schubert, Haydn, and Bartók at 92Y | Evan Mitchell |
 The Tokyo String Quartet played a kind of “meta-goodbye” concert this Saturday evening at 92Y. The performance, their last at this venue before the quartet is disbanded, featured three great composers’ own farewells, the final works written for string chamber ensembles by Schubert, Haydn, and Bartók. The Tokyo Quartet’s personnel has changed since its inception in 1969 – its current members are violinists Martin Beaver and Kikuei Ikeda, violist Kazuhide Isomura, and cellist Clive Greensmith – and the group has existed in its current form since 2002.
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| 10-May-2013 Kennedy Center: Opera House | Zambello's Show Boat at the Washington National Opera | Simon Chin |
 The arrival of Show Boat at the Washington National Opera this month, after stops in Chicago and Houston, has provoked a certain amount of consternation in operatic circles. Does Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein’s 1927 musical properly belong in the opera house, and should a precious slot in an opera company’s season be devoted to such popular and obviously commercial entertainment? Do the moneylenders need to be driven out of the temple?
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| 9-May-2013 Severance Hall | Ton Koopman leads Cleveland Orchestra and Chamber Chorus in satisfying evening of Handel | Timothy Robson |
 Dutch keyboardist and conductor Ton Koopman this weekend completed his third and final season as artist-in-residence with The Cleveland Orchestra, leading an all-Handel program that also featured the Cleveland Orchestra Chamber Chorus. It was a musically satisfying program that showed the versatility of both orchestra and chorus.
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| 9-May-2013 Boston Opera House | Boston Ballet's Chroma: A powerful boost for the city's spirit | Kathryn Maus |
 When planning for the 2012/13 season, Artistic Director Mikko Nissinen could not have known how incredibly well-timed Chroma would seem for the Boston community. Following last month’s tragic events, the three selections comprising Chroma appear poised to lift the collective Bostonian spirit – it is a program that reflects on the past, reassuring the audience that traditions remain strong but that the future too is bright and brings with it a fresh new outlook.
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| 8-May-2013 Joyce Theater | Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet hits (and then misses) at the Joyce | Ivan Talijancic |
 For the occasion of what I believe has become Cedar Lake’s annual tradition of showcasing work at the Joyce Theater, this contemporary ballet troupe has assembled an impressive trio of guest choreographers – Nederlands Dans Theater’s former chief Jiří Kylián, Crystal Pite and Andonis Foniadakis.Read full review... | ||
| 8-May-2013 The Haverford School: Centennial Hall | Big, beautiful voices power AVA's Ballo | Gale Martin, operatoonity.com |
 “For some operas,” famed conductor Carlo Maria Giulini once said, “you can accept a voice of not absolute beauty – if it is well used and he is an artist and interpreter, it will work. But for Verdi you need all this plus the essential sound.”
The Academy of Vocal Arts’ final production of the 2012/13 season, Verdi’s Un Ballo In Maschera, delivered a cadre of beautiful dramatic voices also capable of producing that “essential sound” critical to the opera’s success.
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| 7-May-2013 Roulette | Brooklyn Youth Chorus with Kronos Quartet at Roulette | Rebecca Lentjes |
 Zoran Orlic.jpg) Roulette has never looked so snazzy: the usual dishevelled hipsters were replaced by well-dressed audience members of all ages, wearing heels rather than flannel, drinking from wine glasses rather than beer bottles. Ironically, the performers we were about to hear are not even old enough to drink: this was the Brooklyn Youth Chorus’ annual benefit concert, featuring collaborations with Kronos Quartet and other artists.Read full review... | ||
| 5-May-2013 Civic Opera House | Lyric Opera of Chicago goes proto-American with Oklahoma! | Dan Wang |
 The Lyric Opera ends their 2013–14 season with a run of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Oklahoma!, in all its frothy, proto-American, miked glory. Pluck is in evidence throughout. No audience anywhere, let us presume, need ever fear that the scourges of European “director’s opera” will ever touch this story of proto-nationhood, nor even some light corporate facelift involving suits and uniformly gray sets.Read full review... | ||
| 4-May-2013 Abrons Arts Center | All of a Sudden: Jack Ferver does himself (again) at Abrons Arts Center | Ivan Talijancic |
