Music
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Christina and Michelle Naughton at Lincoln Center
Duo Pianists Feature Classic Style and Its Deconstruction
By: - May 13th, 2018Double your pleasure, double your fun with the fabulous duo pianists, Christina and Michelle Naughton. The Sunday morning concert at the Walter Reade Theater in Lincoln Center is a popular fixture of the Great Performers series. Here up and coming important artists introduce themselves. The Naughtons are well on their way to prominence in the field of classical music. In this wake-up concert they took it upon themselves to delight by alternating conventional music, marvelously performed, with deconstructions of familiar themes by John Adams and Witold Lutoslawki.
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Sir Simon Rattle and Mahler's Tenth
London Symphony Orchestra at Lincoln Center
By: - May 08th, 2018Sir Simon Rattle presented Gustav Mahler, composer and one-time music director of the New York Philharmonic, at David Geffen Hall in Lincoln Center. His last program featured the unfinished 10th Symphony which has not been taken on as often as Franz Schubert’s. Rattle first recorded the Symphony over three decades ago with the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra.
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Jansons and the Bavarian Radio Orchestra Symphony
Listening to the BSO Music Director's Mentor
By: - May 07th, 2018Mariss Jansons conducted Mahler's Ninth Symphony at Carnegie Hall. Andris Nelsons, the music director of the Boston Symphony and a protégé of Jansons, introduced himself to the BSO with this symphony.
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Orphic Moments by Master Voices
Anthony Roth Costanzo and Matthew Aucoin Featured
By: - May 07th, 2018Anthony Roth Costanzo is a counter tenor opera aficionados come out to hear. His voice is unusually rich for this range. He is a physical actor of great skill. The Master Voices presentation of Orphic Moments implanted a dramatic cantata Matthew Aucoin wrote for Costanzo into the opera by Gluck.
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Zoe Lewis’ Cabaret in Provincetown
Bootleggers Rock Monday at The Mews
By: - May 07th, 2018To our surprise, a Monday night at Provincetown's The Mews, in early May, the joint was jumping. It was packed to the gills for a fabulous night of cabaret with pianist/ singer/ raconteur Zoe Lewis and the Bootleggers. It was the absolute highllight of a pre season week on the Cape.
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Buddy Holly on Stage in Chicago
February 3 the Day the Music Died
By: - May 06th, 2018Playwright Janes is an English writer and producer who works in TV, film, radio and stage. Buddy—The Buddy Holly his best-known work and ran for 14 years in London’s West End and toured in the U.K. for 17 years. Buddy has also been on Broadway, toured the U.S., Germany, Australia and New Zealand.
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Honeck Conducts New York Philharmonic
By: - May 06th, 2018Manfred Honeck, who was narrowly beaten out by Jaap van Zweden for the job of music director of the New York Philharmonic returned to the podium of America's oldest orchestra this week. He brought an ambitious program, featuring two of his own arrangements of orchestral music by Dvorak and Tchaikovsky, each drawn from fairy tale works by those great Romantic composers, and the evergreen Sibelius Violin Concerto as an ample and satisfying makeweight.
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Mariss Jansons and the Bavarian Radio Orchestra
Carnegie Hall Celebrates Maestro's Birthday
By: - May 05th, 2018Mariss Jansons started his program with the presumed warhorse, The Wiliam Tell Overture. He brings freshness to the work. In his customary attention to detail, which is then swept up into the greater whole, we hear a symphony, which begins with a beautiful cello solo and expands finally to a rip-snorting conclusion. All sections of the orchestra have a chance to shine in ensemble or solo performance.
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Gerald Finley and Julius Drake at Alice Tully Hall
Among Lincoln Center's Great Performers
By: - May 03rd, 2018Gerald Finley, in announcing his program at Alice Tully Hall, said that he and his collaborator on the piano, Julius Drake, had selected songs they loved. It is a measure of this consummate bass-baritone and superb piano partner that the songs were also among the most difficult in the literature. These masters of the form did not struggle as they displayed pyrotechnics on the keyboard and a wide-spreading musical and emotional range in the voice.
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Dudamel in New York
Old Stalin's Ghost
By: - May 01st, 2018The arrival of the sensational conductor Gustavo Dudamel and the Los Angeles Philharmonic is always a cause for celebration at Lincoln Center. Dudamel remains the leading musical export of Venezuela, the proof that that country's El Sistema program is an entirely successful social experiment in producing quality musicians under difficult circumstances.
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Carmen at Opera Philadelphia
New Production Sizzles at the Academy of Music
By: - Apr 30th, 2018Carmen has arrived in all her glory at the Academy of Music in Philadelphia. Heralded by digital billboard signs on the highways and byways around the city, and topping off the PECO Building in downtown Philadelphia, the news is being broadcast. The Academy has been packed. This new production by Opera Philadelphia and its partners in Seattle and Ireland, is smashing.
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Welser-Möst Conducts Tristan and Isolde
Nina Stemme and Gerhard Siegel Shine in Title Roles
By: - Apr 27th, 2018Tristan und Isolde is not an ordinary opera. Wagner's work stripped almost all the action and plot away from the legend of the medieval knight and the Irish queen and their illicit affair. Aside from one sword-thrust, there is very little action. Everything is internal in this mysterious opera, with turbulent swirls of chromatic orchestration bringing the psychological inner life of the characters to vivid life. In other words, as the Cleveland Orchestra proved on Thursday night, this is a perfect opera for the concert hall.
