Susan Hall
Bio:
Recent Articles:
-
Brokeback Mountain by Charles Wuorinen Front Page
New York City Opera Finally Presents Its Commission
By: - Jun 01st, 2018Brokeback Mountain finally arrives at New York City Opera. The company originally commissioned the piece over a decade ago. It is a powerul and moving work.
-
Exquisita Agonía at Repertorio Español Front Page
De Nilo Cruz Weaves Magic
By: - May 30th, 2018Exquisita Agonía at Repertorio Espanol is a tour de force take on modern science mixed with the age old questions about who we are and what we leave behind when we die. Director Jose Zayas has provided a perfect rhythm to the two-act piece by Pulitzer Prize winning playwright Nilo Cruz.
-
Bychkov Conducts the NY Philharmonic Front Page
Broad Swathes of Sound
By: - May 27th, 2018A special evening at the New York Philharmonic, in which Semyon Bychkov conducted widely diverse swathes of sound from compoers Luciano Berio and Richard Strauss.
-
Backwards from Winter by Douglas Knehans Music
Center for Contemporary Opera at Symphony Space
By: - May 26th, 2018Backwards from Winter had its premier as part of the New York Opera Fest. All the parts that make up opera are unified on stage to create an enormously satisfying operatic experience.
-
Light Shinging in Buckinghamshire at NY Theater Workshop Front Page
Ideas Would Inform Our Founding Fathers
By: - May 25th, 2018The presentation of Light Shining in Buckinghamshire by Caryl Churchill at the New York Theater Workshop takes the bold step of exploring the true roots of American democratic values as they emerged in the tumultuous years bracketing the English Civil War 1642-1651.
-
Mirga Gražinyte-Tyla Leads the Met Orchestra Front Page
Carnegie Hall Hosts
By: - May 22nd, 2018Mirga Gražinyte-Tyla, the Lithuanian conducting sensation who in 2016 at 29 years of age became the first woman to stand at the helm of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra. This week she led the MET Orchestra at Carnegie Hall.
-
Semyon Bychkov Conducts NY Philharmonic Front Page
Brahms, Mendelssohn, and Shostakobich
By: - May 20th, 2018Semyon Bychkov understands that no matter what the back story of a composition, it stands on its own in performance. The conductor deeply understands the music he performs. He conveys this to his orchestra. At the conclusion of a recent concert at David Geffen Hall, instrumentalists congratulated each other and the conductor, amazed and delighted that together they had reached incredible performance heights.
-
Lesley Manville and Jeremy Irons Front Page
O'Neill's Long Day's Journey at BAM
By: - May 13th, 2018From the moment you enter the Harvey Theater at BAM this is an extraordinary experience. The set is by no means a glass house, but it has the effect of one. The walls are semi-transparent. Tall bookcases line the central living room in one corner. Stairs ascend. The front door of the house leads to a walkway visible from the living room. This is the 'home' that will be endlessly called to mind in O'Neill's Long Day's Journey Into Night.
-
Christina and Michelle Naughton at Lincoln Center Front Page
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.
-
Sir Simon Rattle and Mahler's Tenth Music
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.
-
Andrea Fulton's A Punk or A Gentleman Front Page
Big Subjects Treated with Humor and Feeling
By: - May 08th, 2018Theatre for the New City and the Fulton Foundation are presenting Andrea Fulton’s “A Punk or a Gentleman”. Andrea Fulton has an uncanny knack for giving us an incisive vision of difficult social issues. We are asked to reconfigure our preconceptions. Her topic, domestic violence, is not what you might expect. The victim is a man and he, like 25% of American men, is experiencing physical abuse at the hands of his wives and girlfriends.
-
Jansons and the Bavarian Radio Orchestra Symphony Front Page
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.
-
Assembled Identities at HERE Front Page
Cloning as a Way to Explore Individuality
By: - May 07th, 2018Assembled Identities is a new work being presented by HERE, as the important Art Center celebrates its 25th anniversary. In many ways, the play reflects the company’s core commitment to hybrid art.
-
Orphic Moments by Master Voices Front Page
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.
-
Honeck Conducts New York Philharmonic Front Page
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.
-
Mariss Jansons and the Bavarian Radio Orchestra Front Page
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.
-
Karl Marx in Soho with Bob Weick Front Page
Howard Zinn's Engaging and Apt Drama
By: - May 04th, 2018Howard Zinn’s celebrated play comes “home” to the Soho Playhouse, starring Bob Weick as Karl Marx. The theorist of communism engages in a passionate, funny and moving commentary about contemporary American politics and society. Come celebrate the 200th anniversary of his birth.
-
Gerald Finley and Julius Drake at Alice Tully Hall Front Page
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.
-
Dudamel in New York Front Page
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.
-
Carmen at Opera Philadelphia Front Page
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.
-
Welser-Möst Conducts Tristan and Isolde Front Page
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.
-
John Holiday at a Crypt Session Front Page
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.
-
Lawrence Brownlee At Carnegie Front Page
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.
-
Philip Glass and Ravi Shankar at Carnegie Front Page
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
-
Mozart and Bruchner at New York Philharmonic Front Page
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.)
<< Previous Next >>