| Jack Ferver is a well-loved figure on New York’s downtown performance circuit, so it is no wonder that I arrive to Abrons Arts Center’s largest space (the Playhouse) to find that every available seat in the house is full. For the uninitiated (though, arguably, the bulk of this crowd is not), the jewel-box theatre set-up, red velvet curtain and all, could be deceiving – it might be so, for instance, for the older lady with a heavy European accent I can’t quite place who is sitting right next to me. What kind of a performance is it that Ferver does... is it dance? Read full review... | ||
| 4-May-2013 Carnegie Hall: Stern Auditorium/Perelman Stage | "I'm in love with Vienna": Renée Fleming and friends at Carnegie Hall | David Allen, unpredictableinevitability.com |
 For the last concert of her Perspectives series at Carnegie Hall, Renée Fleming assembled one of the least coherent concept programmes imaginable. Billed as “Vienna: Window to Modernity”, it was never clear what was specifically Viennese about the music on show, nor what was particularly modern, nor what windows had to do with anything. If this was about the fin de siècle and the turbulent culture that accompanied the collapse of the Austrian empire, then historians are going to have to redefine what a siècle might be, let alone a fin.Read full review... | ||
| 4-May-2013 Eyebeam | John Cage's HPSCHD: Living art at Eyebeam in NYC | Rebecca Lentjes |
 This past Saturday, I spent five hours in a great big room with a cold concrete floor that was brimming from end to end with sounds and images and people. Three of the four walls, as well as a screen hanging from the ceiling and winding in an angle above, were morphing and spinning ceaselessly with celestial and kaleidoscopic images that were projected from the row of “Lightcircus” artists along the fourth wall.Read full review... | ||
| 4-May-2013 Lincoln Center: Metropolitan Opera House | The Met's soul-searing Dialogues des Carmélites can't be missed | Gale Martin, operatoonity.com |
 Of all the surprising backdrops for grand opera in the universe of operas, surely the prayers of a contemplative order of nuns top any list. Yet, this three-act opera was so riveting, soul-searing, and utterly shocking that audience members were bereft of their senses by the final act, and bereft is no exaggeration. The Carmelite convent of Compiègne during the French Revolution provides the most gripping setting imaginable for Francis Poulenc’s opera Dialogues des Carmélites.
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| 3-May-2013 Lincoln Center: David H Koch Theater | New York City Ballet's evening with Jerome Robbins | Stephanie Sirabian |
 From lifelong fans to the previously uninitiated, New York City Ballet’s All Robbins program was designed to make the whole house cheer. Jerome Robbins’ (1918–98) work on Broadway and in ballet made him a revered artist in both circles. Few others were ever able to achieve such crossover success. Robbins’ choreography anticipates the viewers’ desires, providing humor, excitement and beauty in just the right mix.Read full review... | ||
| 3-May-2013 The Engineers Club: Grand Ballroom | Heather Johnson gives Carmen new meaning in Baltimore | Raisa Massuda, mandolinvision.blogspot.com |
 One of my favorite things about opera in concert is the absence of director’s concept. Don’t take me wrong: I do enjoy a well-directed opera production with a concept. But let’s face it: how often does an opera artist get an opportunity to express his/her own vision of the character? Hardly ever, unless, liberated by the absence of director’s demands, the artist gives the role a bold treatment, and through it, inspires the audience to see a familiar opera at a different angle.
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| 3-May-2013 Carnegie Hall: Stern Auditorium/Perelman Stage | Joy and wonder at Evgeny Kissin's Carnegie Hall recital | Rebecca Lentjes |
_cropped.jpg) Evgeny Kissin is more than a collection of bones and flesh and crazy hair: he is a sensation. Every May for the past several years, the pianist has performed a recital on the Perelman stage at Carnegie Hall, and every year the tickets have sold out by mid-October, seven or eight months in advance. These recitals are the pinnacle of any concert-goer’s season. They are the Super Bowl of classical music, or the release of a new Harry Potter book, or Easter Sunday, when suddenly church congregations surge to twice their usual attendance.Read full review... | ||
| 2-May-2013 Walt Disney Concert Hall | Loving Lang Lang: Heroic Tchaikovsky and Nielsen with Dudamel in Los Angeles | Ted Ayala |
 Among among certain classical music cognoscenti, few statements will probably cause one to lose more cred than saying this: “I love Lang Lang.”
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| 2-May-2013 Kennedy Center: Terrace Theater | Opera Lafayette's minimalistic Actéon conquers the Kennedy Center | Raisa Massuda, mandolinvision.blogspot.com |
 For almost two decades, Opera Lafayette has been known to DC opera fans as a period-based ensemble reviving long-forgotten gems of French Baroque and Rococo chamber opera repertoire. On Thursday night, the Kennedy Center’s Terrace Theater hosted Opera Lafayette’s most recent creation: its production of Marc-Antoine Charpentier’s pastorale/tragédie en musique Actéon.