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John Holiday at a Crypt Session
Ranging from Handel to Jazz
By: - Apr 27th, 2018John Holiday, Andrew Ousley’s latest pick as an artist to perform in his Crypt Session series, sounds like an angel and looks like a linebacker. It’s more apt to note that while Holiday is billed as a counter tenor, he is truly a soprano, comfortable in the very unusual upper registers usually associated with the female voice. His is not a falsetto.
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Lawrence Brownlee At Carnegie
Schumann and Tyshawn Sorey Revealed
By: - Apr 25th, 2018Lawrence Brownlee is a world class bel canto singer. He is also a daring artist who is moving out of his comfort zone to tell new truths in song. The New York premiere of Cycles of My Being by Tyshawn Sorey, was presented at Carnegie Hall.
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Philip Glass and Ravi Shankar at Carnegie
Pacific Symphony Stunning
By: - Apr 22nd, 2018Philip Glass holds the Debs Composer’s Chair at Carnegie Hall for this season. A concert honoring his work was performed by the splendid Pacific Symphony. Carl St. Clair conducted. He has been the music director of this symphony for decades. The performance made the benefits of consistent leadership over time clear
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Mozart and Bruchner at New York Philharmonic
Christoph Eschenbach Conducts
By: - Apr 22nd, 2018A good idea is a good idea. That might be the rationale between this weeks New York Philharmonic program which pairs Mozart’s charming Piano Concerto No. 22 with Anton Bruckner’s sprawling, ambitious and ultimately unfinished Symphony No. 9 under the baton of guest conductor Christopher Eschenbach. For New York’s Bruckner enthusiasts, this concert evoked memories of January 2017. Back then Daniel Barenboim led the Berlin Staatskapelle in a cycle of Bruckner symphonies at Carnegie Hall, pairing the shorter works with the major Mozart piano concertos. (Barenboim paired the Ninth with Piano Concerto No. 23.)
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Cendrillon with Joyce DiDonato
End of the Season Treat at the Metropolitan Opera
By: - Apr 22nd, 2018Cendrillon is Massenet's fourteenth opera, written at the apex of his popularity as the last acknowledged master of the French romantic style. As conducted here by Bertrand de Billy, its score has the weight of fairy cake, high in sugary melodies and whipped by conductor Bertrand de Billy into an airy soufflé of sound. It's hard to believe it, but this run marked the Metropolitan Opera debut for an enchanting work.
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Julia Bullock Rocks at Carnegie Hall
Singing Schubert and Nina Simone
By: - Apr 21st, 2018Julia Bullock swept onto the stage in a long green dress whose full skirt was filled with white flowers reminiscent of the gardenias Billie Holiday always wore in her hair. After Schubert, Samuel Barber and Gabriel Faure, we dug into Holiday, Alberta Hunter and Nina Simone with the singer.
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Manhattan School of Music's Snow Maiden
An Opera Comes Out of the Deep Freeze
By: - Apr 21st, 2018Nikolai Rimksy-Korsakov is one of the most important opera composers of 19th century Russia. A member of the "Mighty Handful", he revised works by Mussorgsky, taught Stravinsky and was a master of orchestration and melody. However, outside of a few concert works, the bulk of his music, most notably a long catalogue of operas, receives little attention. This made it all the more interesting that the Manhattan School of Music's Senior Opera Theater decided to mount The Snow Maiden, an enchanting fairy tale opera and the composer's personal favorite.
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Music of Weimar Presented by Aspect
Bach, Mendelssohn and Liszt
By: - Apr 20th, 2018Aspect presents music in a new concert format, as engaging as it is thought-provoking. In a program at the Italian Academy at Columbia University, Stephen Johnson, a BBC broadcaster, spoke about Weimar, Germany as a cradle of musical talent. Listening to Bach, Mendelssohn and Liszt, there is no question about the talent. Each of these composers had formative experiences in Weimar.
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New York City Opera's Love of Three Kings
Montemezzi's Potboiler at the Rose Theater
By: - Apr 15th, 2018The new New York City Opera extends our horizons. Italo Montemezzi's highly successful Love of Three Kings is presented in its noir depth at the Rose Theater of Lincoln Center.
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YoYo Ma Joins BSO at Carnegie Hall
Strauss Concludes New York Visit
By: - Apr 15th, 2018The Boston Symphony Orchestra played its third and final Carnegie Hall concert on Friday night. This venerable orchestra has found its passion and spark again under the baton of music director Andris Nelsons. As an ensemble, it is moving forward in a bold and forthright manner. And yet, some of its past tendencies appeared in this concert, resulting in a curious evening of variable quality.
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Boston Symphony Brings Tristan to Carnegie Hall
Nelsons Conducts Act II
By: - Apr 13th, 2018It might be his good looks. It might be his magnetic stage presence. It might be his voice. Or it might be his rash of cancellations at the Metropolitan Opera in the last few seasons. Either way, tenor Jonas Kaufmann, who hasn't sung Wagner on a New York stage since 2013, has a fan following. They were out in force at Carnegie Hall on Thursday night to hear him sing
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Andris Nelsons and BSO at Carnegie Hall
Jean-Yves Thibaudet at the Piano
By: - Apr 12th, 2018The Boston Symphony Orchestra is flourishing under the leadership of music director Andris Nelsons. Ensemble and music director arrived at Carnegie Hall on Wednesday night for the first of three concerts this week, fulfilling their yearly obligation to visit that historic stage and offering New Yorkers a sample of the interesting new directions pursued by this brave and ambitious conductor.
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The French Quarter Festival
Music, Culture And Food
By: - Apr 12th, 2018It's the 35th year that New Orleans hosts one of the largest, free, music festivals in the world. Add the culture of the Big Easy and the unique food choices to the festival and you have a four day stint of true debauchery.
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