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| 2-May-2013 Lincoln Center: Metropolitan Opera House | Götterdämmerung at the Met | Meg Wilhoite |
 The word Götterdämmerung contextually translated becomes “twilight of the gods”, and Thursday night’s story was indeed full of endings: the conclusion of the saga of the ring and the end of several lives, human and god alike.
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| 1-May-2013 Carnegie Hall: Stern Auditorium/Perelman Stage | Living, laughing Beethoven: Richard Goode and the last three sonatas | David Allen, unpredictableinevitability.com |
 A concert of the Op. 109, Op. 110, and Op. 111 piano sonatas could very easily be delivered with the kind of self-seriousness that turns Beethoven into the Beethoven of legend, a daunting, impenetrable titan, the kind of Beethoven consecrated high on the proscenium arches of so many American concert halls. The brilliance of this Richard Goode recital lay not simply in the ferocity and radiance of his playing, in his refusal to reconcile the extremes of Beethoven’s late style, but in his capacity to render Beethoven immediate, humorous, and human.
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| 1-May-2013 Cleveland Museum of Art: Gartner Auditorium | Distinctive Californian compositions in the Cleveland Museum of Art | Timothy Robson |
 This week The Cleveland Orchestra and Cleveland Museum of Art, two iconic cultural brands in the city, collaborated on a two-concert series at the museum of music by composers who based their careers in California. The orchestra’s assistant conductor, James Feddeck, conducted the concerts in the museum’s intimate Gartner Auditorium. The first concert featured rare works by Henry Cowell, Dane Rudhyar and Lou Harrison. The second concert, scheduled for Friday 3 May, features music by John Adams (his Shaker Loops), James Tenney and Terry Riley.Read full review... | ||
| 30-Apr-2013 Roulette | Michael Gordon's Timber returns to Brooklyn with DJs and doodles | Rebecca Lentjes |
 This past December at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, six percussionists drummed on wooden planks for an hour in one of the most powerful performances of 2012. The six musicians of Mantra Percussion (Joe Bergen, Al Cerulo, Chris Graham, Michael McCurdy, Jude Traxler, and Nick Woodbury) were performing the New York première of Michael Gordon’s Timber, an immersive and meditative work.Read full review... | ||
| 29-Apr-2013 Lincoln Center: Metropolitan Opera House | Flashes of brilliance in the Met's Siegfried | David Karlin |
 Each of Wagner's Ring Cycle operas offers conductor and performers a continual stream of opportunities for "wow" moments. There are moments of humour, bars of intense power in the music, crises in the drama or passages of intense vocal lyricism - there are so many possibilities that it's impossible for any one performance to capture them all. One way of evaluating a Ring Cycle opera is to consider how many of these fleeting instances were seized upon by orchestra and cast with enough impact to make a lasting impression in your memory.
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| 28-Apr-2013 Chicago Symphony Center | Kissin, the Viennese, at Symphony Hall in Chicago | Dan Wang |
 Let me first describe the sound of the applause: taut, front-heavy, explosive. This was before Evgeny Kissin played his first note at Symphony Hall this past Sunday. It was a packed house, with an audience that spilled out of the choir loft and onto several rows of chairs wrapped around the piano. And as he finished – during his fourth encore, a prelude by Chopin – a middle-aged couple stood by the door on stage, holding hands, listening intently, needing to leave, not wanting to go.
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| 28-Apr-2013 The Juilliard School: Peter Jay Sharp Theater | America's young talent on show at the Juilliard's Cunning Little Vixen | David Karlin |
 Generally, opera doesn’t give old age much of a look-in, but the closing scene of Janáček’s The Cunning Little Vixen, written in Janáček’s old age, is an exception, as the Forester muses on the passing of time and the renewing cycle of life. In today’s Juilliard School production, Aubrey Allicock gave us the most touching and thoughtful of renderings. Through the whole opera, his voice was a delight to listen to: gloriously full, rich and smooth, with the power to cut through the orchestra and fill the Juilliard’s 900-seater Peter Jay Sharp Theater.Read full review... | ||
| 27-Apr-2013 Lincoln Center: Avery Fisher Hall | Emanuel Ax, Alan Gilbert and the New York Phil lay out their craft with Bruckner and Mozart | Joseph Pfender |
 Maurice Jerry Beznos.jpg) Saturday night, Avery Fisher Hall saw a solid and well-crafted final performance of Mozart’s Piano Concerto no. 25 and Bruckner’s Symphony no. 3. The piano concerto was cleanly executed and so polished as to allow the Mozartean patina to shine clearly through. Emanuel Ax played with a crisp yet sonorous articulation which seems to be typical of good interpretations of the concerto, and overall played exceedingly well.Read full review... | ||
| 27-Apr-2013 Severance Hall | Admired, not loved: The Cleveland Orchestra and Chorus in Haydn's The Seasons | Timothy Robson |
 Are there musical works, even pieces generally considered to be masterpieces, that no longer can catch the listening public’s interest, no matter how expertly they are performed?Read full review... | ||
| 27-Apr-2013 Carnegie Hall: Stern Auditorium/Perelman Stage | A tribute to American song: Orpheus Chamber Orchestra with Gabriel Kahane | Kay Kempin |
 Sitting in the majestic Carnegie Hall, Orpheus Chamber Orchestra almost looked dwarfed by the sheer size of the stage. Cristi Andrews Cohen’s voice echoed as she recited the poem by Richard Dehmel. But then soft hums emanated from the strings, incessant but quiet at first, slowing building to a larger, richer sound that enveloped the hall.
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| 26-Apr-2013 Walt Disney Concert Hall | Jean-Yves Thibaudet and Lionel Bringuier with the LA Philharmonic in Saint-Säens and Ravel | Alan Yu, alanayu.wordpress.com |
 It was the golden jubilee of Saint-Säens as a concert pianist, and in celebration he performed his crowning glory, the Piano Concerto no. 5 in F, “Egyptian”, which he composed while on tour in Luxor, incorporating exotic Middle Eastern melodies and rhythms. The concerto is not known to be given over to excessive fin de siècle romanticism, and whatever there was Jean-Yves Thibaudet certainly didn’t overindulge in.Read full review... | ||
| 26-Apr-2013 Nasher Sculpture Center | Handsome animals: An evening of Cummings and Ives in Dallas | Evan Mitchell |
 “It’s a contra-alto clarinet,” explained Ben Goldberg to an audience puzzled at the first sight of this long, coiled silver instrument. “But it can be used to clean your sink in an emergency.” The ensemble Tin Hat – comprising Mr Goldberg on clarinets (B flat and contra-alto), Carla Kihlstedt on violin and vocals, guitarist Mark Orton, and Rob Reich playing piano and accordion – appeared this past Friday on the latest presentation of Soundings, the new music series at the Nasher Sculpture Center.Read full review... | ||
| 26-Apr-2013 Lincoln Center: Metropolitan Opera House | Die Walküre at the Met | David Karlin |
 You can summarise the plot of Die Walküre in three sentences: Siegmund and Sieglinde fall in love and elope; Fricka coerces Wotan into killing Siegmund; Wotan punishes Brünnhilde for trying to save him. But within that simple framework lies a vast gamut of human distress, striving, redemption - and, make no mistake, Wotan may be notionally a god, but Norse gods are made in man’s image: extensions of humanity rather than abstract spirits.
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| 25-Apr-2013 Lincoln Center: Metropolitan Opera House | The Met's Ring Cycle begins with an impressive Das Rheingold | David Karlin |
 Quite simply, it’s the largest scale event in all of opera. With 18 hours of music in a 3,800 seat house, Wagner’s Ring Cycle at the Met is a giant, lavish undertaking – all starting with that famous E flat chord: starting from the quietest of pianissimo double bass notes and building for nearly four minutes before it explodes into the melody of the Rhinemaidens.
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| 24-Apr-2013 Carnegie Hall, Zankel Hall | Exploring the terrain of contemporary American Soundscapes at Zankel Hall | Rebecca Lentjes |
 On Wednesday night, a group of young artists coached by John Adams and David Robertson warmed up on the stage of Carnegie Hall’s Zankel Hall. The snatches of the music we were about to hear – from cinematic melodies to jaunty dance-like snippets – jumbled together as one usually expects of a warm-up. But the mishmash of pitches and textures served as a sort of Cagean preface to the performance, which featured works by 20th-century American composers.
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| 21-Apr-2013 New York City Center | New York City Opera closes season with Alden's riotous La Périchole | Zerbinetta |
 Henri Bergson famously defined comedy as “something mechanical encrusted on the living”. One suspects that Jacques Offenbach would have been a fan of this definition, and that Christopher Alden most certainly is. Alden’s new production of La Périchole, which closes the New York City Opera’s season, is strange, abrasive, and also extremely funny, careening past the everyday to end up somewhere deeply bizarre.
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| 20-Apr-2013 92nd Street Y, Lexington Avenue at 92nd | Modernist Mozart at the end of time: Tetzlaff at 92Y | David Allen, unpredictableinevitability.com |
 It’s easiest to describe Christian Tetzlaff’s approach to playing the violin by what he isn’t trying to do. He is not trying to play as beautifully as possible, in the conventional sense. He is not trying to sound like a nightingale, soaring long, honeyed lines above an accompaniment. He is not, in other words, trying to make his violin sound as the mind’s ear instinctively thinks it should. That is too easy, after all, and it inhibits a truer sense of expression.Read full review... | ||
| 20-Apr-2013 San Diego Civic Theatre | San Diego Opera's flashy Aida features standout soprano Latonia Moore | Matthew Richard Martinez |
 Aida typifies all that is grand about opera. Its exotic setting, majestic music, and dramatic love triangle can make for an evening unique among performing arts events. It’s not a bad way to close an opera season either. San Diego Opera did so on Saturday, capping a uniformly satisfying season with Zandra Rhodes’ vibrant production that was refreshing and at times thrilling.
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| 19-Apr-2013 Carnegie Hall: Stern Auditorium/Perelman Stage | An unconvincing Bruckner 8 from Christian Thielemann and the Staatskapelle Dresden | David Allen, unpredictableinevitability.com |
 Christian Thielemann’s repertoire is broader than is often made out, but not that much broader. At its heart are the four composers most associated with late Austro-Germanic Romanticism: Johannes Brahms, Richard Wagner, Richard Strauss, and Anton Bruckner. It’s a satisfying if rather glutinous diet, one steeped in canonical tradition, and one that on any extended basis can nowadays only really work with certain Central European orchestras.
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| 19-Apr-2013 Brooklyn Academy of Music: Howard Gilman Opera House | William Christie's Jardin des Voix in full bloom at BAM | Stephen Raskauskas |
 Spring has sprung and the arts flourish at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. Earlier this week, William Christie and his superb ensemble Les Arts Florissants revived Charpentier’s David et Jonathas, first produced at the 2012 Festival d’Aix-en-Provence (review here). Friday, Christie displayed a fresh bouquet of voices cultivated with care in his Jardin des Voix – one of most prestigious academies for young singers today.Read full review... | ||
| 19-Apr-2013 Baryshnikov Arts Center: Howard Gilman Performance Space | Rosie Herrera's Dining Alone at the Baryshnikov Arts Center an unparalleled feast | Rachel Rizzuto |
 For the past several months, I have repeatedly lamented the dearth of inventive and compelling dance – preferably without an intense display of nudity. I am pleased to announce that I have found a piece of dance theater worthy of my comprehensive recommendation: Rosie Herrera’s Dining Alone. This 50-minute ensemble piece, which dissects the emotional facets of dining out, was compelling, innovative and alternately hugely comedic and poignant.
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| 18-Apr-2013 Danspace Project, St Mark's Church in-the-Bowery | Vicky Shick's Everything You See at Danspace a confusing whirlwind of tiny dances | Rachel Rizzuto |
 Vicky Shick’s newest piece, presented at Danspace, was a motley crew of a thing in all aspects: colorful and wildly patterned costumes; dozens of pop-up solos, duets and trios, often occurring simultaneously; multi-generations of dancers; and even two separate “stages” within one space. Although this combination gave me more than enough to look at, the overall product felt more distracting and less cohesive than I would have liked. The piece’s biggest asset was its ability to be both matter-of-fact and whimsical at the same time.
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| 18-Apr-2013 AT&T Performing Arts Center: Hamon Hall | New and old: Orli Shaham plays Bolcom, Brahms, and Mussorgsky | Evan Mitchell |
 Christian Steiner.jpg) Pianist Orli Shaham was in Dallas Thursday night for a recital at Hamon Hall, a small space located within the AT&T Performing Arts Center. Her performance of works by William Bolcom, Brahms and Mussorgsky, though uneven and hampered by a bad instrument, was full of humor and sensitive moments, and her spoken remarks helped add a personal touch to the already intimate setting.
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| 17-Apr-2013 Carnegie Hall: Stern Auditorium/Perelman Stage | Der Thielemann brings the Staatskapelle Dresden and Brahms to New York | David Allen, unpredictableinevitability.com |
 “Der Sir”, they used to call him. The death of Sir Colin Davis has been a strikingly international event, and New York has been no exception. Over at Lincoln Center, Alan Gilbert and the New York Philharmonic opened their latest subscription run with “Nimrod” from Elgar’s Enigma Variations, a joint tribute to the British conductor and the people of Boston (another of Sir Colin’s haunts).Read full review... | ||
